Election Day Words from the "Far Left" of American Politics

So I did my civic duty today, and cast my vote at my polling place, deep in the heart of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. I was a little worried, given the words of warning in the press about shortages of voting machines, that I would get there to find throngs of people waiting in line for the one working voting machine. I was pleasantly surprised that the line I had to wait in for my polling district was quite short. Some of the lines stretched outside the door. There were only a couple of elderly women in front of me, one of whom got yelled at by the sour poll worker for being in the wrong line. I was able to get a laugh out of that poll worker when I asked her how many times I was allowed to vote today. Part of me is serious about that. The actual voting experience though was kind of anti-climactic. The voting booth appeared to date back to before I was born. So if there was any attempt to fix the election with rigged voting booths, it was perpetrated by the Nixon administration. I pulled the lever, pushed some little levers, pulled the lever again, and walked out. No receipt, no ballot to put in a box, no visible holes punched in a card, not even one of those iconic "I Voted!" stickers to wear on my sweater. Other than the memory of elderly African Americans waiting in long lines and pulling levers, I really have no evidence of ever having voted.

Still, this is the first election where I've felt pretty good about my choice. My last two presidential ballots were sent (lost) in the mail. I still think Barack Obama is the lesser of two evils. I have been joking about how I still need to decide between Nader and the Working Families party candidate. It turned out that Obama WAS the Working Families candidate. I still voted for him under Democrat though, due to the fact that I wasn't too sure how my vote would be counted if I pulled the working families lever.

One of McCain's talking points for the last few weeks has been to label Obama as "from the far left of American politics." As someone who considers himself pretty far left, and who knows and respects a handful of socialists, I am a little offended by this. If wanting to cut taxes for everyone but the very rich and supporting health care that DOESN'T necessarily result in universal coverage means that Obama is "far left," then what am I? While I still think Obama is more likely to be in touch with the needs of the majority of working- and middle-class Americans, I'd prefer it if McCain did not lump him in with my beliefs. It turns my beliefs into an insult lobbed by uninformed people to bring down a candidate they also know nothing about. This is basically to say two things: Obama is categorically NOT from the "far left" of American politics, and even if he was, what's so bad about that?