While the national media fixates on the saga of the short Yalie beating the tall Yalie, little attention has been paid to an urgent election story developing here in Chattanooga.
A close look at Hamilton County precinct-by-precinct voting shows that the "St Elmo 1" precinct offered four write-in votes in the Wamp/Wolfe race, and a whopping nine in the Crutchfield/Marceaux contest. While there is no way to know for certain, my unscientific exit polling data suggests that many of these 13 votes, maybe even all of them, were cast for Ed "Thunder" Sunder.
His campaign manager should be proud.
Drove down to the Rec Center this afternoon, filled out the bright yellow ballot, voted for the devil I know. Walked out into the leaf graveyard of the parking lot. My van wouldn't start. Maybe that's a sign of something.
The glow from the Red Sox victory has worn off a bit as this election drags to an end. So depressing, watching two men and their gargantuan black-ops squads battle over their diametrically opposed utopian systems, neither of which I believe one iota in. I keep hearing that no informed voter could be undecided this year; that you must be an idiot not to have picked a side. Well, I'm informed -- dammit, I'm ever so informed, thanks -- and I can't believe in either of these visions. One's an idealistic lie, the other's a reductionist, angry pandering.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I picked an issue, a practical, simple issue that I care deeply about, and I voted on it. Tort reform, in case you're wondering. This November, as the world goes crazy, I'm holding my tiny square of turf on the need for tort reform. Hey, I work for an obstetrician. I understand this issue. And I'm going to fight for things I can understand.
I keep thinking about Roger Angell's piece on the World Series last week:
Baseball is the only game that’s played every day, which is why its season often seems endless, right up to the inning and the out—the little toss over to first base—when, wow, it ends. Politics should be so lucky. Perhaps there was a time when a close and angry election like this one could be expected to produce some easy joy and a rough, semi-polite unanimity when it was over, and a little space when the candidates and the pollsters and the focus groups and the voters went home and thought about what it was that first hooked them on such passion, but it does not come quickly to mind. Now the imminent world, with its round-the-clock, round-the-hour schedule of crises and casualties and unfolding disasters, does not permit even a two-minute timeout. What we all could use right now is fifteen weeks till pitchers and catchers.
With all this despondancy in mind, all y'all are welcome to stop by my place tonight for the Old School Election Results Soiree. If you want to relax, trade witty jibes, and talk calmly about the insanity, please come. If you want to yell, please don't. I've had enough yelling.