The first election of any kind that I can remember was the 1976 presidential election. I was in second grade and there was no question who I was voting for in my school's mock elections. Grandpa Guy was making Jimmy Carter donkeys to sell in his woodshop.
"Be a Democrat all your life," the old man told me. I can still hear his high-volume, sawtoothed voice.
Voting was a given with people of that generation. I've read how college educated people are more likely to vote, but it wasn't like that with the old crowd who saw the Depression and World War II. My grandma Mac only had an eighth grade education, but for her, not to vote would have been unconscionable. She worked at the old Ben Franklin store in my hometown of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 then). When an 18 year old girl Grandma worked with and trained, said she didn't think she would vote, Grandma told her, "Honey, you not only owe it to your country. You owe it to yourself."
I had a 1976 bicentennial book full of pictures of the presidents that my Dad gave me. He'd gotten it at the bank for free, along with a car visor calendar. Grandma Mac pointed to the picture of FDR and said, "That's my favorite president." What? I thought. Not George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.
Today, I'd have to concur with Grandma Mac about the importance of voting. I study candidates from both parties, but I'm a registered Democrat, which Grandpa Guy would like. (Maria is unaffiliated.)
In the past six years, I've seen voting become a more urgent need than ever and that urgency has reached an apex this mid-term election year.
Ten years ago, the folksy public radio personality Garrison Keillor, in his book, Homegrown Democrat, wrote, "This is a year for passion." That is all the more true right this moment. The acceptable thing for me to say is, "It doesn't matter who you vote for as long as you vote." But it's never been more important that Democrats get out and vote. Mobilized Republicans have had that mastered into a swift art for more than 30 years and Democrats have to work hard to roll back the damage these Reagan worshipers have done - corporate carte blanche, massive economic disparity, increased poverty and decreased safety nets, endless wars, institutional racism, a breakdown in that safe wall separating church and state and hate-filled toxicity.
Here in Kansas, we have to kick that autocratic, oleaginous corporate jerking theocrat out of the governor's mansion. The secretary of state - let him go deer hunting with Ted Nugent and Jesus (I mean, their own personal Republican Jesus).
This battle is being played out in governor and senator races all over the country. Experts are predicting a Republican controlled Senate will be the aftermath. Think of what that would be like. These are people who would let the debt ceiling collapse and impeach the president on dubious, trumped up charges.
Right-wingers, with the help of a conservative Supreme Court, are negating constitutionally guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties, leaving thousands of people who would vote to protect the peoples interests - and not the corporations - disenfranchised.
We need egalitarian-minded voters more than ever today. If you haven't been kicked off the registries, I hope you make your voice heard. If we need more single women and African Americans voting to achieve Democratic victories, I say bring us more single women and African Americans.
I remember a picture I saw of an 89-year-old World War II veteran, his walker in front of him, a sign around his neck: "Main Street not Wall Street," it said.
Defending what FDR gave him.
