Voting Against Joe The Plumber

Back in late September, right around the time I last wrote here, I took a week off of work and boarded myself up in the house. I did my chores. I worked on computers. And I watched a lot of the political coverage on television. With the economy sliding down the toilet and John McCain suspending his campaign to fly back to Washington to unsuccessfully save the bailout bill, there was no better theater. I didn’t watch movies or videos all week. I wrapped myself up in the issues and watched political analysts instead. It was one of the best vacations I’ve ever taken.

So here I am now, a month later, on vacation again and able to report that I have already cast my ballot as part of an unprecedented push towards early voting here on the Northside of Indianapolis. After my wife got off of work yesterday, we headed to the J. Everett Light Career Center to wade through a process that took fifty or so minutes from start to finish. At first glance the long lines looked unruly and unorganized. But once you were in them, you saw people of all ages and backgrounds sharing pens and clipboards, talking to each other about the questions on the sample ballots. People were energized and courteous, and they definitely felt like they were a part of something big. I know that’s how I felt, anyway.

This was time J. Everett Light has been set up as a satellite voting office. Typically, if you wanted to vote early and/or fill out an absentee ballot, you had to go through the hassle of going all the way downtown. This year, though, somebody took a look at the number of newly registered voters and figured out they needed more polling places. The downtown offices started taking ballots on October 3rd. J. Everett Light and the Southport Community Center opened on October 23rd. In it’s first weekend of operation, J. Everett Light experienced a flood of voters that caused a wait time of about three hours. More computers and printers were brought in. More volunteers showed up. By the time Lorrie and I arrived yesterday, things were humming along. But there were some concerns among the election officials stationed there. “I don’t know how we’re going to get these counted on election day,” he said frankly. “Typically my township sees only thirty-five or forty absentee ballots. We’re now looking at thousands.” Since all of us were, in essence, voting in absentia, there were some concerns among the people in the lines as well. One woman was very concerned that her ballot was being sealed in an envelope until election day instead of being run through a scanner as usual. “M’am,” said a youngish guy sitting at a table checking IDs. “You are looking at the entire election board for the county right here.” He pointed to himself then the other three people at the table. “Democrat. Republican. Democrat. Republican. We are here to assure you that these ballots will be separated by township, delivered to their polling places, and scanned in on election day. I promise you that.” The woman appeared satisfied at that point and continued to move down the line. At that point, a young African American guy passed us on his way to the end of the line, smiling as he went along. “Wow!” is all he said.

The information about J. Everett Light came to me as a small piece of photocopied paper stuffed inside of an Obama/Biden flyer. Since I always go outside through the garage, the flyer had spent nearly three days rolled up in my front storm door before I spotted it. When I opened it, the photocopy about early voting fell to the ground and I noticed the polling places had been circled with two different colored highlighters. If everybody on this side of town received one of these, then this simple, low-tech approach to disseminating information was a complete success by the Democratic Party. Over the next couple of weeks, I waited for a similar flyer from the McCain campaign. But it never came. One night I went out to find a McCain flyer about Obama’s supposed connection to Bill Ayers in my driveway. A week or so later, another McCain flyer arrived, this one concerned about Obama’s “soft” stance on crime. Neither of those flyers had any instructions about where, when, and how to vote. Of the five flyers handed to me at J. Everett Light yesterday, four of them were Democratic. The fifth was from a young woman running for some sort of congressional seat. In a state that usually goes Republican each election, there seemed to be a real lack of visibility by the party there at the center yesterday. Instead, a young woman stood right outside of the doorway holding a huge pop art painting of Obama. There were no words on the painting, just the senator’s smiling face, looking something like something out of a Warhol exhibit. I think that pretty much summed up the vibe in the crowd. That and the woman who asked a volunteer, “How do I vote for a straight Democratic ticket?”

I, of course, filled in the box next to Obama’s name this time around. Anybody who has been reading me long enough probably knows my world view by now, so this should come as no surprise. I was twenty-eight when I first registered to vote in 1995. And since that time, I’ve voted strictly as a Democrat. But I really consider myself more of an Independent. I hold opinions that are both liberal and conservative in nature. For example, I’m pro choice when it comes to abortion and all for the death penalty when it comes to hardcore crime. Most of the time, I find myself in the middle when it comes to the big issues. Unfortunately for people like me, though, there are no real, viable candidates out there who truly straddle the middle. It’s either one side or the other. At that point, I’m forced to choose the person I see as the best representative of my own beliefs. For this election, that person is Obama. What can I say? I’ve been against the Iraq war since it began. I’ve been on reduced hours at my job for almost a year now. My wife’s health insurance plan went from a $500.00 deductible to a $3,000.00 deductible in the space of one year. We’re just barely hanging onto what we’ve got and I personally think it’s time for government as a whole to try something new. I’m willing to give the guy from Harvard a shot. We’ve had eight years of cowboys and mavericks, and it’s given me one of the worst years of my life with 2008. If voting against McCain is the only way to opt out of that plan, then I’m sorry. Like most average people in middle America, politics basically boils down to how it affects me the most.

In the end, though, I’m not really voting against McCain himself. Rather, I’m voting against what his campaign stands for. In the last few weeks we’ve had Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher get up and denounce Obama’s tax plan, only to cry foul once the media found out he has a lien against him for non-payment of taxes. This asshole was actually quoted as saying, “The media’s worried about whether I’ve paid my taxes, they’re worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America.” I may not be a political pundit, but I’ve always thought that every road, school, and war was paid for by taxes. Taxes from American citizens. To me, bitching about somebody’s tax plan when you yourself don’t pay into them makes you ineligible to whine. I’ve filed a tax return every year since I started working, which was at the age of seventeen. So I can honestly say I’ve done my part to support America. I don’t support the war in theory, but you can bet your ass my tax dollars went to fund it. Can Joe say the same? To me, Joe’s an average guy with half a grasp who doesn’t pay his bills. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet, the McCain camp has made him a symbol of the “Everyman”. People, I’m here to tell ya, a better representative of the Middle Class is somebody who gets up every day, goes to work, comes home, pays all their bills, and only has forty dollars left in his checking account to show for everything. That’s me. Those are my people. Somebody who doesn’t pay their bills or tries to cut corners illegally is just an asshole as far as I’m concerned.

Then there’s Sarah Palin. And, really, her only crime is not having any kind of world view outside of Alaska. Believe me, I know what that’s like. A lot of people ask why I didn’t register to vote until I was twenty-eight. The answer is simple. I grew up in a small town and was ignorant of anything going on besides the grind of small town life. Politics didn’t matter when you were constantly worried about where next week’s paycheck was going to come from. That narrow world view didn’t leave enough room for foriegn affairs or Wall Street shenanigans. I was woefully ignorant at the age of eighteen. And the last person you want in the voting booth is a dumb kid who is only worried about the lack of comic book money and nookie. Any vote I would’ve cast at that point would’ve been severely handicapped by my own lack of information and empathy. It took me getting out of Amesbury, MA to see the bigger picture; to get informed. When I finally thought I knew enough about what I was doing, I voted. In the end, I think we’ll probably see Sarah Palin on the national scene again. Maybe not in 2012, but after that. After she’s had some sort of political makeover that makes her realize there are no parts of this country that are more American than the other. That’s a pretty ignorant view of the country, and it’s one I can’t really truck with at this point.

Last, but not least, you have Diane Fedele and Ashley Todd, two McCain supporters that have used race-baiting to further their arguments. In Fedele’s case, she sent out an e-mail containing an image of what she called “Obama Bucks”, a food stamp with Obama’s face pasted onto the front. If that wasn’t bad enough, it showed Obama surrounded by foods such as watermelon, fried chicken, ribs, and Kool-Aid, all of which are considered racial stereotypes. In Todd’s case, she claimed to have been mugged then attacked by a large black man who carved a “B” for Barack on her face once he found out she was a McCain supporter. Ultimately, she confessed the whole thing was a hoax but not before the Republican party ate up the story and spit out a big wad of politically infused pity for this mentally ill woman. In both of these cases, the McCain camp showed no interest in decrying the blatant racism of these two women. Unlike his stump speech in Minnesota when he grabbed the microphone from a crazy woman who was afraid because Obama was “an Arab”, McCain said nothing about Fedele and Todd. Out of sight, out of mind I suppose. But you have to wonder about the leadership qualities of somebody who a) won’t even attempt to decry blatant racism in this day and age and b) can’t assert enough positive influence within his own campaign. Sure, McCain can’t control every fuckwit that rolls on down the pipe, but he could make a decent, heartfelt blanket statement about how we should all respect one another. That would’ve been enough for me. But the silence those two acts alone was enough to make me head out on a cold October day and wait in line for almost an hour to vote for McCain’s opposition. For me, basic human dignity trumps the economy every time. If the Republicans care about every American, they sure have a funny way of showing it by not standing up to the simple and misguided folks within their own ranks. If they were true mavericks, they would bite the bullet and set people straight. But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Anyway, that’s my piece of the political pie. I’ve voted and now there’s nothing to do with the rest of this vacation but sit back and continue to watch the coverage. Vote early or vote November 4th, it’s up to you. But please vote. If you want to be a true Patriot, then get out there and do your basic civic duty by voting. What else can I say? It really matters this time…