6:15am, Nov. 6th, 2007 - Election Day.

The morning starts unlike any other. I hit the snooze button only 2 times - and keep in mind it started giving me a case of the mini-heart-attacks about 15 minutes earlier today. I refuse to be late to work again, and besides that - I’ve got business to attend to.

With the tide of robo-calls receding and the local news starting to take up my story on the bullshit pulled by the local republicans (again) with the terrorist license thing, I’m feeling victorious already. Well that and it’s been good to see Jim Breese didn’t get the GOP nomination and thus might (for the first time I can remember) not be joining us next year.

So I got my coffee poured in the travel mug, my lunch slammed into my cooler, and still feeling a little damp from the shower I head for the car. I’m making good time so I decide all this excitement calls for a little revolution music. I run back into the house to my completely disastrous CD collection…. where is it…. damn un-alphabetized mess…. AH! “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

Back in the car and exchanging the Lightnin’ Hopkins for Blowing in the Wind… I am now ready to vote.

Into the elementary school, among the last feeble remnants of “The Greatest Generation” I look for my booth. These people knew how to put country before politics when push comes to shove. It’s good to see even in old age, they take pride in helping the country limp forward by running the polling places.

Into the booth - lever goes down, curtain closes…

Now I don’t know about you folks but I had no Greens to vote for, maybe 2 Democrats, a few Working Families, and an overwhelming majority across the board of independents, conservatives, and… gulp… Republicans. Needless to say I took a while in there.

Suddenly I’m left wondering who the hell am I really voting for. Obviously not the republicans. Not the Maggie’s or the lock-steppers to Bush & Klan - I mean clan… I realize I know very little except that I don’t like the last 7 years of Republican control of the Federal Government, and I’ve never really been a fan of the way they’ve been running Henrietta, (where I’ve lived all my life) well… ever.

So even though it’s a disgrace and it is one of the stupidest things going for true democracy, I voted purely from an opposition / working families point of view. I didn’t pick any judges because they were all reds. I voted on the ignorance is bliss line.

I started wondering… where the hell are all the progressive thinkers in this town? Don’t give me that bullshit that Henrietta is full of white trash hicks and lazy bastards who happen to be very conservative. I don’t buy it. It’s kinda true, but not completely. In a way, Henrietta is like “Heartland” America. John Cougar country if you will… and Mellencamp’s a fairly liberal guy when you get right to it.

If you get any of these people going - even when they really don’t know much about current events or politics in general (and that needs to change) they don’t have anything in common with the party that represents them over and over again.

The suburban public gets led around by the words “property taxes” and the occasional GOP mind fuck like “Bill Johnson is BLACK! He’ll make Monroe County into a ghetto with a gang in every school and a fried chicken in every garage!” or any other thinly veiled white flight politics. When that doesn’t work, then they fall back on the Bush theory of “scare the shit out of them, scare the votes out of them.”

We had one younger guy run this year on the “Brighter Futures” party line. His whole deal was wind energy and pro-environment issues. He’ll probably loose, but I voted for him because I admire that he’s trying, that he’s not afraid to go for it, and that when it comes down to it… at least on that issue, he’s totally right. (Besides, I already was feeling like a winner this morning - no more Breese… I can almost taste it!)

But 1 progressive guy in this whole town is fucking pathetic. Get off your lazy Asses! I talk to you… I grew up with you… believe it or not, you all do give a shit! We can’t all be really smart and follow every detail of how bad we’re getting fucked everyday - but some of us must have it in us to get our names under a lever in that booth under some office on a progressive party.

Give those of us who aren’t Conservative Republicans someone to stand behind. Like the whole argument about how there’s no great leaders anymore like we had in the 60’s. Where’s our RFK? Our MLK?

I want a guy with a last name beginning with K to get out there and get the people off their Asses!

Sooner or later, if life hasn’t beaten me down hard enough, I’m going to get mad enough to just go for broke and see what happens if I run for some kind of office. Why the hell not? Could I really do a worse job? Movies with the regular guy telling the truth in politics do well because that’s actually what the public wants.

I’ll tell you this - the waterfall of honesty, obscenity, and bluntness would at least be good for people’s souls. Well, most of us anyway. I tell you, it would be like the best porn you’ve ever sneaked a peek at. (And you’re full of shit if you say you haven’t, by the way… You should run for office. You’d be perfect!)

I walked out after voting this morning and saw an older couple walking in. I’m not a generally happy guy - or for that matter, I’m not usually going out of my way to say “Hello” to anyone I don’t know.

I found myself smiling, with a brisk business-like walk, (showing them people my age aren’t all a bunch of slackers) giving a nod and saying, “Mornin’!” I think it made their day - at least at that early stage.

I had this second of afterthought like - that will be enough to start some small change. When some young guy or gal does get the political nuts to stand up for what they believe in and run for something around here, they might have a better shot with those old folks.

Next Election Day, maybe I’ll feel more like pulling out “The Times They Are A Changin’.”