VOTING

Good morning. Pajama #1 logging in at 6:35 AM California Dreamin’ Time. After seeing my daughter off to school, I will head off to vote. Just one groggy thought at this early hour: Whoever wins this thing it won’t be time for the usual electoral whoopin’ and hollerin’. No confetti for me, sorry, if my side wins, and I won’t enjoy looking at dancing and singing from the other side if they do. “There’s a guy with a gun over there….” In this case, Waziristan, I guess – and he’s not the only one. This is nothing like any election I can remember.

6:47 AM: OT, but not really. Theo Van Gogh, maker of a film about Islam, was shot dead in Amsterdam – shades of the Pim Fortuyn murder.

Meanwhile, something about the planted votes in Philly now creating an alarm on Drudge seems fishy (how’s that for a redundancy?). Which side planted and why? To embarrass the other or to win votes?

7:47A – Dept. of Amusing – Joe’s Dartblog – a Dartmouth student blogging the election reports: Bush-Cheney says that Dartmouth needs to deliver 400 voters for Bush to win. That sounds like a very abstracted number, but the College Republicans here have a list of 417 students who will vote Bush. The question is getting them to the polls. I am in the ‘warroom’ right now and it is a slow start… That’s interesting. You’d think Ivy League students would have the committment to get themselves to the polls. [Didn’t you go to Dartmouth?-ed. Yeah. Well? I was too young to vote then.]… via Power Line.

8:07A – Dept. of Why Drudge Gets Ten Gazillion Times More Hits Than I Do – He writes “SHOCK!” when some voter fraud is reported in Philly. I go “Yeah, so what else is new?”

8:20A – Off to vote. It’s an eerily beautiful day in Los Angeles – seventies, clear, plumeria and hibiscus hybrids blooming on my terrace – the kind of day you realize why so many people came here and turned this place into the complex megalopolis it is. Normally, Sheryl and I take Madeleine with us to vote (we did last year) but somehow this time it doesn’t seem fair to submit a six-year old going to a progressive Hollywood school to the feedback she would get when she tells her peers her parents voted for Bush. So it goes in America 2004.

9:32A – Just returned from voting at the Valley View School in the Hollywood Hills – longest lines I’ve seen hereabouts. It should be no surprise that when I looked down at the registration list for my street, I saw only one Republican listed . I’m still listed Democratic. Maybe I’ll go Independent, which is what I am considering how I voted. I easily chose Bush for President and Howard Berman, the longtime incumbent Democrat, for Congress. Howard has been staunch on the WoT, almost a 9/12 Democrat, and deserves our support. I left the Senate selection blank. Barbara Boxer is about as conventional a knee-jerk reified liberal as exists. I couldn’t vote for her, but I couldn’t pull the lever (push the ink pen in this case) for the Republican, another non-entity. Voting for one of the fringe candidates (Libertarian, Peace and Freedom) is waste and their candidates are ridiculous anyway. I also skipped the judicial votes. I hadn’t done my homework and too little knowledge of the candidates was easily available. In the old days I would have followed the LA Weekly’s advice (now I only trust their restaurant reviews). Life was so simple then. I did vote on most of the propositions, however. But the system must be repaired. It’s fake democracy as it stands.

10:12A Many sites are linking this article by a Democratic Party pollster saying “we don’t change sitting presidents during wartime.” A ver. Meanwhile, Drudge has taken the alarm signal off his headline about campaigns awaiting exit polls. What does that mean? [Boy, are you reading tea leaves.-ed. What else have I got to do?]