inspired by liz

i was born and raised in the democratic party. my great-grandmother worked for the party before she even had the vote, and continued working for it through the roosevelt years*. i remember my grandmother weeping for joy when clinton was elected back in 1992, because she'd lived through the hell of reagan and didn't know if she'd live to see the causes of the democrats ever recover. on my birthday that year following, which always falls on inauguration day, she gave me a teddy bear she'd named billy, and told me that 'something very important is happening, something you shouldn't ever forget'.

i didn't fully understand what that 'something' was, yet, but i remembered the election of 1988. i remember my elementary school holding a mock-election, after showing us the debates and having us study the platforms -- all of us, from the kindergarteners up. i remember that we elected dukakis in a landslide, and i remember how disturbed we were to learn that in the real election, the one that counted, reagan won.

that mock election, of course, had no bearing on the outcome of the actual election, but i remember how miserable i felt afterward, when i learned that. i hadn't quite grasped, i don't think, that our election was just a mock-election, and the feeling of disenfranchisement was strong. i remember students asking, the day after the real election, 'but didn't they count our votes?'

i was paying attention, even back in 1988. i remember coming home from daycare every night and watching McNeil/Leher News Hour as my mother made dinner. to this day, i get hungry every time i hear that intro music. i watched with her as iran-contra played out, as the anita hill scandal played out, as we went to war with iraq. i wasn't quite understanding yet what i was watching, but i remembered being upset about them, particularly about clarence thomas, and i knew that my grandmother was speaking about those things when she told me to remember.

i've been paying attention to primaries all my life. i've watched every convention for the past twenty years, and i've gone from colouring pictures of flags and donkeys during the speeches to yelling at the TV in frustration. i've read, and i've listened, and i've watched. i know what the democratic party has tried to do, and what it has failed to do, and what it doesn't care to do. i've watched it fail to live up to its promises.

i have a little donkey pin, given to me by my mother years ago. it lived in my little box of treasures all the years i was growing up. it's quite old. it may have been my grandmother's, or even my great-grandmother's. i have no desire to wear it anymore. the party has an ugly history, but i feel like the party itself has forgotten that history, and has made too many mistakes to be trusted.

i understand what it is to be a democrat. i've been one all my life. i, too, am tired of those who've only just started paying attention trying to explain to me what it means to be A Good Democrat, and i know very well that it doesn't mean 'doing whatever we tell you to do'. i've wanted to stay and fight, to try to help the party change from the inside, but my voice has less value, i think, than these newborn democrats who've wandered in and started telling me to remember my place, to make the coffee and earn the money and get out the vote while they do all the Big Important Idea Stuff. i'm tired of my own party telling me to shut up. i'm tired of being bullied by the very people who, in the same breath, insist that they're the only ones who care enough to protect me.

that's why i'm not voting for obama. that's why i'm changing my party registration, after being a D all my voting days. that's why my vote is going to mckinney, provided she gets the green nomination next month. i know that a third party can't really thrive in our political system, but i can't support the democrats any more, and they're not getting a dime from me until they bother to acknowledge my existence. if the democratic party has decided that courting moderates and conservatives while threatening everyone else is the way they want to go, fine. they can do it without me. since the democrats have stood by while roe's been rendered largely moot, and since they stood by as republicans appointed the raging crazies who sit on the Supreme Court today, i'm not likely to break down under repeated beatings with the 'OMG BUT BUT SCOTUS!' stick. please do not even try. please extend that courtesy to those who might still, or will still, vote obama.

i've also come to realise, through this process, what an outrageous jerk i was to those who didn't vote for gore in 2000. to those i might have blamed in any way for gore's loss, i offer my apology. it wasn't your duty to blindly vote for gore, and if he didn't earn your vote, he didn't deserve it. i sure as hell do blame the media, for making it unduly difficult for people to trust gore; if their presentation of his character and history influenced the votes of those who didn't support him, i'd be disappointed, but not surprised. i blame the media, in large part, for where we are today, too. the media isn't the one driving me out of the party, though. the party itself's done that.

(*and she lived in pittsburgh, and she was part of that famed machine. i know the history well. frankly, i wish we had a bit more of that populism-driven machine today.)