Sherry Chandler

This morning I stopped at my usual Swifty to pay 50 low-value dollars to fill the tank of my 1997 Camry. It’s a nickel discount for cash at Swifty, and as I handed my two-twenties-and-a-ten to the attendant, a rosy-cheeked white-haired man who is at those pumps in all weathers, I noticed that he had an “I Voted” sticker on his padded flannel shirt.

“Ah,” says I, “you voted. Good for you. I voted, too.”

“I haven’t missed an election since I was 21,” he replied. And, after a pause, “Of course, that’s just typical of old people. We’re reliable. We vote.”

Most in those years when the station attendant and I were young had to be 21 to vote, though at 18 a boy could fight in Korea or Viet Nam. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution rectified that inequity. My grandmother had two children before she had the right to vote. My mother was born without the right to vote. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution rectifed that. The 15th amendment gave suffrage to black males. (paragraph edited for factual inaccuracies.)

Voting is important to us old people. We remember those who did not have the right. We hold our right to vote sacred and we consider it our sacred duty to vote.

This gas-station conversation and Koshembos’s comment have given me a focus for some things I’ve been wanting to say here. It has to do with why I’ve become so obsessive about this election campaign. It’s probably going to be repetitive and it will no doubt be long, so I hope you’ll hang in there with me.

Though I have been hard on Barack Obama on these pages, I don’t consider myself his enemy or even an adamant opponent.

I have been proud to call myself a bleeding-heart liberal and a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I registered Democratic in 1963 because my Daddy told me I’d better do that if I wanted my vote to have any power in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. (I was thinking of registering Independent, but Independents can’t vote in our closed primaries.) I have been a loyal Democrat ever since, though I have voted once or twice for a Republican.

When this primary started, I would have been proud to vote for Obama and I had doubts about a Clinton dynasty (though never about Hillary Clinton, whom I have admired for going on two decades). As the race continued, I became more doubtful of Obama. I could still be persuaded to vote for him but I want something for my vote. That’s the way the system works. You vote for the candidate who is going to work for you.

I want the man to stop running as a Republican. I want him to take a strong stance against the character assassination, sexism, and misogyny that has characterized this primary race as Hillary Clinton has spoken out against any hint of racism. And most importantly, I want him to honor my vote.

If, as has been argued (most articulately by Anglachel), the DNC wants to use this year when a Democrat seems to be a shoo-in to develop a strategy that wins the presidential election without having to court the racist South, that’s fine with me. As a liberal white Southerner, I’m not eager to see the worst of my region exploited for electoral gain, though I do get my back up at the vitriol heaped upon our poor benighted redneck heads. But I would like this strategy to elect a Democrat, not a Republican in sheep’s clothing. If you aren’t going to elect a Democrat, what’s the point????

Who do I call a Democrat? Some one who looks out for the poor, the ill, the elderly, the working class, minorities. Some one who cares about education and the environment.

The problem with throwing out the South as Anglachel points out is that you also throw out the working class who make up what you might call the Appalachian diaspora. This, I think, used to be called the Democratic base, a large chunk of it anyway.

Still, I could be persuaded to vote for Barack Obama. When I look at John McCain and his promises of four more years of Bush policies, I could be persuaded.

BUT

I do not want him foisted upon me by a party elite, the media, and the blogs.

Frankly, I don’t trust them. I trust my fellow citizens, especially the ones who vote.

If I am convinced that Obama has seized the nomination without letting the process work — and I mean really work, not some cosmetic sort of let-Hillary-quit-with-dignity bullsh1t — if I am convinced that Obama and his supporters in the DNC have somehow gamed the system, then I will not be able to cast my vote for him.

Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president when the Democratic National Convention names him such and not before. He cannot declare himself the winner.

We were appointed a president by coup d’état, middle-class Republican riot, and patriarchal fiat in 2000 and I was furious. At the time, the news media congratulated us for sitting quiet for our coup, for recognizing “the rule of law” and not taking to the streets. Myself, I thought a little taking-to-the-streets was in order. It was Founding Father Jefferson, after all, who said “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.”

Voters have indicated in poll after poll that they want this primary contest to continue to its logical end. Me and the gas-station attendant and the poll worker I talked about yesterday, we want to have our say. Kentucky Democrats showed up yesterday at 43%, while only 19% of Republicans voted. This electorate is not ready to have a nominee chosen for them.*

But it seems to me that the Democrats have internalized the worst of the Rove/Bush worldview and they are using it to attack one of our own.

I will not enable such tactics with my vote.

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Read Big Tent Democrat.

And here.

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*Kentucky’s voters are old and poor and rural and we have a paltry 8 electoral votes, but if Al Gore had won Kentucky in 2000, the way Bill Clinton did in 1992 & 1996, he wouldn’t have needed Florida.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is quietly planning to take over the Democratic National Committee and assemble a multistate team for the general election, the latest sign that he is putting rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nomination fight behind him.

Top Obama organizer Paul Tewes is in discussions to run the party, several Democratic officials said Tuesday.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said no final decisions have been made on general election plans and that such decisions would be premature with Obama yet to clinch the nomination.

Link from TalkLeft commenter nycstray.

Does anybody remember the 2000 election?

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From Hillary Clinton’s Kentucky victory speech:

Thank you, Kentucky. Thank you all very, very much. I am so grateful for this victory. And I am so appreciative, because tonight I am thinking about why we are all here. It is not just to win a primary, or even just to win an election; what propels us is the struggle to realize America’s promise. A nation where every child can achieve his or her God-given potential, where every man and woman has a fair chance, where we fulfill the ideals our founders pledged their lives to defend and our nation was born to uphold.

I want to say a special word this evening about someone who has spent his whole life dedicated to realizing the promise of America. Senator Ted Kennedy is one of the greatest progressive leaders in our party’s history, and one of the most effective senators in our country’s history. He’s my friend, and he’s my inspiration. More than that, he is a hero to millions of Americans whose lives he has fought to better.

I am proud to have stood side-by-side with Ted Kennedy to increase the minimum wage, to extend health insurance to millions of children, to help stop insurance companies from discriminating against the sick. But the privileges that I have had and so many others have had because of the battles we have fought side-by-side with him are just a mere handful of what he has done during his entire public service; five extraordinary decades devoted to America.

And as a lifelong champion for social justice and equality, his work has made the path easier for me, for Senator Obama, and for countless others. He has been with us for our fights and we’re with him now in his. And I know he is going to fight with all of his legendary might, supported by his wonderful wife Vicki and his entire family against this latest challenge. And we wish him well and send our thoughts and prayers to him.