I went to early vote Democratic in my home county, which is "rabidly" Republican. Did I encounter hordes of voters fired up about the election?
Actually, no. I was able to vote in near-record time. I wonder how many other precincts are like mine, with the light turnout customary to a mid-term, and with a great opportunity for core turnout to make a big difference.
I live in Collin County, Texas, 25 miles north of Dallas. It's one of those majority-Republican regions which regularly gets labels like "most conservative county in Texas". I'm a bit wary of these kinds of labels, because rather like town which say they are the birthplace of some famous person lost to history, lots of regions want to claim they are "most conservative".
It's a puzzling county this year, in which the local prosecutor indicted a number of court clerks for allegedly taking days off while reporting on the books they are on duty. This same rather aggressive fellow asked a grand jury to indict a local judge for supposedly accepting a bribe from a litigant to run for office, and then recusing herself from hearing that litigant's case. I have no idea about these charges, one way or the other, and presume everyone is innocent until proven guilty--but it's a curious set of indictments in a county that retains a bit of a small town feel.
Collin County is also a wealthy county with a small percentage of poor people, which nonetheless underfunds indigent health care. I will say one good word for our local politicans. They managed to abandon plans to build a bridge over our local lake, when it turned out that nobody wanted a bridge built. This is as close to environmentalist legislation as they achieve. In short, all politics may be local, if we accept that local is a synonym for "odd".
I went this week to vote in the early voting. My wife and I are blue voters in a sea of red voters. We're like blue buttons on red coats. Given the national media, I assumed we'd see masses of conservative voters turning out, particularly as we have a contested governor's race.
The reality was simple--the early voting took me 8 minutes from car exit to car entrance. The line was non-existent. This bit of anecdote is not empirical proof of anything. One voter's experience on one day in a sleepy election office peopled by kindly election judges is not representative.
Yet the anecdote does resonate with me. This is yet another mid-term in which the party in power is being strongly challenged by the party out of power. This happened in administration after administration in the past.
Our media, hungry for a story, is talking about this election as if we faced a red tide of sealife-killing conservatism. But we can't get caught up in that media thing. We just need to turn out and vote.
History shows that administrations weather such challenges. History also shows that if the core turns out, the damage in such a mid-term can be contained. We'll see what happens--and ignore the odd media spin, searching for a crisis when in fact it's the usual mid-term. President Obama inherited an economy in near-collapse. Let's hope he keeps the seats in the House and Senate necessary to continuing undoing the damage wrought by deregulation and unsound policy.