I remember the thrill I had when it was my first vote, back in 2000, when I turned 18 years old. I had spent much of my free time volunteering at the El Paso Democratic Party headquarters for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. That was the year when I had firmed up my political identity as a Democrat after researching the issues, and writing from the left political point of view in the high school newspaper that I worked on.
I was about to go out into the world from high school and the safe environment of my home, and I viewed electoral participation as essential to being involved in that world. I’d followed the twists and turns of the election, and was stunned at how much the media seemed to like George W. Bush, and how they sneered at Al Gore. As a Texan, I’d seen for myself the devastation that George W. Bush had put on our state, and knew that he’d be an incredibly bad President.
Even though Al Gore was pedantic, and was listening too much to the consultants about what to wear and how to emote, I knew that he’d be better than George W. Bush, and that he’d carry on the legacy of the economic boom under Bill Clinton. I just couldn’t imagine a world in which Al Gore wasn’t President. I just couldn’t.
I got up to the voting booth and voted. I beamed when I got my “Voted” sticker, and told my mother that I had voted. I felt proud of my vote. I went home with my mother, sat down on the couch, and watched the election returns. We cheered when the states went for Gore, and when Florida went for Gore, we cheered even more.
Then suddenly, Florida was back in the toss-up column, and then it went red on the screen with George W. Bush’s smirking face next to the state. I was horrified. Both my mother and I cried that night. We knew that the next four years would be terrible. We had no idea how bad it could be, and it’d exceeded the parameters of our imaginations.
The first administration of George W. Bush was one that I railed against, that I protested against with my friends in college, and I just could not stand the thought of another four years of George W. Bush. I looked at the Democratic presidential primary candidates, saw how weak they seemed to be, and how there was only one man who seemed to cut through the bullshit. I signed up with the Howard Dean campaign around the same time I signed up on Dailykos.
I was tired of how weak the Democratic Party had become under the first term of George W. Bush and how they’d bent over backwards on the Bush tax cuts that blew up our deficit. Howard Dean got what it meant to have a backbone as a Democrat. I volunteered for the Howard Dean campaign and was involved with the Dean chapter at my college.
I saw how Kerry and the other Democrats went after Howard Dean and tore him down. I saw how the media tore down Howard Dean and blew his microphone moment out of proportion. I’d known for a while that the media was never liberal, and was never fair, but it was nevertheless shocking to see how they’d built up Howard Dean and then tore him down so quickly. Debates raged on Dailykos between the Kerry and Dean supporters. I voted for Howard Dean in the primary, and reluctantly voted for John Kerry in the presidential campaign. It didn’t surprise me when John Kerry didn’t fight back against the Swift Boat veterans. It didn’t surprise me when he lost. Democrats who don’t have backbones don’t win.
The next four years of the second George W. Bush administration passed by in a blur for me. I tuned out of politics. I was tired of caring so much. I was tired of feeling like all the work I’d done didn’t matter. I was tired of hearing from people on Dailykos that it was a center-right nation, and that progressivism didn’t matter. I gave up for a short while.
Then I got involved back in politics because I couldn’t stop caring even though I was tired. I worked in Congress to make a difference in the lives of those that I cared about. I heard about a Senator named Barack Obama from Illinois, and I’d met him once on Capitol Hill. He was saying and doing all the right progressive messaging when it came to the war in the Middle East, health care, and I really liked the public option part of his health care plan.
I couldn’t stand Clinton. She stood for the DLC, the center-right wing of the Democratic Party, and she was an emblem of all the mistakes that the Democratic Party had made under the Bush administration. Senator Barack Obama represented a massive shift from that, so I voted for him in the primary. Then I voted for him in the general election.
Now, we have President Barack Obama, who has made quite a few political mistakes in office, and messed up his approach in negotiating with the Republicans. He is still fixated on the grand bargain given his interview to the Des Moines Register. He is not the progressive that I voted for in the primary in 2008. He governed as a center-right Democrat, and he will continue to govern as one. He still thinks that Republicans will be more amenable to negotiating if he wins re-election. I disagree with that. I do not think that the Republicans will ever be amenable as long as tax increases on the wealthy are on the table. I do not trust them---you know why? Because we have been burnt by them so many times, that we’ve learned to stay away from the fire when it comes to trusting them.
Even though the President has been a major disappointment when it comes to climate change and other issues where there could have been a more decisive leadership stand (even the President has said that he should have been more of a story-teller in leading the American people), he is far better than Mitt Romney. The President is a supporter of a woman’s right to choose. The President has expanded contraceptive coverage for women. He has expanded maternity coverage for women, including breast pumps so first-time mothers can breast-feed their children.
I am a first-time mother, with our first child that we are expecting in March 2013. We are voting for President Barack Obama because we do not want our child to grow up in a Mitt Romney administration. I do not want insurance companies to discriminate against me because I am a woman. I do not want our government to ignore climate change anymore. I do not want the hard-fought rights for gays, lesbians, and transgenders to be rolled back. I do not want environmental and financial regulations to be further weakened. I want my child to grow up in a healthier and smarter world.
That is why I will be going to the polls to vote on Election Day. Then I will be using my rights as an American to further safeguard the safety net that is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from any mistaken “compromises” in the deficit talks. I would rather have President Barack Obama in office to push towards the left, and towards the correct progressive approach. I’d rather have that fight with him than with Mitt Romney.
That is what I will be teaching my son. That it’s important to fight for what one believes in, to challenge those in power to do right, and not to give up on what is right. That voting is important as civic duty, because if you don’t vote, then what reason do you have to complain about those that are elected to office?
Progressive activism is also important as is voting. The day after the election, we will be organizing and fighting to protect the bedrock principles of the safety net, and urging for progressive taxation, more regulations to protect our food, water, products, and air. In short, I will be fighting to keep the Democratic Party from going further right, and I will be fighting for a more Democratic House in 2014, because we need both houses of Congress to push forth a progressive agenda.
That is why I am voting Democratic.