Tennessean ran my op-ed about being a Democrat on Election Day in Williamson County. Click to read.
Below is the uncut version. See if you can guess who is the "famous country music singer" or the "widely known basketball coach," whom I allowed to remain nameless.
Spirit of Democracy Requires Election Day Etiquette
Let's
play nice on election day. We can be
cordial even if we disagree.
For
instance, don't flip off anyone who holds a sign you don't like. Don't roll your window down and cuss someone who
is not feelin' it for your candidate.
In years past, some of my friends and family
members have stood outside the 100-foot boundary at polling locations in
Williamson County. We smile,
greet people, thank everyone for voting regardless of perceived party affiliation
and encourage the support of our candidates. We approach it like a
tail-gating atmosphere, and we enjoy meeting new people and seeing neighbors
and friends.
When
people make nasty remarks, we do not reply in kind. We must all get
along---we live and work together. We
have more in common than differences.
Nonetheless,
it is hard not to be stunned when things like these are said and done:
"You
should be ashamed of yourselves," one man said to Obama supporters on
election day 2008. While we were trying
to figure out what we were supposed to be ashamed of, his wife said, "You
are not an American," to my wife, who was born in Alabama.
Flailing
her arms and poncho, another woman started yelling at us as soon as she got out
of her car and hit the sidewalk, angrily clip-clopping her boots toward us.
"Obama's
going to run this country into the ground," she finished as she turned to
walk inside.
I
bit my tongue to keep from saying, "It's too late; Bush already did."
A
little girl, whose mother had brought her to learn about voting, was frightened
by the woman's outburst. I had taken her
picture as she held an Obama sign. The
mother said, "Please do not use her picture anywhere that the public can
see her."
A
widely known basketball coach, who shall remain nameless, stalled in his
tracks, a sneer-smile crossing his lips, when I asked him to vote for my
candidates. To his credit, he did not
say anything nasty.
A
famous country singer, who shall remain nameless, got carried away with the
moment and about fell off her stilettos while walking one way and leering back
at us over her shoulder. To her credit,
she did not launch a diatribe.
Poll
workers on the inside must put duty over party.
A poll worker during the 2008 primary put his arm around my wife and said,
"I'm going to help you vote," when he acted as if the voting machine would
only display Republican candidates.
Even
Ashley Judd has felt this in Williamson County. "You just voted for the wrong one,"
a poll worker once told her. "Unacceptable,"
Judd recently told a gathering of Tennessee Democrats. "That is inappropriate."
A
school crossing guard got fired in 2008 after a Republican voter complained to
the Franklin police that she was talking to a woman with an Obama sign. She was later reinstated after someone came
to his senses.
The
press does not report on these uncomfortable things, the sign-stealing and this
underbelly of politics at the person-to-person level. If you want a he-said, she-said to this
story, a counterpart that says there are over-the-top Democrats who try to
intimidate Republicans in Williamson County, it simply does not exist.
Williamson
County is the sixth largest Democratic voting bloc in the state. Still, there are those in Williamson County who
would like to deny the existence of Democrats there, just as they are in denial
about there being hungry children in
Williamson County or that Obama was born in Hawaii or that Democrats are
entitled to breathe the same air. I think those do not represent the GOP
mainstream in Williamson County and Middle Tennessee, although they have
grabbed the microphone locally and nationally.
Elections
heighten emotions. There's a lot at
stake. For me it's a matter of whose
side are you on: People and democracy or
the big-money players who are taking over our government?
That's
what pushed our Founders over the edge: the teaming up of a giant transnational
corporation (British East India Company) and the government (King George III),
who handed the faltering monopoly a bailout which involved taxing American
colonists.
Does
any of this sound familiar?
Thomas
Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave at our dying democracy. If you would not cuss out or flip off Thomas
Jefferson, don't flip off my friends and family for exercising the rights which
protect you as well.
