Pondering at the Polls

We'll get to our post-election analysis later this week when the rest of you wingnuts calm down. Until then ...

It was nearly six in the morning when Sal and I arrived at the polling place. There were already well over a hundred people in line. It took us nearly an hour to get to the place where we would, as part of a constitutional republic (in what little time we have left to call it that), exercise a right that is the envy of much of the world. It surprised us to learn that there are enough Republicans in Arlington County to form anything resembling a quorum. Someone from the Arlington County GOP was handing out sample ballots. Now there's something you don't usually see. There were also a few right-leaning voters in line next to us. This included one in particular ...

We never got his name, that of a young man in his early-forties. He said he was from Vietnam, and as a small child, was one of the “boat people” who escaped the Communist takeover of the South in the mid-1970s. He was not one to hide how he felt, or why he was there. As with our Filipina would-be congresswoman from Ohio, he too was seeing pattern of behavior in American life that precipitated the worst, and he was determined to make his voice heard that day as well. He described a recent visit back to his home country, and how very different it was. Sal and I have always been impressed by the business acumen of the Vietnamese-American community in the DC area, and we let him know that.

The Democrats in Arlington County are the beneficiaries of one-party rule as it is, what with the entire Board of Supervisors (the executive branch of county government in Virginia) being of their persuasion, so they don't have to go to all that trouble of rigging the voting machines. No, sir, they don't have to cheat to win an election, not among gullible upper-middle-class guilt-ridden white liberals, not like they do in Chicago, where this clown was caught wearing an Obama ball cap, in total violation of standards of conduct for election officials, and passing out multiple ballots to certain people. (Yeah, we'll get the Justice Department right on it -- when hell freezes over.) And, of course, Jim Moran won yet another term as our congressman, even though his son was caught on video participating in attempted voter fraud. If his daddy-o had done the deed himself, it wouldn't have made any difference. They love that shanty-Irish son of a bitch.

But for Sal, it was a momentous occasion. Having only been an American citizen for four years, and finally having educated herself on the American political scene, she voted for the first time in "the land of opportunity."