the technologist

I am a registered Democrat in the state of California thanks to my vote for the ketchup dude four years ago. All of the candidate stumping, debating, posturing this year and I was nevertheless (still) an undecided Democrat as of yesterday, Super Tuesday. Since last fall, my brain has been saying Hillary and my heart has been saying Obama. Just like in the country generally, in my head all of what were supposed to be decisive turns in this horse race failed to provide a clear winner.

This is a record of how my day unfolded, as I struggled with the decision, tried to make sense of these over-hyped California ballot propositions, hounded my friends for their opinions, took pictures, voted, shot time-lapse video from my rooftop, and wandered around my neighborhood. Super Tuesday, indeed.

7:45 am:
My alarm goes off. First thought in my head: I hate my goddamn alarm. Second thought: It’s Super Tuesday and I still don’t know who the hell I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:50 am:
Still hate my alarm. Still don’t know who I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:55 am:
I have to find an alarm with a 10 minute snooze. I also have to get up and move my car from a meter spot. Is anyone campaigning against the L.A. County Parking Mafia?

8:15 am:
Back in bed. Too much work for school, need to hide from it for a while longer. Under covers. Wifey comes in and laughs at me. She’s Canadian and so can’t vote but has been a Hillary supporter from Day One. Why is the choice so obvious to foreigners?

10:30 am:
The stress of all my work, of thinking about going from Hollywood to USC to Studio City to USC to Hollywood throughout the course of an 8 am to 10 pm day while fighting a cold on top of the weight of my impending civic duty was enough to finally chase me out of bed in a panic. Is there such a thing as pity for a man who wakes up at 10:30 am on a Tuesday? Worth a shot.

10:55 am:
Make some coffee. Fire off some emails. The wheels are turning. I start bombarding my friends with IMs to see if/how they have voted. I get wildly different versions of the same response:

“i was a hillary man till a week or so ago. now i’ve been talked into the obama camp. i didn’t think he could win the general election before but he’s got so much momentum i’m willing to give him a chance. plus i won’t hate it if hillary does win the primary, but i’ve decided to go with the heart in the end. trying not to be cynical for once in my life. even though i personally think she’s a badass, i think he might help take politics in a slightly different direction. some bi-partisanship might actually lead to things getting done.”

That was Chas.

“i think that having a black man as president instantly gives us more credibility in the foreign policy arena, which is where we need to do the most damage control. the president is more of a figure-head than a decision maker and in that sense, we need someone dynamic and someone who can lead. obama is that person hands-down.”

That’s Tricia.

“starting to think obama is the man on social issues, i just don’t like the idea of him as commander in chief. i think if he pulls too many people out of iraq and afghanistan that we will just have to go back. it’s unrealistic to pull us out the way he is talking about it…. even if they gave the order to get out, it would take at least 2 years to pull all our shit out and all our people. that’s just not a reality, even if i thought it was a good idea. we would have to dump billions of dollars worth of equipment there.”

That’s Rob, an ex-Marine who did two tours-of-duty in Iraq.

11:15 am:
I check Facebook. People’s status messages are rife with Super Tuesday slant. From the benign “Get out and vote” to many more specific messages in favor of Obama. The manifestations of a) heavy interest among the under-thirty voting bloc and b) the overwhelming support for Obama among those people are abundant. I’m actually starting to think for the first time that he can really pull this off.

11:30 am:
Stupid California ballot propositions. If I see another sad, disenfranchised American Indian on TV standing in front of a corn field with his distraught compatriots…

11:45 am:
I tell my Hillary-hating friend Max that I am leaning toward Obama. He tells me that “twenty years from now, they won’t stone you.” I knew I was in this for something.

12:00 pm:
That’s it. Going to the L.A. Times website. Check their positions on the Props. Voting how they tell me to. Am I a sheep? An irresponsible citizen of a democracy taking my civic duty lightly? Perhaps. As I try to find impartial information from other sources, I hear a story on KCRW (L.A.’s NPR affiliate) about how the ballot measures in this state are completely out of hand as vehicles for special interest groups and lobbyists to covertly advance their positions. Going with The Times.

My destiny awaits…

12:30 pm:
So many people are scared of the “Clinton Machine,” as if it is one of those things in War of the Worlds, tooling around town turning firstborns of registered Republicans into little piles of dust crowned by pacifiers, belting out evil Hillary laughs in the place of the alien foghorns. I actually think she’s poised, intelligent, well-versed on the issues, and even— wait for it— presidential. What is it about this Obama character that keeps pulling at my heart-strings, luring me into his Kennedy-esque mystique with his inspired orations and promises of fresh-faced politics?

2:00 pm:
With lunch in my belly, some random DVR viewings of past debates floating around in my noggin, and obsessive IM polling of all of my politically active friends under my belt, I have finally come to a decision. It is time.

2:15 pm:
Two pens, my reporter’s notebook, my camera, and my L.A. Times prop guide in hand, I make may way to my polling location. The irony of being part of this supposed surge of youth voting as I walk into none other than the Bethany Towers Assisted Living Facility lobby to cast my vote does not escape me.

2:20 pm:
Not a lot of people there— maybe three people in line ahead of me— but I’m sure this is the dead part of the day. I get crossed off, sign my name, and take my ballot over to one of the little voting urinals they have setup.

2:22 pm:
History beckons. I have been seduced. Only in America, the great land of one-upmanship, can the first opportunity ever to elect a woman president be undercut by a choice with even more historical gravity. Doh!

2:23 pm:
Why did I vote for Obama? Truth be told, I still can’t give a succinct answer. Sure, I wanted to be a part of history. I wanted the above picture to be something I would show my grandchildren, telling them that the first chance I had, I cast my vote in hopes that it would help a black American ascend to the most powerful elected position in the world. I really draw no distinction between that and a woman becoming president, because to me they both represent holistic progress, not mere degrees. In the end, it really came down to who is part of the establishment and who could change it. Who would have to dole out cabinet positions based on two decades of Washington backscratching, and who could go in and clean house with abandon, partly because of an intoxicating idealism and partly because he just didn’t know any better. I opted for the latter.

2:25 pm:
A quick walk-around the surrounding area to see what kind of presence— if any— candidates had in the relatively youth-dominated area of Hollywood where I live.

2:27 pm:
No issues with compliance within 100 ft, but walk a bit further…

2:29 pm:
…and you find (left to right) Viva Asmelash, Alissa Knoell, and Oiyam A. Poon, three grassroots Obama supporters returning from hyping their man to the community somewhere. They tell me that they feel pretty good about his chances in California, provided that the whole debacle with the independent voters doesn’t hurt too much.

2:32 pm:
I walk a bit further and see a cluster of signage on one street corner.

2:35 pm:
No Hillary signs or supporters anywhere. Nothing on the Republican side either, for that matter. So then I head up to my roof to try out this nifty time-lapse feature I have on my new camera. I just want to get a sense of how many people come and go from my particular polling location over a 45 minute span:

3:00 pm:
The deed is done. I woke up in a fog of cold virus, lack of sleep, and indecision. By 3 pm though I was convinced that I was part of something bigger, something meaningful, significant, a watermark in American history, something people will study with fervor for years to come. Just as I had seen all over USC campus the previous week, Obama was everywhere. At least in my universe. The notion that my few square blocks of campus and Hollywood are a microcosmic representation of the United States is far-stretched at best. But it sure as hell seemed that way.

3:30 pm:
Driving in my car to Culver City for a different assignment: a ride-along with Culver City police for my reporting class beat. See how cops spend Super Tuesday.

(turns out it’s busting 27-year-old, Jaguar driving, shoplifting parolees at Target, which puts a whole new spin on the epic sense of “hope” everyone is experiencing just because a few people get up and talk about how we can change pretty much everything that’s wrong with our country today by casting a vote. Hanging with cops brought the cynicism back full-force. Go figure.)

As I’m driving, I hear that Obama has won Georgia. An African-American dominated vote, but nevertheless, the first called victory of Super Tuesday goes to my choice. My man. The man with the plan.

10:00 pm:
After six hours with the Culver City Police, I am exhausted and greased from all the buttering up they do even to a measely student journalist. Don’t get me wrong. They were extremely nice. But I’m constantly in awe of how I’ve gotten by far the friendliest responses from the police when city councilmembers and supervisors won’t give me the time of day. Hell, a contractor won’t even call me back, but the cops took me out for a bbq dinner. I left trying to figure out which way was up. But that’s another story…

10:05 pm:
DAMMIT. Dammit dammit dammit. Clinton won California? How are they calling it with only 35 percent of the polls reporting? Absentee ballots? Something is messed up here. People casting votes months ago when McCain was on his last leg, Giuliani was the front-runner, and Obama was a blip on the 2008 radar that had a Hillary-supporting nation wondering why he just doesn’t wait another eight years. It felt like a sledgehammer to the temple. How could the progressive stronghold of the U.S. vote overwhelmingly in favor of the establishment? Or was I just bamboozled and lashing out at myself for taking the bait?

10:15 pm:
I call a few people. Calm down a bit. It’s sinking in. If this were the Republican primary, it would have been a Hillary slaughterhouse, but thanks to the proportional distribution of delegates, Obama is less than 100 shy of her count. I didn’t even know I was voting for the guy as of this morning, yet once the ballot was cast, I have felt such an emotional attachment to the cause. A large portion was probably personal validation, but hope is a strong word. Audacious even. (wink!)

Hope does cast a spell. A potent one. When Obama speaks, style is the substance. The thought of having someone so inspirational, so dynamic, such a poet of the public address, had become a sort of spiritual elixir. I know all of his supporters’ fingers are secretly crossed that he will have the acumen to wisely choose cabinet occupants should he get elected president. No one is entirely sure who his close friends and cohorts are— but as that presidential figurehead… man would he be awesome!

Turns out nothing was decided on Super Tuesday (except maybe that I will never shoplift at a Target). The choice for the Democratic nomination is out of my hands. Strange thing about this democracy of ours. It’s so easy to get charged up by enacting our most basic of civic rights. It’s stressful even. And when it all ended with a whimper and not a bang, I felt like a hollow man. Truth be told, I’d be perfectly happy with Hillary as President. There are still a lot of people out there yet to vote who need to come to grips with that similar indecision and— finally!— put the choice behind us. Thanks everyone!

On to tomorrow.

This piece was originally posted at Pop + Politics, where I am a staff writer.

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~ by Kent Francisco on February 7, 2008.