I'm ready.... to win.

[rockymountaindem]

Hello DemocraticUnderground, I'm rockymountaindem.

Let me tell you something about myself. I'm ready to win an election. Oh yes, I'm really ready.

You see, I have only been on this earth a few short years. My first memory of world events is of the 1991 Gulf War. Specifically, I remember being mad because my parents were too busy watching CNN to play legos and read dinosaur books with me. I also remember Bill Clinton's inauguration, specifically that my mom was ironing while she was watching it on TV in the den of the first house we lived in.

I also remember, barely, the 1996 election, but I didn't really understand what was going on.

Thus, my first real political awareness came with the 2000 campaign. I remember it quite well. I was in high school at the time, in Colorado Springs. Now, Colorado Springs is quite the conservative place. If you supported Gore, as I did, you had to talk about it in hushed tones. Most people who were willing to express their support of Gore only did so by nodding quietly when I asked them (and it was always I who asked) who they supported. It wasn't something we felt comfortable with. Afterwords came the horrible recount period. My US history teacher, who kept a Bush campaign sign leaning against the blackboard, kept calling Gore a sore loser and every bad name in the book. The day after the USSC decision, I had her class in first period. To my surprise, she wasn't even late from her FCA meeting. She was in her room with the boom box blasting party music, ecstatic that a "real Christian" had won out over the forces of darkness, of which I evidently was a part.

Since then it's been pretty much all downhill for us. A former teacher of mine called me a coward and a traitor for expressing my opinion that the upcoming invasion of Iraq was a big mistake. A lot of my friends mocked me during and after the 2004 election. My whole political life, basically since my early teens and the 2000 election, has been one disappointment after another.

But now, the shoe is on the other foot. We stand on the verge of the first great Democratic victory of my lifetime. I'm really, really ready. I'm ready to see that the Democrats aren't a party of second-place finishers. I'm ready to see that my party can win. I'm so ready that I volunteered on a campaign for the first time, because this year I finally had a campaign to volunteer with. I'm so ready that I went to cast my first vote ever... in a Democratic primary where all the candidates were running unopposed. I went in the late afternoon after work, and the worker told me I was only the sixth person who asked for the Democratic ballot, two of the others having been my mom and dad (who only voted that morning because I told them it was important to show the Republicans that we're energized for the election). I'm so ready that I sent my absentee ballot back home in the express mail so it would get there on time.

I'm ready to prove to my friends, who can't understand why anybody would vote for the forces of "socialism and darkness", that they don't have a monopoly on success. For them, this will be their first political setback. I'm ready to smile for a change. Even if we don't win the Senate, we'll come close. That will put a smile on my face.

So you might say I've waited my whole life for this. Oh yeah, I'm ready for tomorrow. And if things go our way, which they most likely will (at least to my satisfaction), you'll be able to hear me yell all the way from Canada. I hope you'll join me in celebration.

[rockymountaindem]

1. Meh, I'll give it a shameless kick

I rarely have anything important to say anyhow :)

[HappyWeasel]

2. That's more or less my story from 2003 on.

I lived in Florida until 2003, I pretty much had friends and relatives supporting different parties and factions, I myself couldn't come to any sort of affilliation. The only two things I remember was that I was really liberal on bio-ethics and really conservative on foreign policy since I was 12 (1997-1999 was the time Dolly was born and Serbia was forced to cede Kosovo to the UN authorities). I then moved with my mom and step-dad to Wyoming at the end of 2002. What was interesting in this event is that dispite the fact that in order to be a "true Wyomingite", you had to be a neo-conservative was the fact that I began to feel a stronger and stronger connection to the democratic party. Since then, I have been taunted be being called a "not a real American" and "not a real Christian". Now, after several years of being pushed around, I feel that we can win this election. I think that it would be great if we could retake the house(so we can prevent any more damage), if only barely and take at least 48 seats in the senate (perhaps a net gain of 3- you know- get enough fillibustering capital to force the president to pick a non-federalist for SCOTUS if JPS retires or dies by 2008).

[itsmesgd]

3. do more now............it's fun

Go to moveon.org (call for change). It's something that you can do from your house with your cell phone with those free evening minutes. It's easy and it can actually help to get out the vote in some key races. Plus, it's democracy in action.

Call now, vote tomorrow, prepare to act if necessary tomorrow night through the weekend.

This is it folks, go time.

[haymark]

4. kick