I didn’t vote in the first presidential election I was eligible for. It was 1980, and my attention was elsewhere. I was right on the precipice of a fifteen-year hole that was to be my career as a rock and roller. Little did I know that America was poised on a precipice of its own.

I never made the mistake of not voting again. Even at my most fogbound, I managed to do my research and get myself to the polls. But I never actually participated in a campaign until this year. I not only donated actual money to the Obama campaign, but I guilted my wife into doing the same. And then on election day, we both took off work and spent the day calling folks in New Mexico.

Most of the people we called weren’t home, but we were told not to leave messages; just keep going through the lists as quickly as we could. The folks who did answer were pretty evenly split between those who had already voted for Obama and parents of newly registered kids. “She’s at school,” they would tell me, “But I’m pretty sure she voted for Obama last week.”

Continue reading ‘Your Favorite Little Podcast: Episode Fourteen’