Poor Michigan. My adopted state just can’t seem to catch a break. Michigan is in the middle of a one-state recession with the highest unemployment in the nation (7.5%). Housing prices have been sliding here for years, long before the current nationwide troubles. In this state we lose jobs by the 10,000’s.
The latest indignity to befall our state happened when Michigan, desperate for attention from Presidential candidates, moved up the primaries. The National Democratic Party responded by sanctioning Michigan, resulting in us losing our delegates at the national convention. Many of the Dems then pulled out of the primary, leaving Clinton as the only A-list candidate.
I have to admit that I still get a tingle each and every time I vote. It is one of the few times when I feel the awesome power of living in such a stable democracy. Voting is something I never take for granted. Well, for the first time ever that tingle was not there. This morning I headed to my local polling place, and because I could not vote for Obama, I chose the “Uncommitted” option.
I was so saddened not to be able to put a mark next to the name Barak Obama on my ballot. To have done so would have filled me with a palpable excitement. And had I been able to vote for Obama, I would have wished that my mother would be there to see me picking between the two leading Democratic candidates, a Woman and an African American. I thought back to 1972 when my mother was so excited to have Shirley Chisolm on the ballot, the first African-American Female candidate for a major party.
We’ll have to see what happens this summer and fall. Maybe something else will go wrong here and they won’t let us vote for president in the November election.