I love to vote. Love it. Love it. I can remember getting an absentee ballot sent to me in college, and that was back in the day when you had to have a witness/notary stamp your ballot before returning it by mail. But, because I live in a state where the presidential primary/caucus doesn’t mean much, I usually don’t pay much attention to the campaigns until later. Until the ABC both-parties-in-one-night debate on Saturday, I had not watched any of the 30,000 battles so far. It was one of those nights, however, so I tuned in my TV and did my best to tune in my brain.
It turns out I didn’t have to. Lilly, who is super sensitive to tone of voice, may have told me all I need to know. In about the third hour of yammering, I noticed that she looked VERY upset. Her ears were pinned back. Her head very-much round. Her body posture one of hiding-submission.
The bickering among candidates, it seems, really ruined her night.
I’ll have to watch more carefully from now on to see if certain people upset her more than others.
This is the first campaign season is some 20 years that I won’t have my friend Jody Smith, who was a major politico deep in her genes, to help dissect not only the candidates but all those ballot issues that crop up. As long-time readers may recall, Jody died in May. She was brilliant and funny. She once went into a legislative budget hearing and compared some line item to a big-breasted teenage girl in a tight sweater. She often used outrageous analogies to get people to pay attention. The thing is that her comparisons always cut to the real issues. They weren’t, in other words, just for show.
Without such clever input, I was set for a lonely election year.
Then, I noticed Lilly’s reaction. Perhaps she can be my new partner in political figuring.
Those 24-hour news channels have a lot of time to fill. If they assemble a panel of Pup Politicos, I’m signing Lilly up.
I’m afraid I would have the same reaction as Lilly but it would take me only 10 minutes of yammering. Subject me to 3 hours and you’d have to lock me in a loony bin.