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(AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian.)
No, not THAT first time! The first time you cast a ballot in an election.
Women's Voices, Women Vote has put together a great new ad campaign that starts running today -- and I absolutely love it. From their website:
With Election Day just weeks away, Women's Voices. Women Vote. has released a new series of public service announcements featuring some of American's best known actresses encouraging women to vote.Tyne Daly, Rosario Dawson, Lauren Graham, Angie Harmon, Marg Helgenberger, Felicity Huffman and Regina King have all contributed their considerable talents to the campaign....
Almost half (46 percent) of American women aren't married -- and these "women on their own" are among the fastest growing large segments of our population. This new reality could transform the nation's politics, and there's a new kind of organization -- Women's Voices. Women Vote. (WVWV) -- working to get them to participate in our democracy.
Participation is a big part of the battle -- and that feeling of empowerment that you can get when you understand that you not only want change, but that you can really work to make it happen...well, that's what we are ALL working toward, isn't it?
Please take some time to view the PSAs -- and then pass them around to your friends, your family, your co-workers...anyone and everyone you think might benefit from a little kick in the behind to get up, get out there, and participate in this experiment that I like to call American democracy. We can't win if we don't get people out there and voting. This is a great way to get the word out to a whole lot of folks that we want to hear their voice, too.
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Women!
My first vote was in 1988 voting against Bush I. I voted third-party.
ladies, ladies.
I wanted to wait until there were a few comments up before going OT Re Warner’s announcment, but I can’t wait any longer!
I just have to mention that I have once again demonstrated that I have no instinct for the grapevine; I had a hint of this and didn’t realize it. I got to talk to former VA Lt. Gov. Don Beyer last week, and I told him that when he’d introduced Harris Miller at a candidate forum in the spring, I thought Beyer was the person who seemed most senatorial. I asked him if he was considering running for John Warner’s seat in ‘08. He said he wouldn’t rule it out, but he was currently busy as Mark Warner’s finance chair, and if Mark didn’t run for president, he’d probably be the candidate.
Somehow, I think he knew that this was at least a strong possibility. If I was a proper political gossip-monger, I would have recognized it and told everyone. But at least I can make up for it now and put my chips on “Mark Warner for Senate”!
I voted on the very day I turned 18, November 6, 1984. That must have been for Mondale, I guess.
MSNBC is showing KO’s piece from last night about THE NUTS! ; )
My first vote was for McGovern in 1972. (Boy, talk about dating yourself!)
MayDaze @ 7
Mine too ; )
Can I vote to oust idiot Chris Shays from CT.
His comment about Teddy was fucking outrageous…
Jack
Cozumel @ 8
me three,
mornin’ pups - offline at home again - but caught the “Rove blackmailed Foley in to staying on Sam Seder show this morning - wheeeee!”
I voted for the first time in 1972 when I was 19, for McGovern. I also had my first experience in dismay that year — no, not at the outcome of the election. I was so enthusiastic, I became a deputy registrar. I think for every Democrat or Peace and Freedom Party member I registered, I registered at least 5 Republicans.
This is my district, CA-04, ha! (By the way, Charlie Brown ate John Doolittle’s lunch in the debate last night.)
I have a theory about this on the next thread down @107.
My first vote was in November, 1968, and I was changing residence from WA to CA, so could only vote nationally. I was recently out of the Army, had campaigned for Bobby Kennedy in Oregon, and was so depressed by the war and the Chicago Convention, I voted for Nixon, who had a secret plan.
Thanks for the advice, fellow pups, in the preceding thread. I’ll find a way to talk to Kohring’s ex-employee about the alleged pot use tomorrow. Re the questions on pot and Alaska, it is still legal to possess or grow small amounts in the home. You can’t share it. Our medical mj law is strange and tied up in the mechanisms of an ultra-conservative Lt. Guv.
cbl at 10 — I’ve got some info on that coming up shortly. Whew! Just when you think that it can’t get any messier…LOL
cbl @ 10
I guess there are a lot of us old lefties that are still not co-opted. I was a student radical at the time (when radical meant leftist). You know what the difference was between a hippie and a student radical - we had to go to those damn classes!
McGovern.
Maydaze, Cozumel, cbl — mine too. I was so excited. They had just lowered the voting age to eighteen. I voted absentee from Copenhagen.
MayDaze @ 15
I seem to have a lot of hippies in my classes, by that definition….
MayDaze @
7
cbl @
10
Another McGovern baby here. Proud of my first vote.
Hello FDL. :)
1972…..
Wow…How did McGovern not win? or there are just alot of early 50’s folks around the lake this am.
My first time was 1980. I turned 18 in 1976 but my birthday is Nov2 which made registering a problem. By 80 I was in the service and stationed in Korea. I am ashamed to say that groupthink prevailed and I voted for Ronnie. In 84 I had just got out of the army and was very disgruntled. That’s when I started voting democrat and have ever since.
mag53 @ 20
The joke after McGovern’s defeat - “Well, look at it this way, 40% of the American public voted for drugs, sex, and rock and roll!”
Every election since 1972, McGovern, just after returning from Vietnam.
Have NERVER voted for a Republican. Never will.
(Did help my dad pull the lever for JFK when I was a kid.)
1972: McGovern - and McCloskey for congress. He walked part of his district, and had a booth at the county fair that year: you could actually meet a Congressman!
Actually, I think the first election I voted in was a school-board election, because I’d registered in 1971, as soon as the amendment went in.
My first vote was in 1988, Dukakis. I remember being very excited, I felt very grown up. I really love election day, I love voting on the clunky old mechanical machines we have here in NY.
This is an interesting post. I am one of those women on her own (as was very obvious this weekend when we had a family portrait done and the men were placed and the women told to go to who you belong to and my step sister and I just stood there.) I think there could be a good way to reach out here through meet-up or something.
1972 for me too- brainwashed by a republican family, voted for Nixon. Not too long after that found my truth and have been voting it ever since.
The first time I voted on my own was the 1992 presidential election. I voted for Bill Clinton. WHOOHOO!! The Big Dog Rulez!
Do her breast look drawn in?
mag53 @ 20
I remember the week before the ‘72 election, McGovern made a series of TV addresses in which he highlighted all the Nixonian scandals which quickly began coming home to roost in ‘73. I wonder if those talks are on YouTube? I also voted for McGovern in 1972, making up for my ‘68 vote for Nixon.
How to get young women to vote:
Republicans like to bring out the nuts to vote by putting things they are interested in on the ballot — initiatives against gay rights, pro “god” in schools, anti reproductive rights, etc. They don’t even care if the initiatives will be struck down later as unconstitutional because the whole purpose of the initiative isn’t to enact the particular law but to bring out “their” voters.
Well, that’s just dastardly. Why don’t we do it too? But with the added plus of actually wanting to pass initiatives that will improve the lives of millions of people!
This is the initiative:
All awards of child support shall be paid by the state through direct deposit to the custodial parent on the first of the month. The parent ordered to pay will pay the state, not the custodial parent. The noncustodial parent will pay a $2 per month surcharge to the state to fund the program. The state will impose penalties and/or fees for late payments.
What is stress? What is life-limiting? Ask any woman who has had to worry and wonder every single month, every single year whether the child support check will arrive on time. A law like this would be a godsend to custodial parents (usually young women) and children everywhere.
You want women to come out and vote for the Democratic Party? Why should they?
1964 - All the way with LBJ !
UptownNYChick at 25 — this is one of those issues that we try to brainstorm on frequently, but coming up with good ways to energize single women is a tough one. Let alone a whole lot of married women who don’t vote, either. There are SO many issues that matter to women of all ages and constituencies, it boggles my mind that some women never think to participate in the political process enough to vote. Any ideas you have on this — or anyone else for that matter — I am ALL ears.
68
Hubert!
klyde at 28 — welcome to the wonderful world of red carpet make-up artists — and the use of carefully applied bronzer for “enhancement” purposes for cleavage for photos. SIGH (And do NOT ask me why or how I know this…LOL)
1972, McGovern…
Christy Hardin Smith @ 34
Is that why bill looks sort of orange in that pic;-)?
LindaR @ 30
How about universal health care? It’s time for this to be the Democratic mantra.
Cozumel @
8
And mine too.
McGovern for me too. I wore a McGovern for President T-shirt into the polling place and a very nice older lady working there told me I wasn’t supposed to do any political advertising inside, but then leaned over and sweetly whispered, “I’m for him, too”. Never forgot that.
My first vote was for McGovern in 1972 — and it didn’t count. All of the Presidential ballots were thrown out in Tucson, because the electors were not identified properly.
In 1968, I supported Gene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey — but as the saying went, I was old enough to die but too young to vote!
The Bay State Librul @ 9
Speaking of cars..
While Shays was talking about them did he mention..
The # of people killed by Laura Bush’s car ?
MayDaze — I’m all for universal health care. The child support initiative, however, is what will appeal to young women.
Maybe only a person who has watched her 6-year-old’s feet grow two sizes in three months while being told to wait for the child support check can understand.
Ed*ard Teller @ 29
Let’s see, We have two more years of bush left and the Dems look to take control of congress. With all the crap that will probaly surface between then and now, you’d have to make a mini-series to fit it all in.
hey guys, what’s the answer to this…this happened under the agreed clinton framework and the right is using this as an claim that the inspections were worthless:
Christy Hardin Smith @ 32
Well, as an on-her-own woman, I think it’s hard to socialize comfortably. I envy my mother who has a group of ladies she knits with very week. I am a walker and walk with group occasionally. Book clubs are popular, heck I am thinking about bringing voter reg. forms to my Weight Watchers meetings and the gym.
Maybe we need to take a cue from the repugs and work within social groups.
Interestingly enough- after all these years, few americans are familiar with Laura Belle’s brush with death- in a leading role.
Strange ain’t it.
Clusterfuck got her cheap- she was marked down goods.
E. Teller, I added my thoughts at the end of the last thread. In a nutshell…not an issue.
Need a little help with campaign research. I seem to remember a site that had all kinds of good Republican quotes against Bush policies. Quotes from Powell, Warner, Baker, Hagel, etc. Thought I had bookmarked it, but can’t find it. Any help appreciated!
Looks as if the senate will come down to Missouri. If there is a place that needs our help right now- that’s it!
Attracting voters goes right back to the issues. Why do democratic politicians have to take a stand on issues like gay marriage? Why not ignore something like that completely and speak directly to the voters? Any guy who’s been through his 20’s knows women have a good nose for bullshit. It seems to me that issues like gay marriage are just a way to tie the hands of the opposition.
The AP, via CNN.com, is playing up Reid’s land deal as a Big Thing. Apparently they’ve been able to blow it up to the point that the ethics committee is actually noticing.
And that cleavage really looks painted on! It’s obvious that she, um, doesn’t have much there.
In my years in high school, civics, history and government classes were required for graduation. Which helped voter motivation and responsibility later in life. Today this is not the case. At least in the public school in which I teach. My conviction is, if you keep the masses, (starting early in child development) ignorant, it will work to Republican advantage. So if you cut spending on schools you are killing two birds with one stone: more money for the well to do, and more voters for the Republicans.
In my day we wanted to to turn 21 not because we wanted to be able to legally go into bars, etc., we wanted to vote.
LindaR @ 42
I disagree. Universal Health Care ought to appeal to young women and single mothers especially, because even when the child support checks come on time, they will often be way less than the hospital bill.
rw at 48 — things are tight in several states at the moment Senate-wise: Ohio, Missouri and even NJ. Bob Geiger did a great round-up on it the other day — here’s the link — and things haven’t changed much since he did this write-up that I can see.
OT but I want to correct my 100 at the previous thread. Josh at TPM has the Rove/Foley story.
And don’t forget TN.
Thanks for the warm welcome, back later.
Repugs did not understand why women love Bill Clinton. He listened to women, he dealt with the issue of poverty (which affects more women and children) and taking time off for a sick relative. Yeah, he has charisma, but seriously, women will follow someone who is real and helps make their and their children’s lives better.
I agree, ignore gay marriage and show me some policy on universal health care for children. Show me how you will help me when I have to take care of my elderly parents.
rwcole @ 48
One thing that helps get women out to vote is having strong women candidates for whom to cast their ballots! Knowing that there is a candidate who has walked a mile in your pumps and can understand things from your perspective makes it a lot easier to get motivated to actually get to the polling booth and cast that vote.
Twice I came very close to voting for Nixon. In 1960 I was still in the sway of my Republican father, but was 9 days too young to vote. Thus I first voted in the 1962 off year, which was of historical note here in MN because Dem Karl Rolvaag (novelist Ole’s son) won the governor’s office by less than 100 votes after several recounts.
In 1968 I went to the polls (I was living in Penna at the time) having decided to vote for Nixon, even though I’d found him repulsive ever since his “You don’t have Nixon to kick around any more” moment in the press conference after losing the CA governors race in 1962. But when I finally got in the voting booth I couldn’t bring myself to pull the Nixon-Agnew lever.
OK Kiddo, what do you teach? I am having so much fun teaching an 8th/9th grade Global Studies class at our local alternative school! The kids are informed and full of opinions, what a joy. Wish I could be that enthusiastic about some of my other classes/students, but I get revved for those kids. Just proves the old axiom…it all starts at home.
rat bastahd @ 47
I appreciate your comment on this and looseprophead’s also. I’ll try to talk to the former staffer to get a feel of what has actually been going down. Certainly not going to the cops on this, even if verified. I may even talk to Vic himself about it before deciding.
Peterr @ 58
I was completely taken aback by something a friend of mine said recently. She said, “This country isn’t ready for a woman to be president.” I think the “strong woman candidate” is a concept that’s dead on arrival. I’d like to see the “smart woman candidate”
Something I met yesterday, possibly relevant here:
Red Family, Blue Family
Making sense of the values issue
It’s an interesting essay on the differences between the ‘blues’ and the ‘reds’.
Redd-
Thanks for the link. At the bottom of the linked story- the writer says that he do is most worried about Missouri.
New Jersey is scary, Tennessee could go either way- and even Rhode Island and Montana are far from certain- but Missouri insists on being deadlocked and not budging in either direction. Goopers are about to dump a bundle into that race and dems must at least match it or “turn out the lights”.
LindaR@30…great idea.
I have tried for a very long time to get the Democrats to address their women constituents who they treat like crap…just like they treat their Afro-American constituents. Dems show up every 2 or 4 years and tell us to vote for them while they schmooze and whine and beg the Angry White Male to please oh please vote for them…they offer them guns; they tell them that we’ll try to keep the women folk in the kitchen and put more restrictions on Women’s Destinies; and last but not least, Dems can do WAR just as good as the Repugs.
Women are over half the population. And if women don’t vote, Dems don’t get elected. So they better pick ONE fu*cking issue that women want and talk about it CONSTANTLY. Peace, health care, child care. Pick one.
I worked with Women’s Voices, Women Vote during the Kerry Campaign…a great group. Unmarried women (divorcees, widow, single mothers, never marrieds) are a huge voting bloc and from my canvassing, they are a hell of alot more angry than the whiney white male….and deservedly so. Working for 75 cents on the dollar of white male’s has that affect on them.
This organization has great campaigns and flyers and ideas. I just wish the Democratic Party would listen to them.
anjinsan @ 52
I’m failing to convey the constant weight-bearing stress a woman feels every single month when the children are growing and the income is not dependable. Children need to eat every day. When the check is late one, two, three days — a week, two months — that creates unyielding, ever-present worry. You shop at the grocery store, counting up every penny as you put things in the basket, feeling guilty for buying something so frivolous as cookies. Should you spend three fucking dollars on goddam oreos? Forget such luxuries as a pot roast.
Universal health care is crucial to our national health, and I agree it will make the lives of women with children better as it will make the lives of middle-aged people afraid of losing their accumulated wealth to a disease better.
But child support is a young woman’s issue like no other. I’m just saying: if you want young women to vote, give them something to vote for.
I’ll join the party — absentee ballot for McGovern in 1972!
Peterr
Well in that case- it probably helps that the dem candidate in Mo. is a woman?
MayDaze @ 22
I often wonder how many of that 40% are now the facists that want our children to submit to a drug test to recieve a parking permit at a public school?
well, it looks like i might have seniority here, at least for the moment:
‘60 Kennedy
‘64 Johnson
‘68 Humphrey
‘72 McGovern
‘76 Carter
und so weiter…..
absentee ballots
‘00 Gore (from Venezuela)
‘04 Kerry (from Sudan)
Some of you may know this guy, but I stumbled across him the other day…. Check this out :
http://fascarto.blogspot.com/
and
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/
anjinsan @ 52
Uh-uh. Trust me, hospital bills are that last thing you worry about if you don’t have enough money to actually feed your children. Most people don’t understand how disenfranchised the disenfrachised are.
Exactly so. !
LindaR @
11
LindaR, I watched as much of that debate as I could stand. I got so tired of hearing Doolittle scolding like a fishwife over Brown’s membership in the ACLU and such, that I was delighted when Charlie made an issue of it and accused Doolittle of hanging with convicted felons. Of course, Dooby’s comeback was, “they weren’t convicted felons when I got to know them.” My thought was, “Right. They just hadn’t been caught.”
Jimmy Carter, 1980. Makes me realize I’ve been fighting the good fight against the radical Right since it first went national, which may be why it feels so personal to me.
Well, if it isn’t Filliam H. Muffman!
Oh…I forgot something. Maybe Women’s Voices, Women Vote are NOT HEARD by the Democratic Party because they don’t wear clothing that reveals cleavage and lots of skin.
That must be the reason. We gotta go sexee! Yep, that’s the ticket. Maybe Women’s Voices, Women Vote could change their name to Women’s V*lva, Women Vote. hehehe
LindyH — Wasn’t Doolittle creepy and whiny? I loved it when Charlie Brown pulled a Thoreau on him: Doolittle kept accusing him of being a life-time member of the ACLU! so Charlie said: The ACLU’s mission is to defend the Constitution. You ask me why I belong to the ACLU, I ask you why you don’t!
slade @ 77
slade, this is why I think the initiative process and the child support initiative would be so effective. Bypass the “powers that be DLC entrenched male-centric whatever” and do it on our own.
LindaR -
Universal health care is crucial to our national health, and I agree it will make the lives of women with children better as it will make the lives of middle-aged people afraid of losing their accumulated wealth to a disease better.
But child support is a young woman’s issue like no other. I’m just saying: if you want young women to vote, give them something to vote for.
I’m with you - making the day-to-day is critical… universal health care is nice, but it’s the kind of thing that often only hits you once in awhile until you a older…
kristinejoy @ 72
Okay.. You and LindaR have both said the same thing, so I’m beginning to see now.
mag53 @ 69
You know, I do, too, mag53. We used to think when we boomers finally “arrived” we would have a much more tolerant society. Now we’re here, and it’s really pathetic. I think a lot of people were with the leftists then because it was “cool”, and when Reagan became “cool”, they went there. Depressing.
slade at 77 — um, no idea if you were going for snark or tacky with that…but it fell with a thud for me.
Organized delegate-selection mass meetings in Northern Virginia for George McGovern and then voted for him in November 1972. Pissed off a lot of centrist “non-aligned” mentors in the Democratic Party that spring, but we flooded the zone at the mass meetings, having convinced our USGovernment teacher to give extra credit for showing up at the elementary school on Saturday morning.
Good times.
You can put off a doctor bill until the check comes. Putting off a hungry child is a lot harder.
LindaR @ 78
Doolittle was creepy indeed. The statement that squicked me out the most was “All conservatives believe in the Constitution.” I call bullshit.
Youtube has a collection of four McGovern TV ads - three from the ‘72 general election contest, and one from the ‘84 primary series. They’re great, ’cause they show how some of these themes continue, and give a hint of what a fine man McGovern is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrifjInBdlY
Child-support is a good idea. Even if you don’t have a child, you may have gone through it as a kid.
Is it a national issue? Divorces and child-support are handled by the state, aren’t they?
UptownNYChick @ 88
The state, yes.
NYMary @ 85
Amen, and I’m amazed that this particular issue hasn’t been more in the light. It’s time to put it out there. I’m phone banking this weekend, and part of my mission is to ask people what their burning issues are. I will be listening very carefully.
McGovern for me too. My first heartbreak.
LindyH @ 86:
The statement that squicked me out the most was “All conservatives believe in the Constitution.” I call bullshit.
Yeah, like they go to church and say they believe in Jesus: right up until they’re in the parking lot, then it’s every man for himself.
Nick at 9:13, thanks for the great link.
I did vote for Jesse Jackson in one of those primaries… just because I could.
LindaR @ 79
Bypassing the powers that be has it’s downside too. Out here in CA we are suffering from a severe case of initiative abuse. Narrow intersts write some outragous proposal, pay signature gatherers to qualifiy it and spend megabucks on misleading ad campains. It’s cheaper than bribing our legislature.
P J Evans @ 92
Yeah, those “Christian values” aren’t always apparent when the real world intrudes.
Helpless Dancer, I’m with you in CA and I agree about the initiative abuse. I wish it were illegal to pay people to collect signatures. That would be a way to ensure that the process was truly a “people’s” initiative, as intended. (I think it would help, anyway. I’m not sure I’m right about that.)
Raise the minimum wage to $10.50 an hour in one step and forget about the incremental $7.00 plus which is definitely not a living wage. When jobs were going begging during the Clinton era, many who had protested raising the minimum wage found they could afford to pay more when they had to.
thanks for the McGovern ad link, ET.
that stat jumped out at me — 46% of American women aren’t married?
also, the fiance points out, “would we refer to unmarried MEN as ‘men on their own’?”
seems like it’s still difficult to escape the sexist framing….
rat bastahd @ 60
Math, physics and English. ‘Global studies’ Bet that’s fun!
MayDaze @
7
My first presidential vote was for McGovern as well. The constitutional amendment to change the voting age to 18 was in 1971, when I was 19. In 1972 I was in college and worked for my first political campaign, McGovern. *sigh*
Good times. We can have them again.
I just voted absentee and stuck my ballot in the mail. One vote here in CA-11 for McNerney! We just need a few more. :)
Sally @ 98
yeah, they hated HillaryCare too, which now seems to be one of big biz’s biggest mistakes ever, as they try to compete with global manufacturers whose home governments provide health care.
rwcole @ 33
Me too.
LindaR @ 97
I think that a lot of it has to do with the ease that astroturf groups with high minded civics loving names can be created with no clue as to who funds them. That and the fact the paid for by statement at the bottom of the ad is near impossible to read.
‘76.
James Earl Carter.
NYMary @ 85
What’s an unpaid doctor bill going to do to you? Lower your credit score? Sorry, when we were living in our car, my single mom didn’t spend a moment worrying about her credit. Things have always been bad for the poor, and there is very little way for them to get better.
The poverty angle would be such a great long term winner for the Democrats. IF you help out the poor, make them believe in the process, you not only help this generation of children, but you also get progressive voters for life. It won’t help win today’s election, but it would be a winner for the party long term, by getting the disenfranchised part of the process.
Also, help with student loans! Those of us who had nothing, who stayed in school and paid our own way often have crushing student loan debt. The disadvantaged now can be educated working poor; you can have a 1400 SAT and FICO in the 400’s. So sorry about that american dream…. you have to be born into it.