Rarely have we seen such an unappetizing buffet of All of this led to an anguished indecision on the If you don’t vote, where’s the fun of going home to On the other hand, how can a true believer in Democracy Caught in a quandary, we called our old man, who schooled As usual Dad came through. He reminded us of the old Anyway, we took Dad’s advice and went and voted for But hey, its Election Day in Massachusetts. Anything Ah, Election Day in Massachusetts, a holiday for all true fans of Democracy and a day at the races for political junkies, both of which groups we admit to belonging to. Of course, it is just a primary election, and … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/votem.jpg\")
Ah, Election Day in Massachusetts, a holiday for all
\n true fans of Democracy and a day at the races for political junkies,
\n both of which groups we admit to belonging to. Of course, it is just
\n a primary election, and every
\n one of the candidates<\/a> has flamingly failed to
\n inspire, impress, captivate or motivate the Dowbrigade to vote, despite
\n our having captured and considered their (unavoidable) messages.<\/p>\n
\n political hors d’vores, outside of the glorious one-candidate elections
\n of Communist Albania in its political prime. Actually, the ballot looked
\n a lot like Albania – in a majority of the races, from Teddy’s on down,
\n there was only one candidate. <\/p>\n
\n part of the Dowbrigade. To vote, or not to vote. To the stone cold
\n politics addict any election is worth voting in, right? It’s like Bukowski
\n and the racetrack – doesn’t matter who’s running, it’s the joy of the
\n chase (and all of the seedy characters haunting the fringes) that keep
\n us coming back.<\/p>\n
\n watch the results roll in on TV and the net? Who wants to watch an
\n ugly dogfight if, as the saying goes, one "don’t have a dog in the
\n fight"? <\/p>\n
\n bring him or herself to pull the lever for some venal hack who sold
\n his soul to blind ambition, corporate puppet masters and the powers
\n of darkness long ago? Is not a noble abstention the righteous path to democratic
\n expression in situations like this?<\/p>\n
\n us in this Democracy stuff half a century ago. "They’re all pathetic
\n losers, Dad," we complained, "who couldn’t lead a chorus of Row, Row,
\n Row your Boat."<\/p>\n
\n adage that says Democracy is a terrible, flawed, unworkable system
\n – but it’s still better than all of the others. We figure he meant
\n that in the real world, we often have to opt for the least of several
\n evils. After we had hung up (of course) we remembered the perfect rejoinder
\n – the other adage (we saw this one on a bumper sticker) that says,
\n Don’t forget that the lesser of two evils is still Evil….<\/p>\n
\n the least of the evils, and so now we sit in our personal Media Center
\n waiting for the results. We couldn’t bring ourselves to vote
\n for the unopposed candidates, and we are almost sure the ones we did
\n vote for will lose. But hey, losing elections is a long family tradition. The
\n one time we tried to use our negative mojo to vote for the guy we wanted
\n to lose, he
\n won, with disastrous results. So much for Voodoo
\n Voting<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n can happen.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"