LMNOP

Today is Election Day, and if this is the first time you are being made aware of that fact then I would probably like to hang out with you sometime and talk about what it's like to use an abacus, practice subsistence farming and actually bury your own head in the ground for 22 hours a day.

Anyway, this has been the most interesting and exciting campaign season of my lifetime, a fact I confirmed today by performing the following election-by-election analysis of the contests I've lived through.

1984: Reagan vs. Mondale--my first election.  At the time, I was about 17 months old, so you can just imagine the range of issues I was considering: none whatsoever.  And it didn't really matter what I thought anyway, as nothing I did could have stopped Reagan from stomping Mondale, 525 electoral votes to 13.

 

1988: My only memory of this election is of occasionally hearing the name "Dukakis" and thinking it was funny and also slightly naughty-sounding, like some kind of doodoo/caca combination.  Anyway, this was yet another Republican kill, bringing the cumulative electoral vote totals within my lifetime to 951 for the Red Team and 114 for the Blue.

1992: In a 100% improvement over my retention of the '88 election, I have two memories of this campaign.  The first thing I recall is hearing a lot of kids in my school talking about Clinton's appearance on Arsenio Hall, a show I'd never heard of but pretended to be very familiar with, lest I look naive in front of the other eight- and nine-year olds.  My second memory is of thinking Ross Perot was an idiot; after all, I was only in third grade, and even I knew that quitting was a bad strategy.  He also looked funny.

1996: I recall taking a liking to Bob Dole, because he was old and weird and he fell down in front of everyone, and the middle school me could certainly relate to such humiliation.  As such, I proudly cast my vote for Dole/Kemp in our school's mock election, which they won over Clinton/Gore in a super-landslide.  This ran counter to the results of the real election, so I guess small Catholic grade schools are not the best election predictor.

2000: Just a smidgen too young to vote, I didn't give a rat's ass about this election until it turned into the huge, farcical shit show you and I all remember.  Then I just wanted it all to end.

2004: This was the first year I ever cast my very own ballot in a Presidential election, and I started off my voting career 0-1.  Hopefully today my record will improve to 1-1.