Blog in the strict sense of the term

Image via Motley News.

My weird and more than somewhat disreputable-looking brother texted from his cave in Vermont to announce his surprise that he was allowed to vote without showing any ID—that is, that they skipped not only a picture ID but any ID at all. I guess first of all that gives us an idea of how long it's been since he last voted, or maybe not (to be fair, he was living in Utah until recently, where they passed a Voter ID law in 2009 that allows non-picture IDs). I like to think it's evidence that everybody wants to vote though.

That goes as well for an old and possibly entirely demented lady with a walker and flanked by two home health-care aides trying to keep her calm as she panicked over the ballot, the walker, and the location of the state-supplied pens, I mean really panicked, "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" As I left the aides had her by the wall, and I'm not sure whether she'd voted yet.

Out on the street was Congressman Jerry Nadler (outside Zabar's Appetizing at Broadway and 80th), greeting passers-by. I waved. Wish I'd taken a picture for you all, but I had to get to work.

In the end I did vote for the Working Families Party (Cuomo's name was there, but I tried not to think about it). Partly because I was convinced that the Greens would get a lot of votes without mine. As a voter, I respond especially to the feeling of being needed. (So did the B-B-B-Bastard, I'm pleased to note.)

So Grimes has lost in Kentucky, and, as one very Obotic tweep remarked, "lost like a coward" in disavowing the black president who supplied the medical care Kentuckians love, though they obstinately refuse to believe a black president could have had anything to do with it. Our 17-year-old gallantly objected: "It was the only way she could have won." But then, as we now know it wasn't. Either she couldn't have won at all, or she could have won some other way. We'll never know which. But assuming (without any real evidence) that she has some Democratic consciousness of who Obama is and what he has done to the long-term benefit of Kentucky, she could have tried being honest about it, and then if she lost she'd have the consolation of having been honest.

Anyway I'm about to turn on the TV.