The year after she was born, women won the right to vote. The first time she was old enough to vote, she chose between Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a member of the Greatest Generation, she grew up during the Depression, married and started a family at the end of WW II, taught her sons the value of hard work on the family farm, and voted in 21 presidential elections. But as we prepare to elect our 45th president, she has decided not to vote.
She could get to the polls, and she could manage the wait in line. At 98 her mind is as sharp as it ever was, and she has paid attention to what she reads in the newspaper and sees on TV. “But I can’t tell what’s true,” she told me. “The lies and the half-truths — there’s just so much of it — I don’t know what the candidates stand for.” She takes the responsibility too seriously to vote simply along party lines. She won’t vote AGAINST a candidate; she wants to vote FOR someone. So this year, she will not vote.
This is not the America she taught her children and grandchildren to believe in. This is an America controlled by pollsters and data, by soundbites and video clips and news cycles, by hidden money, by obstreperous elected officials whose only loyalty is to their re-election fund. If you want her vote, candidate, — or mine — you have to give us what we want: maturity, decency, and a sense of duty.
It’s too late for 2016. Is it too late for 2020?