Big night.  Huge night.  Yesterday was the primary election in Illinois.  It snowed yesterday.  It was cold.  A very light turnout.  And my candidate won.

Yeeeesssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 By, last time I heard, 400 votes.  It wasn't supposed to be this close.  Nowhere near this close, but the weather and the opposition obviously got their people out to the polls.  

From the media

From my cell phone camera 

The cell phone camera captures my truth.  Life doesn't feel like a story with sharply delineated images that have clear boundaries, meaning, a distinct start and finish.  We are looking at the same people, but my eyes aren't a Nikon with a large flash unit.  

Democracy is messy.  The other candidate -- the one 400 votes short -- she ran a vigorous campaign and damn -- damn, she got her people to the polls.  I know what we did, so I can only imagine how much passion they put into their campaign.

The Sun Times ran this from the short victory speech:

"Because of these people, we have to send a new kind of leader to Washington. We need to send leaders who are problem solvers instead of those involved in partisanship, people who understand how business and economic leadership actually works, and leaders who want to move the country forward instead of back to the era we've just left." 

For what it's worth, I was at a 'meet and greet' on Saturday, and actually overheard the conversation with the businessman mentioned above. [unless it was another businessman with 19 profitable years]  What he didn't say is that that businessman is currently making money.  He said that he COULD expand if he could get additional credit.  But he doesn't need to and won't expand by taking a second mortgage.  He isn't a victim, but rather the victims don't even know who they are, since they are people that would have a job if he had additional access to capital.  It is way, way to nuanced for a sound bite.  

So why do people bother?  It's fun.  Just for the hell of it.  Because the other volunteers are cool.  Because the candidate and his message resonate.  All of the above and more.

Democracy.

 Is this a great country or what?