For me, politics is not business, it's personal. I cried when George W. Bush was elected to his second term. So it should mean something when I say the upcoming presidential race has been even more personal than that.
As a young voter, this is the first presidential race I will vote in, one that comes at a crucial time for both the country and my future, and one that has perhaps the best roll of candidates I've ever seen. I can't help but care tremendously.
This has been true all over the country. The Wall Street Journal reported enormous increases in voter turnout during primaries, where you normally see a turnout of maybe 15 percent. In some states this election, the rate has been as high as 60 percent. Much of that turnout, both the Wall Street Journal and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) said, comes from the 18- to 30-year-old crowd — us.
CIRCLE reported that some states saw youth voter turnout quadruple from what it was four years ago. Volunteer offices are full of college students and, for once, there is a crowd around the tables on college campuses for political clubs. We, America's young voters, are getting excited about politics.
This fervor has made the last six months or so interesting for me, because I am a Clinton supporter. Based on experience with this race, some readers just closed the paper in disgust, some considered it, and a good portion of the rest are no longer as kindly disposed toward me as they were before that last sentence.
To those people, I have confessed a personal shortcoming. I am not a disciple of the Democrats' Luke Skywalker, the Second Coming candidate. I am stuck in the past; don't I know Hillary's a liar? Don't I see that she's polarizing? I've heard it so many times I have it memorized. I understand very clearly that Obama means a lot to his supporters. To them, he means more than politics as usual. He means a reason to care.
That is how I feel about Hillary, or at least how I felt before her campaign began fizzling out. To me, she was a candidate with the intelligence, the foreign policy experience, the political know-how and the strength of character built by fire needed to turn this country into a place I could be proud of again.
I was disappointed by the venom against her. I still am, especially since I have yet to hear a reason for it that doesn't amount to "I just don't like her, OK?" As the race has gone on, some of that venom has even been directed at me for supporting her, or more accurately, for not supporting Obama.
I tried to like him, I really did, but after hearing him speak I find the main part of his message that I am impressed with is the public's response to it. He makes politics personal for his supporters. I just wish I could have seen why when I heard him speak. I just wish that that version of personal politics didn't include making mine the eighth deadly sin.
The rest of the campaign will be hard, like Super Bowl Sunday when your team just missed making it. Take away the good commercials and you have my November.
I'm glad Hillary is still in the race. She owes it to me and the others like me to stick with us. I am not the first to say it, but probably the only way Obama can prove to me that he's worth believing in is by making her his running mate.
Only a man who understands putting ego aside to do his job well could do that. Only a man self-aware enough to know his weaknesses, and strong enough to obtain the tools to correct them. Only a man who can keep politics personal for me in this race. It takes the kind of man Obama's supporters believe he is — a man who deserves to be president.
I want Hillary to be vice president if she can't be president. It won't be everything I hoped for, but seeing her name on the ballot at all is better than nothing. Like missing the Super Bowl, but knowing that there's always next season.
Emma Breysse is a journalism senior. E-mail her at: emma.breysse@asu.edu.
