Terrier: Pawprints on Election Day

By: Daisy

This morning, as I watched my human friend Laura walk across Massachusetts Avenue in North Cambridge to vote on Election Day, I began wailing from the back seat of our Toyota Corolla. And while my other human friend, Rich, patiently waited behind the wheel for Laura to return, I couldn't stop crying.
You see, I wanted to be in that polling place, too, casting my vote in the elections I've blogged about for almost 10 months. Yet until some forward-thinking human introduces a Constitutional amendment that would extend the franchise to dogs, the only way to make my Westie voice heard is by blogging. So here are my thoughts on the final day of Campaign 2012.

• Beware Republican dirty tricks. Here is a cautionary tale for you humans: It would have been a cinch for me to vote today. I had it all down pat. I would saunter into the polling place, grip the ballot between my teeth, stand on my hind legs in the booth to fill it out, and feed it into the machine. Hey, why not? I've already figured out how to escape my leash ... and how to make the car window come down. (I just press the black button on the rear door with my paw!) I decided not to vote, though, because I am, at heart, a law-abiding . Republicans aren't so scrupulous. In 2000 they benefited from hanging chads in Florida ... in 2004 it was flawed Diebold voting machines in Ohio. What next?
• Kudos to Warren for dogged campaigning. Here in my home state of Massachusetts, the "hot" race is the Senate campaign between GOP incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. With their million-dollar fundraising, both sides have made this race the most expensive in state history. Yet it may be plain old shoe leather that makes the difference. After Rich brought me back home for my morning dog-walk, we passed two women going door-to-door on our street, checking to see if people had voted. "Nobody's home," one woman told Rich, adding that there were "long lines" at the polling places. Their buttons and clipboards showed the strong organizational level of the Warren campaign ... something sorely lacking in the campaign of the last Democrat to run against Brown, Attorney General Martha Coakley, who lost the special election of 2010. Perhaps Warren's shoe leather can beat Brown's pickup-truck fuel.
• Last stop on Mitt's ride? Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, will return to the Bay State this evening, for a campaign watch party at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston. (He was also here this morning, voting at Belmont Middle School.) To me, this reveals the pawprint of fate on human history. After all, it was from Massachusetts that Romney left on the infamous 12-hour car trip to Lake Huron with his Irish setter, Seamus, in a portable kennel atop the family station wagon. So it is time for the voters of Massachusetts, and the US in general, to pay Romney back for this bad decision ... as well as the many others he made in his political career. The authors of a book on Romney that details this incident, "The Real Romney," say that it represents "emotion-free crisis management." Sorry, but humans need to demonstrate emotions like compassion, sympathy and respect in helping each other through crises like the Great Recession, the War on Terror and now Superstorm Sandy. In his four years in office, President Obama has shown this skill. Romney hasn't.

I believe that I have found the perfect sunbeam for my midday nap. Let us hope that when the sun goes down and the moon rises, President Obama and Professor Warren will see their stars on the rise as well.

Daisy is a West Highland white terrier living in Cambridge, Mass.