Senator George McGovern for President of the United States - it was probably a very lonely little ballot.  I still remember how exciting it was to vote that November and voting remains exciting for me to this day.  The thrill wasn't quite the same for Michelle Obama; in fact, Lauren Collins writing in the March 10, 2008 issue of New Yorker reports that Mrs. Obama doesn't even recall her the specifics of that first vote.

"Oh, God, um, I've voted every time that I could vote, but I don't--it doesn't stand out," she said. "You know, that was just something you did,  you didn't not vote....But I, you know, it wasn't like this moving experience for me"--she breathed in dramatically--" 'I cast my first vote!' " 

Not recalling your first vote isn't anything exceptional.  I remember that at the time most of my friends were much more impressed that I had been able to sneak into campus bars at age 17. (I went to college a year early and if you had a college I.D. very few bouncers bothered to check the birthdate.)  Plus, 1972 was such a tumultuous year politically that it may have stood out more than the year MO cast her first vote.  Senator McGovern was considered a real outside the pack nominee and Richard Nixon his polar opposite.  It was particularly thrilling to be a McGovernite on the campus of The University of Tennessee at Knoxville where just being a Democrat was pretty revolutionary.  Boy, what a rebel I was -  at least in my own mind  - remember this was a state where George Wallace won the Democratic primary and Richard Nixon took the state in the national election.  Mrs. Obama has also spent her adult life building a resume of accomplishment and work within her community which might have yielded more personal memories than just pulling the lever at the polls; being the person amongst my group who scored highest on the LSAT and then took twenty years to finish her undergraduate degree and never made it to law school are my greatest claims to professional fame.

The differences in our voting experiences also serve to delineate some of the differences between Mrs. Obama and many women of my age (about a decade older than MO).  While finding some of Geraldine Ferraro's comments ill advised, I have nonetheless been appalled by the lack of respect shown to her as the first female included on the national ticket of a mainstream, major U.S. political party.  (Some of the rudeness of that particular post can be written off to youth, although I cannot imagine thinking that referring to GF in the manner chosen by the blogger was acceptable.)  The tenor toward older female supporters of HRC taken by some in the Obama campaign has been in many ways more demeaning than that of the Republicans.   The disrespectful, condescending tone becomes slightly more understandable when viewed against a backdrop of voters who have previously been less than excited by the whole concept of casting a vote.  

Switching the lever next to the 1984 Democratic ticket was another of those "voting for George Mc" experiences.  Having been too young to vote for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in the 1972 primary, the 1984 vote marked the first time I had ever voted for a woman.  Mrs. Obama would have voted that year as well and yet the moment apparently had very little impact on her.  Having written that I do realize that part of Mrs. Obama's lack of enthusiasm for voting may have stemmed from the fact that until this year there was never a candidate of color who would have occupied either position on the Democratic ticket.  I know for a fact that never seeing a face like one's own in the campaign ads can over time diminish the ardor of even the most faithful member of the party.

It would have served both the Obama team and the Clinton team well to realize that though both camps have many ideals in common, they have many experiences that are totaaly foreign to the other side.  I do not support Hillary Clinton because she is a woman but it is overwhelmingly gratifying to finally have the opportunity to work for a candidate whose campaign is more than a losing cause; it seems like the capstone of a lifetime of votes cast.  For Mrs. Obama and many Obama-ites, this election is not the culmination of a series of votes, it is for some almost like voting for the very first time.  I hope it gives all of them the thrill my first vote gave me.