In what year did you become politically "sentient?"

[Jeebo]

27. Some time between 1968 and 1972.

My awareness of political realities -- my political "sentience", if that's what you want to call it -- changed A LOT during those four years. At the time of the 1968 election I was 18, almost 19, and if I could have voted that year, I would have voted for George Corley Wallace, but 18-year-olds did not yet have the vote then, I think it was 1971 when that amendment was ratified.

My parents were big George Wallace supporters. They were good people, both of them. There was not a mean bone in either of their bodies. They and we were just caught up in that cultural gravity well down there in Selma. Yes, my hometown is Selma. I was in the ninth grade in Albert G. Parrish High School in Selma when the Selma-to-Montgomery march happened.

My political "sentience" began to emerge about 1970 or 1971, during college at the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!), and by the 1972 election, I was a "liberal", or as we call ourselves now, a progressive. I voted for the first time in the 1972 election, and I voted enthusiastically for a very different George.

Like you, I have never voted for a Republicon for president, but I did vote in 1976 for John Danforth for the U.S. Senate. That was the year of Jerry Litton's plane crash here in Missouri, where I have lived since 1971. Litton was a rising star in the Democratic Party and I believe he very likely would have been president by now. But that plane crash snuffed that out (I have always wondered if it really was an accident?) and Missouri Democrats had to come up with a post-primary replacement candidate (the very unpopular former governor Warren Hearnes) and John Danforth was the inevitable winner almost by default.

I hope you find my political reminiscences interesting. I do think your "poll" is meaningless, unless your intention is to hear these kinds of reminiscences.

-- Ron