It will be a stormy L.A. election day for the first time in years. Will rain hurt turnout? Will the weather affect turnout? Will it affect the political climate? The answer to all three questions is, “Hell, yeah.” But before you can give a proper answer, you first want to know if you’re an Election Weather Junkie.
The term “weather junkie,” coined by radio show host and author Neil Cavuto in his book, “Neil Cavuto’s American Center: A Conservative’s Tour of the United States with Neil Cavuto,” is now a part of the lexicon of the politically engaged. I am a weather junkie. But it is, in fact, a complicated addiction that can consume and even destroy the lives of both the addict and the addict’s family.
But in this case, I have not made a conscious decision to be a weather junkie. I was, in fact, an alcoholic during the Bush years, and was always a weather junkie in my own way. My drinking went hand in hand with my political feelings.
I was at a Bush rally in Washington just days before the 2004 election, and was drinking and talking politics with members of the Bush voter registration group BushForLiberty. We were having a great time, until the Secret Service showed up and informed us that we were, in fact, being arrested, since we didn’t have our registration forms at the rally.
I was, in fact, an alcoholic during the Bush years, and was always a weather junkie in my own way.
We were then escorted off the premises by the Secret Service. We did not have to stay on the grounds, because we were all allowed to go to someone’s house to pick up a registration form.
That was just the beginning of a long night of drinking, and a series of bad decisions that eventually set me down a very dangerous road.
That night, with the exception of one person, I was alone. I had only one rule at that point: I only drank when people were around. And I did not drink with anyone who was not on the same page as me, which, for me, meant a total lack of
