No Ordinary Election

[RainDog]

I have lived through some amazing history. My first public memory on this earth was the funeral of JFK. My childhood was recorded on television with the images of Bull Connor's thugs turning hoses and dogs on their fellow citizens who only wanted to be treated as all are created: equally. Martin Luther King and RFK and Dan Rather showing the Vietnam War were my understandings of power... and that power was the power to destroy, not create.

LBJ sent the high boys in my neighborhood off to die in an unknown grave. Some of them came home. The boy whose family had the big willow tree came home as a heroin addict. I guess he was alive. Then my government was killing students on a campus in Ohio. My school was integrated while people in Boston were fighting over race and education. It wasn't just the south that spewed hatred. It was across this nation.

The voices that talked about another way were silenced over and over again.

Nixon showed that there are Americans who can and will do the right thing, when reporters actually investigated a story and did not just repeat the lies of the powerful. The Davids brought down Goliath. I don't remember the Church hearings from that time, but I learned about them later. Watergate, internal spying by the CIA, medical experiments on Americans without their consent that drove them mad with syphilis or that damaged their children in the womb - I didn't learn of these things until later too, but they were low hum behind the politics I had learned to hate.

Why was Reagan valorized for murdering nuns and priests in Central America? Why war? Apparently, as Bush Jr. told Herskowitz, presidents who are successful start wars and kill people. That's how they make Americans love them. Is that really all we are as a nation? Is that really how we value people --- for their ability to engage in blood lust? Republicans who sired children in "off-the-book marriages," ones with pictures of them licking cream off the nipples of strippers, ones who kept their liaisons with the maid a secret - those were the men who made sure Clinton was impeached. Politicians whose children ran hard drugs, like Dan Burton, got their kids off because of their connections while they railed against "those people" who trade in illegal substances. People who smoked a joint were more dangerous than pedophiles in that world.

When Bush stole the 2000 election, I was incredulous. Were the power prostitutes in this country worse than I could have ever imagined on my most rage-filled day? Yes. The answer was and is yes. After 9-11, tho I detested Bush and all the silver spooned republican hypocrisy he embodied, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. That lasted about a month or two, when all the totalitarian bills started flowing through Congress that castrated the Constitution. I guess that Constitution was just a nancy boy to those republicans and democrats alike. I saw the Republicans bully Democrats over and over. It seemed that Democrat=Constitution for Republicans. Even some of theirs began to jump ship because they honored country over power politics at the end of the day.

John Edwards had some truth to tell about power in this country as exercised by the wealthy. The American media pretended he did not exist. Again, why was I surprised by this when I'd had years to see the media fail to serve its purpose as watchdogs and instead spew lies about Jessica Lynch and Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and WMDs and the numbers of causalities and deaths? Why was I surprised that the most powerful media outlets in this nation could allow the most base and disgusting lies to pass unnoticed, along with the caskets of the soldiers who died because they believed their government would not send them to die for a lie?

I have never been so ashamed of my country in my entire life. I had never felt that my country had totally deserted the ideals upon which it was founded until the last seven years.

And now someone has come up to talk about healing and changing the assumptions about what this country is...or can be. Others may see this differently, but for me, Hillary Clinton is more of the same political muck. She may mean well, but she cannot overcome the reality that many of us see her as an embodiment of politics as usual. This is ironic, no doubt, since she is the first female in the U.S. with a real chance of winning the presidency. Life is like that. Full of tragedies not of our own making, or of our making but only because we have tried to survive the times in which we live. Hamlet wasn't real, but he was. Richard III wasn't real but he now sits in the Oval Office. Bush's deformity is internal, but no harder to see.

I understand the Hillary supporters who say they cannot and will not support Obama. I feel the same about her, because I feel that we, as a nation, have gone through a passage into a dark place and have not found our way out. The way out, for me, is through an Obama presidency. Obama and Hillary's positions on many issues fall into the same liberal (as in classically liberal, not the dittohead misinterpretation) approach to policy.

The difference is that Obama offers a person like me the ability to believe something good could still happen. That change is possible. That dynasties don't always win, that David can beat Goliath. Even if that belief is anchored by the smallest of weighty hopes, considering the electoral process, with an Obama presidency I can allow myself to think that we, as a nation, can correct our mistakes, can go forward instead of back, can forgive as long as we don't forget what got us to this point and so can find ways to correct the wrongs done in the name of democracy.

This is no ordinary election. If we end up with politics as usual, it won't just be JFK, RFK, MLK, Medgar Evers, or thousands of soldiers that will be put into their graves. For me, it will be the very idea of this nation itself, the one I was taught about as a child but rarely saw. As an adult, I want to work to make that ideal a possibility for my children. The person who gives me hope that change is gonna come is Obama. I will settle for nothing less.

[LWolf]

1. Do you understand someone like me,

who can support neither?

[RainDog]

4. Yes

and I understand that republicans hope you will stay home. I have, only once in my life, voted for a candidate I hoped could win. Gore wasn't the nasty asshole he was made out to be by the Naderites though, was he? We would not have the same situation we have now if he had fought as long and as hard as was needed to hold onto the presidency that he won. The Bush junta terms have been one long Constitutional crisis. Gore's refusal to accept the power politics of the repukes would have been nothing in comparison.

you have to do what you have to do. I thought I could support Hillary too until she supported McCain over a democrat. At the very end of the day, I will probably force myself to vote for her, but I will not do it with any happiness. I will do it with the knowledge that this nation is dead to me because she does not have the backing to win the nomination without some sort of power politics dirty tricks.

[LWolf]

5. I voted for Gore.

I didn't like Lieberman, but I voted for Gore anyway.

I think it behooves the party to nominate a candidate that won't leave the left wing of the party, and the natural independent and 3rd party allies on the left, "at home" in November.

I wish there were still one on the ballot.

[RainDog]

6. I DETESTED Lieberman

and still do. His "independent" run shouldn't have gotten any support from democrats, but it did. Including one that gets talked about here often.

As far as 3rd party left, I agree. I've lived elsewhere, where democratic socialist is the center. I find it impossible sometimes to understand why this nation, with so much talent and energy and optimism, can also be so fearful of equitable laws and human rights for its citizens. I think that Obama is reaching across the aisle because he knows this is necessary right now to strip the religious rights' power in republican circles. There are many republicans who hate that their party is now the party of the talibornagains. I may not agree with them on economic philosophy, or what works or doesn't, but I can respect that they are rational human beings who do not hope to bring about the end of the world because of their apocalyptic fantasies.

The tragedy, to me, is that this country could be all it is said to represent. Those with the ability to focus the discourse, however, want false outrage and mind candy to play 25/7 in our lives.

[LWolf]

8. I agree with most of what you say.

This part, in particular, cries out for a thread all its own:

"I find it impossible sometimes to understand why this nation, with so much talent and energy and optimism, can also be so fearful of equitable laws and human rights for its citizens."

[RainDog]

9. Thank you for the kind words

What do you think? What is it here that has made it so hard to get past that last hurdle - and by that I mean, the place at which working people have a "lobby" in the govt, not just the CEOs.

I know Republicans have snookered the religious right with talk of their issues, but it's interesting to note that over two decades of major power status...over FOUR republican administrations and the rightest wing congress in my lifetime during the 1990s, no repuke politician has done anything that would actually overturn roe v wade. Issues like the teaching of creationism --while we get embarrassed because they have pamphlets in the Grand Canyon Park-- these cases are always resolved against them at the state or local level because all in power in these states know that they cannot afford to become the laughingstock of the entire world - what public university board is going to let their grant funding that reaches the millions of dollars be put in jeopardy because Huckabee's church doesn't have enough faith to see god in all creation? -- or don't have enough faith to see that the bible is full of beautiful, horrible, tragic and scary stories meant to give insight into their own human conditions?

Is it the fear that republicans (and not just them) exhibit in the face of the inevitable change that is life? Is that why republicans have to look to war as the only answer to any issue? Even in the face of facts that modern battles are not now fought by conventional means? (I keep thinking of those British soldiers who stood in a line and got mowed down because that was the ways wars were fought, and they had the fancy uniforms and titles to prove it. In the meanwhile,
the Americans had learned from the Native Americans how to fight in the new world...of course, they didn't retain those lessons...but there was a time...)

Beyond the republicans, we had a two-term Democrat that some called the best Republican president since Eisenhower...btw, whoever might read this, this is obviously not freeptard speak, for any who think I'm trying to be derogatory... if ONLY we could have republicans who were as insightful about power as Eisenhower...

who they had to destroy, apparently, because he was better at their game than they were. I think Bill Clinton wanted more for this nation, but he had to settle for what he could work through with Congress.

But knowing this, one way to get beyond the past is to elect enough left of center to the govt to undo all of Bush's damage. He didn't get Roe V. Wade undone, but he has left a court that soon could. He didn't get to rewrite science, but he has put people into imp. positions in agencies whose purpose is to provide truthful information and workable policies. I don't want my govt. to lie about connections between birth control issues and cancer, for instance. But repukes are still telling that lie, too.

I guess I'm going off on another rant, but it seems, from looking at demographic info from other places, the wider the education, the larger the middle class, and the more opportunities women have to control their financial and reproductive futures, the better the economy, quality of life and human rights are across a nation.

So - how do you think we move forward?

[LWolf]

10. I think you've answered your own question.

We move forward by electing left-of-center people to the government. We've given up that opportunity for the presidency this year, but that could be ok if we elect enough left-of-center people to both houses of Congress.

We elect them to local offices, state offices, and we keep moving, one election at a time.

Meanwhile, we are unrelenting in holding our elected representatives accountable for social and economic justice.

I think it can be done, if enough of us are patient, persistent, and passionate enough about it. If we don't allow ourselves to be silenced, if we make our presence known on every issue, at every election. It might take a long time, one small step at a time, but we can get there.

We need some passion and some determination. How did women get the vote? How were advances in civil rights accomplished in the 60s? How have we pushed beyond the gatekeepers to reach for the ideals in our Constitution, every time another step forward has been achieved?

[rzemanfl]

2. I am older than you and remember more. I don't think the

damage can be undone in my lifetime, but the country can't go on the way it has been. We have known since I was a little kid that the world would run out of oil at some time in this century and we did nothing to prepare for it. People my age got "National Defense Student Loans" to learn about the world and somehow we ended up on the verge of a theocracy as we near an insecure retirement.

K&R, by the way.

[RainDog]

11. incredible, isn't it?

I do not understand why the so-called capitalists didn't try to create a new mkt, starting back in Nixon's time, with renewables and simply ideas about ways to live that make more sense. I didn't know about peak oil until after the 1st Bush selection. Funny thing, tho. My b-i-l is an engineer who has worked with offshore projects for years. About four years ago I was talking to him at a family gathering and asked him if he knew about Hubbert the Exxon guy. He didn't, so I told him. His response was... the markets will take care of it.

I didn't say a word. What could I say with that sort of religious fervor about the power of money to regulate the directions of our lives... which is total bullshit, huh? I mean, esp. considering the markets are not free. They're held captive by oil and weapons makers... we don't have a free market econ. But that naiviete would have been touching if I didn't think about my kids trying to survive in the near future.

I've said this for years, but I still think it's true- we need a leader who can get Americans to look at energy conservation on the same terms as the moon race. I heard Kerry say those words, but I never saw any force of will behind them. But this issue is also why I was so furious after 9-11 when Bush told everyone to go shopping. Shopping. What a bastard in diapers.

[Tatiana]

3. OUTSTANDING.

The difference is that Obama offers a person like me the ability to believe something good could still happen.

Because, as you have so eloquently stated, the two candidates contain "classically liberal" positions on most policy issues, this becomes the deciding factor. At the very least, because of similar policy positions, we'll get similar centrist Presidencies out of either candidate. AT THE VERY LEAST.

At the very best, from one candidate we will get a return to the '90s-style government where the rich get richer, the middle-class do OK, and our international standing is improved. From the other candidate, we will get a transformative government that blazes a future pathway in the areas of the environment, energy, OPEN and ACCOUNTABLE government, economic fairness for the average citizen, an end to "pay to play," and international respect and accord.

The way I see it, the potential of the latter is worth voting for.

[RainDog]

7. Thank you. Yes, your words: the potential is worth voting for n/t