This is not the time to be faint-hearted.
I have heard people say that they are not going to vote because they are not excited. They wanted President Obama to have done more by now, and more the way they wanted. So, because that has not happened, they are saying they are going to stay home.
I hope that is not the case.
The fact that the Democrats are facing an uphill fight in these mid term elections is no new thing. Nearly every president has to endure this mid time crisis and the real threat of losing the House and or the Senate.
But there is something hugely different in this mid-term election, and that is the internet and Fox News. These two entities have given a platform to angry Americans, mostly white, who feel like they have been ignored, and by golly, they are working to “get their country back,” by any means necessary.
It is very scary to think about people like Sarah Palin running for president, or like Paladino running for governor in New York. The fact is, though, Paladino IS running and Palin looks like she will run. What will our country look like should they win?
There seems to be an ideological block on who “the American people” are. For me, it’s everyone who lives here, is a citizen and pays taxes. That includes Hispanics and Asians and African Americans; it includes rich and poor, the haves and have nots…
But I have this uncomfortable feeling that for Tea Party people, “the American people” are a lot more select group.When they talk about what “the American people” want, I have this feeling that they are not talking about me, or my Hispanic neighbor, or people I know who are on welfare. I have this feeling that “the American people,” for them, is an exclusive, elite group. They are the ones, they feel, who have been marginalized, ignored and forgotten, and it is for them that the Tea Party is bound to fight.
So, what about the rest of us?
Now, the “values voters” chiming in, and again, “the American people” are narrowly defined as those who believe as they do. They have momentum, these values voters, and they have money …and now they have momentum. They have made the word “liberal” almost a cuss word, suggesting that Liberals are loose and without morals.
Gee.
So, as I see it, unless I want this country, which is my country as much as it is the Tea Party’s country, and is as much the country of the poor as it is of the rich, I think that not voting is not an option, no matter how disappointed I might be. The country the Tea Party wants back is a country which far too often ignored “the least of these” so that the profits of the rich could increase. Damn the “least of these.” Let them eat cake!
That’s not what I buy into when I read the words “all men are created equal,” and even if Thomas Jefferson didn’t mean black people and women and whomever was not white and male when he coined that phrase, the fact is that under God, all people ARE created equal.
And so, I would hope those who are faint-hearted would eat some political spinach and get some energy …and vote. We have way too much to lose if we do not.
And that is a candid observation.
Candid Observations 