For
those of you who are wondering why I have been silent about the
results of our 2012 election I can only say that my silence is simply
because I haven't until now figured out what to say about it. It
was most interesting for sure both in its results and its
implications for the future of the GOP both here in California and
nationally to say nothing of its implications for freedom in America.
It has huge implications for the future of our Nation and for the
sacred obligation of its citizens to create a 'more perfect union' as
expressed in the preamble to our Constitution. I discovered a most
interesting article this morning in the Prospect
written
by Harold Meyerson entitled the Future
of the White Man's Party. I
encourage everyone to read it. It is an eyeopener and it is based on
those things called facts that the GOP stubbornly refuses to
acknowledge exist.
I
remember the night four years ago that Barack Obama was elected. The
sheer joy that ran through the Nation and buoyed the progressive
population was simply electric. There was finally hope for our
people. Hope for our
Nation. I was so excited by that election that I half expected sparks
to fly when I reached out to touch anything. Finally it appeared that
America had outdone itself and was beginning to put its racist and
genocidal past (yes racist and genocidal) to rest in a potter's field
and there would soon be closure. We had finally turned the corner. I
should have realized that that was not true and that I was being very
naive. it was merely a repaired section in the bumpy road to the
democratization of the Nation. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quickly
announced that it was the intention of the GOP in the Senate to make
sure Obama would be a one term president, some sort of political
fluke. The Dems in the House which they had controlled since 2006
were dominated by Blue Dogs and even though they had elected a 'San
Francisco liberal' to be Speaker were scared of their own shadows and
fearful of rocking the boat they were partying aboard and every time
one of the GOP barked they jumped and looked over their shoulders in
fear for their careers. They complained openly that they had to be
very scared because if they got turned out they couldn't help Obama
and everything went downhill from there. They forgot the words of
Franklin Roosevelt in the darkest days of the Great Depression that
the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. The GOP caucus in the
Senate objected to everything the inexperienced president proposed
and much of President Obama's Hope Agenda was stalled and starved in
that body. Each and every member of the GOP caucus in the Senate had
to approve of every item, seemingly even bathroom breaks, or the
modern day equivalent of the filibuster broke out. After 2010 the
House buried every piece of progressive legislation. If by chance
something got passed by the House it got filibustered to death in the
Senate. Barack Obama's legislative successes were few and were
earned by the sweat and tears of the president, his staff and few
progressives both in and outside of government.
As
the just finished election cycle wore on the GOP and their anonymous
financiers invented potential scandal and controversies out of
nothingness and offered it up to the American people. They posited
serial incredible ancient conspiracies dating back almost fifty
years to a have a 'poo'
black child from Kenya'
elected President of the US. They dreamed up incredible nightmarish
situations some of their spokesmen and intellectual leaders fueled by
oxycontin addictions denigrated this man as 'one of them' in a
cosmic battle between “us and them”. They sent racist emails
around the globe arguing that they weren't racist but that they were
'only jokes'. They allied themselves with fundamental religionists
who believe that the Bible was written by the hand of god and that
every single thing in it was true, even the contradictory parts. They
called him a Muslim because we hated Muslims and then some of the
same people with straight faces called him an atheist because we
hated atheists. He was a socialist. He was a communist. He was
whatever we hated the most on any given day. A few even tried to call
him a homosexual. They did everything they could to destroy this man
and his presidency. American politics engineered by BSCs became very
ugly. Then the campaign for the soul of America got into high gear
and everything got worse. Lies were told and those lies were picked
up by the organs of hate and were retold and retold again until they
became true in the minds of people susceptible to being lied to.
State legislatures in the so-called swing states that had been
captured in the 2010 election enacted laws to make it more difficult
for people to vote that acted disproportionately upon people, mostly
of color, who tended to vote as Democrats. They cut back on
innovative ways to increase citizen participation in the electoral
process such as early voting and voting by mail. They installed
defective voting machines in precincts that tended to vote
democratic. Not all those machines were defective just a few. They
set about to steal another election like they did in 2000 and then
again in 2004. Their agents in such sterling hate groups and the
National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council
screamed to anyone who would listen their crazed idea that marriage
needs to be restricted to only good heterosexual people and that
unless it was so limited those nasty evil homosexuals would be on
their way to your city, your neighborhood intent on breaking up your
marriage and courting and marrying your son or your daughter. This
was their great wedge issue designed to bring out huge hordes of BSCs
from the woodwork like so many voracious termites to vote against
their own interests and to put the GOP back in total control of my
government and to control the judiciary for decades to come. They
even involved the US Conference of Catholic Bishops who to a man
bemoaned that mandating coverage for family planning in the AHA was
somehow depriving those medieval lords of their right to practice
their religion.
Finally
America got through what Joe Biden called malarkey and I call
bullshit and election day dawned and America voted. The result of
that election was earthshaking. Barack Obama won a majority in the
popular vote and is poised to earn 62% of the electoral college vote
when Florida gets its malarkey together and finally finishes counting
votes cast in the democratic counties such as Miami-Dade. The GOP
spinmeisters and its chief propaganda organs such as Fox News called
it a squeaky win instead of what it really was, a landslide.
The
President's coattails extended far and wide and the BSCs such as Todd
Akin in Missouri a man totally ignorant of human biology was
defeated, Richard Mourdock who asserted that pregnancies resulting
from rape were “God's will” were defeated and sent packing. Both
Connie Mack in Florida and his wife Mary Bono Mack in California were
sent packing. The Democrats increased their membership in the Senate
and are now in a position to finally end the filibuster in the Senate
and restore that body to a majoritarian body as intended by the
drafters of our Constitution. No one expected the Democrats to
increase their membership in the House but they did and I suspect but
for the evil of gerrymandering after the 2010 census would have
taken over the House.
In
California after reapportionment by a citizens' commission the
Democrats prevailed in legislative elections so that that come the
new legislative session they will have super majorities in both the
Assembly and the State Senate. If other states had reapportionment
by similar citizens' commissions free of partisan influence and
incumbent protection I suspect the Dems would have taken over the
house and retired the likes of John Boehner and Eric Cantor and yes
even Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann.
Perhaps
the most astounding change in the last four years has been in the
area of civil rights. For the first time in history marriage equality
has been enacted by popular vote. Not just in one state but in four
states: Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. Massachusetts has
become the 18th
state in the union to allow marijuana use for medical purposes and in
two states, Colorado and Washington, marijuana has been legalized for
recreational use. As Bob Dylan intoned so many years ago “the
times they are a changin.”
People
power is alive and well in America. And no, Mr. Romney, corporations
are not people.
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