I'm not usually one to cheer for another person's misfortunes, but there is so darned much at stake in our choice of president this November that my ever-lovin' liberal heart has positively been doing somersaults in the wake of the Great Donor Event "Leak" of the Romney video and transcripts this week. I'm reminded of that eloquent line of Michelle Obama's in her DNC speech, about how being president doesn't shape who you are; it reveals it--I guess the same could be said of supposedly "private" wealthy donor events. Romney had no reason to be anything but himself--and that self has now been broadcast around the world, shocking those who didn't know he felt those things, and confirming the beliefs of those of us who did. I've always been someone who believes the best about people, or tries to--sometimes naively--but as far as Romney is concerned, the mask is off. Unlike a masquerade ball, however, he can't just put the mask back on and go back to the party. Everyone knows who he is now.
And who is he? We've gotten an inkling of the real Romney when he's said these odd things in the past and then tried to explain them--like about not caring about the poor. When pressed, he said, "there's a safety net," or something similar. I remember thinking about the hundreds of homeless people in my town--and those are just the visible ones--and wondering what on earth he meant. He keeps talking about his need to focus on "the people in the middle," and again I have to wonder what he means. He does not apparently mean the middle class, as that would be me and the stratum of most of my social circle, and his policies and beliefs certainly are not geared to us. But that's not really the main issue--the most alarming and upsetting one that's been so starkly and "eloquently" reiterated by Romney in the leaked video (though he claims it was "inelegantly" said) is this: "... my job is not to worry about those people [the 47% who support Obama and he claims "don't pay taxes"]. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." It's been said by various commentators that Romney's explanations after his "gaffes" can be worse than the original--he just digs himself a deeper hole. In "defending" his remarks, once they were leaked, it became clear that he was conflating numbers of people who don't pay income tax (which is only part of the taxes we pay) and Obama supporters. But any way you slice it, he basically stated to his high-level donors that he would have no intention of addressing a Romney presidency to that rather large segment of the population--nearly half the voting public! The obvious corollary is that he would simply expect to govern those people who supported him!
There are so many other alarming, aggravating, infuriating things he said, with all their ramifications, but I want to just hone in on this one issue of who a president thinks he or she is serving. I'll end this post with a simple but moving rejoinder from Obama. The contrast between candidates has grown so vast this week, they might as well be on different planets:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/obama-mitt-romney-video_n_1895038.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
"Different planets" is the right metaphor, because each puts forth the vision of a completely different world--one in which 47% of citizens are irrelevant, and the other that encompasses every last one of us.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
Obama Supporters: A Multitude of Little Guys
The news today about Obama finally leading in the fundraising race, for the month of August, warmed the cockles of my heart. It also has me thinking about ants. I imagine millions of little workhorse ants together carrying a gigantic load, or maybe a more positive image is a crowd of jubilant sports fans hoisting their hero upon their shoulders. It's a fitting image for the reason behind Obama's huge tallies of donations. Unlike Romney, whose donors are mostly the big rich guys giving the maximum donation, the vast majority of Obama's donations come from the little guy (and girl) who average around $50 gifts. I gave around that myself this past month, even with very little work coming in to pay my own bills. I figured if you add my piddly gift to all the others I hoped were amassing, it would really make a difference--and it did! THIS is what propelled Obama into the White House in 2008--and not just a lot of little donations but truly monumental grassroots efforts to spread his message, to register people to vote, and to get out the vote. Never was there an election before that convinced me one voice really DOES matter and really can change the world, and the news today reminded me of what dedicated, impassioned "little guys" can do. I am getting truly "fired up," especially with the positive poll numbers today--after being truly worried that the other side could pull it off--as I'm starting to let myself imagine that Big Money will not win out, that "obstructionist politics" will not be allowed to triumph, and our multitude of voices will once again propel this good and wise and honest man into office.
So I'm gonna keep on giving what I can, when I can, knowing millions of others are doing the same. You know those entire villages of people who have bought lottery tickets and then won big? We are that village, only this election won't be about chance or the luck of the draw. It'll be about putting our money where our mouth is, but especially about standing up and casting that all-important vote.
The contrast between the candidates seems to get clearer--or more painful--by the day. Fifty-eight days before the election, Romney doesn't even have a plan to close tax loopholes, and he's flip-flopped on health care--he now says he likes "some" of the Affordable Care Act and won't get rid of all of it, after swearing up and down that he would abolish the whole thing. From the start, he struck me as a candidate who would say anything, take any stance, to make himself more popular. That, to me, is the antithesis of integrity because you can't trust anything he says. Political motivation is a dirty, dangerous thing, and Obama isn't immune to it either, but the president's speech last Thursday did one thing beautifully--it confirmed and solidified in our minds who this man is and what he stands for. He didn't try to convince us that he was anything other than that, and for this alone, he will always have my deepest admiration--and of course, my vote.
So I'm gonna keep on giving what I can, when I can, knowing millions of others are doing the same. You know those entire villages of people who have bought lottery tickets and then won big? We are that village, only this election won't be about chance or the luck of the draw. It'll be about putting our money where our mouth is, but especially about standing up and casting that all-important vote.
The contrast between the candidates seems to get clearer--or more painful--by the day. Fifty-eight days before the election, Romney doesn't even have a plan to close tax loopholes, and he's flip-flopped on health care--he now says he likes "some" of the Affordable Care Act and won't get rid of all of it, after swearing up and down that he would abolish the whole thing. From the start, he struck me as a candidate who would say anything, take any stance, to make himself more popular. That, to me, is the antithesis of integrity because you can't trust anything he says. Political motivation is a dirty, dangerous thing, and Obama isn't immune to it either, but the president's speech last Thursday did one thing beautifully--it confirmed and solidified in our minds who this man is and what he stands for. He didn't try to convince us that he was anything other than that, and for this alone, he will always have my deepest admiration--and of course, my vote.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Obama vs. Romney: Choose Your Future
Obama's speech accepting the nomination at the DNC Thursday may have overused the word "choice" just a tad, but it sure got the point across. If the speech wasn't perhaps as soaring and inspirational as we could have hoped, in retrospect, I believe that was because he was not trying to convince us of anything--merely to remind us: of what has been accomplished or begun in the past four years, of the work still left to do, and of the weight of our decision in November. I certainly felt more solemn when he was finished than I did in 2008, because I experienced in a visceral way that very real weight on my shoulders. Where in 2008 there was this uplifting, nearly ecstatic "anything is possible" feeling about casting my vote, this time around--with what is shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election--I and likely many others will go to the polls, or sit home and fill out our mail-in ballot, with a grave sense that our voices MUST be heard, or the future will be very dark indeed.
I'll never forget 1984, when Reagan was up for reelection--I was just 21, on a study trip in Britain from July to mid-November. When the election rolled around, I was living in London, and I realized with shock that, in my first-ever chance to vote in a presidential election, I would not get that opportunity--I had neglected to file an absentee ballot in time! I went to sleep that night with this awful sense of dread, and the hopeless feeling that there was nothing--not a solitary thing--that I could do about it. When I awoke the next morning, I went down to the curbside newspaper box and bought a paper, staring dumbly at the headlines: "Reagan Reelected!", or some such thing. I've never spent a more depressing day in my life. My vote might not have changed the course of that election, but if every U.S. student studying overseas had remembered to cast a ballot... well, you get the picture.
The 2008 election taught me--and so many of us--that one vote DOES matter, because it is not just one, but one and one and one and one and... as Clinton reminded us Wednesday night in a slightly different context, "You do the math."
With just 60 days now, before the November election, it's time to sharpen my pencil, so to speak, and start putting my skills to work in the best cause I know--crafting letters, emails, op-eds, or anything else that might connect to one or more folks out there who have any notion of sitting out the vote, to remind them that "one and one and one" of us are absolutely essential if we are to reelect the man VP Biden described as having "profound concern for the average person," a man of "patience, wisdom, courage, and grace." Put those qualities up against "the other guy's" record, and the "choice" could not be more clear. For me, the time has come to put a "voice" to that "choice."
I'll never forget 1984, when Reagan was up for reelection--I was just 21, on a study trip in Britain from July to mid-November. When the election rolled around, I was living in London, and I realized with shock that, in my first-ever chance to vote in a presidential election, I would not get that opportunity--I had neglected to file an absentee ballot in time! I went to sleep that night with this awful sense of dread, and the hopeless feeling that there was nothing--not a solitary thing--that I could do about it. When I awoke the next morning, I went down to the curbside newspaper box and bought a paper, staring dumbly at the headlines: "Reagan Reelected!", or some such thing. I've never spent a more depressing day in my life. My vote might not have changed the course of that election, but if every U.S. student studying overseas had remembered to cast a ballot... well, you get the picture.
The 2008 election taught me--and so many of us--that one vote DOES matter, because it is not just one, but one and one and one and one and... as Clinton reminded us Wednesday night in a slightly different context, "You do the math."
With just 60 days now, before the November election, it's time to sharpen my pencil, so to speak, and start putting my skills to work in the best cause I know--crafting letters, emails, op-eds, or anything else that might connect to one or more folks out there who have any notion of sitting out the vote, to remind them that "one and one and one" of us are absolutely essential if we are to reelect the man VP Biden described as having "profound concern for the average person," a man of "patience, wisdom, courage, and grace." Put those qualities up against "the other guy's" record, and the "choice" could not be more clear. For me, the time has come to put a "voice" to that "choice."
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Clinton Hits a Homer
Hi, and sorry for the long hiatus! Wow, did Bill Clinton hit it out of the park last night at the DNC, or what? I was still weepy and ecstatic after Michelle Obama's show-stopper speech the night before and wondered how anyone could follow her. But Clinton just plain rocked. I don't know about you, but he's the only president in my lifetime (except Obama) that I never got tired of listening to. What I most appreciate--and what he proved again last night--was his brilliant knack for putting dizzying economic (and other) concepts in layperson's terms, so anyone can understand them, without making us feel like idiots. Last night, he laid out the "other side's" fatally flawed economic plan, and he also explained how faulty fiscal policy created the mess that he cleaned up during his two terms, and how it is a far deeper mess this time, that no one presidential term could fix... but Obama is on his way to doing that. This is a fierce case for an Obama second term, and I just hope all those fence-sitters (or those inclined to sit out the vote this time) out there were listening. But I suppose the deepest impression he made on me and my partner last night was when he talked about "cooperation" being what "works" in the real world--that he couldn't imagine "hating" the Republicans the way they seem to feel about Dems, and especially Obama. Their utter determination to simply rid the White House of Obama he pointed up to be the small-minded (my words) focus that it is, which I hope will embarrass the folks who feel that way. In a PBS interview last night, with the roar of the convention in the background, Governor Deval Patrick (MA) spoke eloquently about the need to articulate not just what one is against, but what one is for, and he decried the Republicans in Congress who, in the past two years, have voted against legislation merely because they felt it would stymie Obama's plans for this country. He declared that this sort of political behavior has got to stop, now. I couldn't agree more. Thanks to his words, and those of Bill and Michelle, I feel the fire again, like in 2008--this sense that decency and honesty and cooperation CAN win the day--and in fact MUST win, with so very much at stake.
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