Last night I spent some time making phone calls on behalf of CT's Attorney General, Dick Blumenthal. He's running for the US Senate. (Reading the tea leaves, Chris Dodd "retired".) Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a phone fan. (Average waiting time to get a call returned from me = 2-3 days.) I sat in a crappy, windowless office overhearing people I don't know, calling people I don't know to vote for a man that I don't know, will probably never meet, and having not lived in this state long enough to know or care about his record, have no personal stake in him triumphing over the Republican candidate, Linda McMahon. I did it because I consider myself a liberal, Democratic pragmatist, and as such, I think it is important for each of us to perform the 1,001 things that are required to get the party's candidate elected in the best of times, much less some of the worst.
As a woman who can vividly recall Reagan's winning the Presidency (because my now almost 30 year old daughter was in utero and just as the election was called for him kicked me with a violence she hasn't displayed since); who remembers the 2000 Presidential election, and who spent part of November 2004 in West of Nowhere, Ohio, on my own dime working to get John Kerry elected (a man for whom I felt even less affinity for than I do Blumenthal). I am here to tell you that it makes my blood boil to read "progressive" ideologues neigh about the Obama administration's perceived betrayals and shortcomings. So much so as to decide not to vote in the midterm elections.
I am not saying oh don't talk about such things in public because anyone who knows me knows that I can sling dirty laundry when I want to. But, really now, until we get a parliament instead of a 2-party representative democracy, power (and the ability to wield it skillfully) is situated in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. There are a few elected independents, an occasional Socialist, but even they have to caucus with one party or the other. What I'm saying is, we don't have the luxury of sitting this election out because Obama and the Democratic Party sometimes have feet of clay. How effective was Cynthia McKinney when she was representing Georgia? How effective is Dennis Kucinich? And what voter anywhere wants to defend voting for Raph Nader in 2004? If the outcome of that split vote didn't teach us that elections do have disastrous consequences, I don't know what will.
We have got to stop pretending that Congressional and Presidential politics are like modern marriage; that our feelings matter and that we need to dialogue about them. Lyndon Johnson was a son of a bitch's son of a bitch but his presidency will forever rank as one of the most pivotal to the lived lives of Americans, particularly African-Americans. (Him and Lincoln.) Graze through Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate" or Taylor Branch's "Pillar of Fire" to understand the kind of Congress that Johnson was up against.
Before November 2nd I will be making calls on behalf of Dan Malloy who is running for Governor, Rosa DeLauro (to return her to the House) and some more for Blumenthal. As much as I love it and read it avidly, this is no time to sit back and hurl snark. This is a time to step by step, vote by vote, elect people who have made peace with the down and dirty of politics (and the accompanying criticism). They stay in the game and they get things done. Wherever you are I hope you'll do the same.
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