Saturday, November 06, 2004
Catastrophe
Well, what can I say? We got beat. We were robbed. The media is at fault. Wah, Wah, Wah.
The bottom line is that we are facing 4 more years of Bush and it feels like I have been kicked in the nuts and thrown down a flight of stairs - by roughly half the country.
On Wednesday after Kerry conceded and the full scale of the loss was apparent I wandered into downtown Portland to seek some solace in what I knew would be a city grieving with me. At a coffee shop off of Pioneer Courthouse Square the girl behind the counter asked how I was doing. I said, "Not well at all." She said, "I know, isn't it terrible. We just have to figure out how to keep going." I wasn't wearing Kerry gear, my politics are not easily identifiable and I had never met this girl before. It didn't matter. Nearly all Portlanders (outside the financial district) had the same look on their faces. The look of a grieving person at a funeral of a loved one who died suddenly, dramatically and without warning.
Portland went for Kerry in a big way in this election. Kerry received 71.5% of the vote in Portland's Multnomah county winning by a margin of 152,000 votes. In Oregon as a whole Kerry prevailed by 68,000 votes which was a vast improvement over Gore's narrow 6700 vote win over Bush in 2000. In neighboring Washington county to the west and south of Portland, where I live, Kerry won by a 13,000 vote margin. In and around Portland Kerry volunteers worked tirelessly for the last six months to achieve the results that we did. Despite this effort the rest of our state mirrors the rural red states of the country and went strongly for Bush. Unfortunately anti-gay marriage Measure 36 prompted a large conservative turnout and the measure past by 138,000 votes. In fact more voters approved this measure than voted for Bush!
At Pioneer Courthouse Square I walked up to a guy who was wrapped in an American Flag that had a large peace sign in place of the stars in the blue field. I let him know that I was grieving over our loss. He began speechifying about Diebold and how they stole the election and it is not over yet and he was leading an effort to demand an investigation of the obvious fraud and that it was not too late if we fought hard to put Kerry in the White House...... blah, blah, blah. I told him that first Kerry had already conceded, second the Republicans are in control of all 3 branches of government so no investigation was likely to be done, third by his own admission computerized voting machines with no paper trail could not have votes recounted so it is a mute point unless we actually heard from a whistle blower from within the conspiracy if there even was a conspiracy. The bottom line is, we lost, and we lost big. Despite having the worst president in history we failed as a party to win even one state that we had not won in 2000. We should be asking how we can reach the people who voted against us rather than making them think we are bunch of sore losers and nut cases by crying foul. The guy was unmoved continuing to cry "Diebold stole it. It's not over. We are going to win!"
Two other women walked up to commiserate. One was from Portland and her friend was from Kenya. We spoke about what went wrong and discussed how heart broken we were. We talked about how Bush's supporters said that it was his morals that made all the difference in how they voted. The Kenyan woman said that America was not an especially moral country like its citizens want to believe it is. "The United States has been consistently behind the rest of the world in every issue of morality from slavery to civil rights to the death penalty and on and on." An old woman of Russian extraction who was an election judge for 30 years in Chicago walked up to us and said in a thick accent, "I just can't take having to listen and look at that idiot for another 4 years. I just can't. I am so ashamed for us!" The woman from Portland was on a lunch break and said that she just wanted to cry and was finding it impossible to work at a time like this.
This is not a normal post election reaction. This is not a victory that gives a mandate to the president. This is a country literally torn apart. Where does the opposition go from here? Not to the right as the hapless DLC would have us do. But we do need different strategies. We cannot continue to concede the red states, or the red zones within our states, and win on a national level. We must not allow Bush to claim that he has a mandate, which is what the bastard is doing right now. Democrats have to oppose the coming juggernaut of Bush dangerous policies that are coming down the pike and we need to prepare right now for the mid-term elections in 2006. We have to unapologetically present bold progressive policy initiatives and not allow the Rethuglicans' claim to be the party of God, when they are in fact the party of greed, racism and hate, to go unchallenged. We have to think of ourselves as being where the Republicans were in 1964 in the electoral wilderness after Goldwater's thumping at the polls - and then remember that it is not nearly that bad. They went from that low point to the so-called Reagan revolution in 16 short years. We must be willing to do the same. We must be willing to lose in the short run rather than capitulate and become the Republican Lite party. The battle is on.
It is not the hard work ahead for our party but rather the mistakes and catastrophes that Bush will no doubt involve us in before '06 which scares the hell out of me. I fear for my country and the world.
Enough for now. Time to listen to some Blues so I can cheer up.
------ Click on Comments for a follow up.
Well, what can I say? We got beat. We were robbed. The media is at fault. Wah, Wah, Wah.
The bottom line is that we are facing 4 more years of Bush and it feels like I have been kicked in the nuts and thrown down a flight of stairs - by roughly half the country.
On Wednesday after Kerry conceded and the full scale of the loss was apparent I wandered into downtown Portland to seek some solace in what I knew would be a city grieving with me. At a coffee shop off of Pioneer Courthouse Square the girl behind the counter asked how I was doing. I said, "Not well at all." She said, "I know, isn't it terrible. We just have to figure out how to keep going." I wasn't wearing Kerry gear, my politics are not easily identifiable and I had never met this girl before. It didn't matter. Nearly all Portlanders (outside the financial district) had the same look on their faces. The look of a grieving person at a funeral of a loved one who died suddenly, dramatically and without warning.
Portland went for Kerry in a big way in this election. Kerry received 71.5% of the vote in Portland's Multnomah county winning by a margin of 152,000 votes. In Oregon as a whole Kerry prevailed by 68,000 votes which was a vast improvement over Gore's narrow 6700 vote win over Bush in 2000. In neighboring Washington county to the west and south of Portland, where I live, Kerry won by a 13,000 vote margin. In and around Portland Kerry volunteers worked tirelessly for the last six months to achieve the results that we did. Despite this effort the rest of our state mirrors the rural red states of the country and went strongly for Bush. Unfortunately anti-gay marriage Measure 36 prompted a large conservative turnout and the measure past by 138,000 votes. In fact more voters approved this measure than voted for Bush!
At Pioneer Courthouse Square I walked up to a guy who was wrapped in an American Flag that had a large peace sign in place of the stars in the blue field. I let him know that I was grieving over our loss. He began speechifying about Diebold and how they stole the election and it is not over yet and he was leading an effort to demand an investigation of the obvious fraud and that it was not too late if we fought hard to put Kerry in the White House...... blah, blah, blah. I told him that first Kerry had already conceded, second the Republicans are in control of all 3 branches of government so no investigation was likely to be done, third by his own admission computerized voting machines with no paper trail could not have votes recounted so it is a mute point unless we actually heard from a whistle blower from within the conspiracy if there even was a conspiracy. The bottom line is, we lost, and we lost big. Despite having the worst president in history we failed as a party to win even one state that we had not won in 2000. We should be asking how we can reach the people who voted against us rather than making them think we are bunch of sore losers and nut cases by crying foul. The guy was unmoved continuing to cry "Diebold stole it. It's not over. We are going to win!"
Two other women walked up to commiserate. One was from Portland and her friend was from Kenya. We spoke about what went wrong and discussed how heart broken we were. We talked about how Bush's supporters said that it was his morals that made all the difference in how they voted. The Kenyan woman said that America was not an especially moral country like its citizens want to believe it is. "The United States has been consistently behind the rest of the world in every issue of morality from slavery to civil rights to the death penalty and on and on." An old woman of Russian extraction who was an election judge for 30 years in Chicago walked up to us and said in a thick accent, "I just can't take having to listen and look at that idiot for another 4 years. I just can't. I am so ashamed for us!" The woman from Portland was on a lunch break and said that she just wanted to cry and was finding it impossible to work at a time like this.
This is not a normal post election reaction. This is not a victory that gives a mandate to the president. This is a country literally torn apart. Where does the opposition go from here? Not to the right as the hapless DLC would have us do. But we do need different strategies. We cannot continue to concede the red states, or the red zones within our states, and win on a national level. We must not allow Bush to claim that he has a mandate, which is what the bastard is doing right now. Democrats have to oppose the coming juggernaut of Bush dangerous policies that are coming down the pike and we need to prepare right now for the mid-term elections in 2006. We have to unapologetically present bold progressive policy initiatives and not allow the Rethuglicans' claim to be the party of God, when they are in fact the party of greed, racism and hate, to go unchallenged. We have to think of ourselves as being where the Republicans were in 1964 in the electoral wilderness after Goldwater's thumping at the polls - and then remember that it is not nearly that bad. They went from that low point to the so-called Reagan revolution in 16 short years. We must be willing to do the same. We must be willing to lose in the short run rather than capitulate and become the Republican Lite party. The battle is on.
It is not the hard work ahead for our party but rather the mistakes and catastrophes that Bush will no doubt involve us in before '06 which scares the hell out of me. I fear for my country and the world.
Enough for now. Time to listen to some Blues so I can cheer up.
------ Click on Comments for a follow up.
Comments:
Hello from the Red States.
You and I are on opposite ends of the scale.
I am a "fundamentalist" Christian, and I voted for Bush.
I'm not 100% enthusiastic about four more years of Bush, but given the choices at hand it was a slam-dunk for him over Kerry.
Bush's talk about relying on God, praying, being thankful, those things sounded real to me. They sound like my experience too. Kerry's last minute insertion of religion sounded completely bogus... not that he isn't a religious person in some way, but that bringing it in at the last moment was just using it as a political tool.
If I haven't pissed you off completely yet, I thought I would make some suggestions about how the democratic party could make itself a little more palatable to me and my ilk.
First off, face up to abortion. It's not swept under the rug, although people don't talk about it in a political context. Abortion is death. Whether or not that thing being killed is a "person" can be debated. But abortion just for the sake of not being incovenienced is like asking a vegan to eat a cheeseburger. As long as the candidates from the D party revel in pro-abortion (pro-choice), they won't make any headway here. Clinton at least had the right "sound". He said abortion should be legal but rare. I'm willing to settle for that. Abortion is sad. An expecting mother kills her child. I can't find any reason to celebrate that.
Second, find some compassion. I know, the jokes about Bush being a compassionate conservative. There isn't enough compassion in either the right or the left right now. Kerry stood up on his two feet and blasted the president in a way that I wouldn't allow anyone to address me in my house. No respect, no politeness, just crap and more crap. Even if it's true, it is harsh and cruel. Compassion starts in interpersonal communications, then we can move on to feeding the hungry and seeking justice. Those things need to happen. We need more of that. It would be nice if the Terry McAuliffes and Karl Roves of this world could find a way to make things work without it being a continual hateful conflict.
Third, ease off on the gay rights stuff. Obviously gay marriage is a dead issue. The whole ActUp thing is offensive, and frankly not too smart. If you want to make any headway with people who respect the Bible you're going to have to learn to be a little more diplomatic about it... maybe even read it and see where we're coming from... I know its a lot to ask.
And finally there's the issue of science, religion and intelligence. Some of the fundamental problem here is that people on the "naturalistic" side of the fence treat religion like some kind of intellectual disease. That is offensive. And it's not too bright either. Religion is one of the main driving forces in all cultures in our world. Whether or not you believe, you have to find a way to accomodate. Standing back and calling religious believers stupid will get you more elections like we had this week. Those "stupid" religious people figured out how the voting machine works. Not only that, anti-religious bigotry is not an intellectually honest point of view. Religion has been of great benefit, and great conflict to the whole world for all of known history. The freedoms we enjoy as citizens of the US are a product of both secular and religious thought. Science is a wonderful tool. But there is no way that Science alone could have produced the society we enjoy. Somehow in the past non-believers have been able to tolerate things like the "under God" in the pledge of alliegence and the 'In God we trust' on the money without finding themselves compromised. But there seems to be a generation of activist-minded folks who want to erase the history of faith in our country. That puts all believers on the defensive, and will result in a strong push-back.
Well, thanks for letting me comment in your blog. You have my permission to erase this if it messes up your train of thought or something.
You and I are on opposite ends of the scale.
I am a "fundamentalist" Christian, and I voted for Bush.
I'm not 100% enthusiastic about four more years of Bush, but given the choices at hand it was a slam-dunk for him over Kerry.
Bush's talk about relying on God, praying, being thankful, those things sounded real to me. They sound like my experience too. Kerry's last minute insertion of religion sounded completely bogus... not that he isn't a religious person in some way, but that bringing it in at the last moment was just using it as a political tool.
If I haven't pissed you off completely yet, I thought I would make some suggestions about how the democratic party could make itself a little more palatable to me and my ilk.
First off, face up to abortion. It's not swept under the rug, although people don't talk about it in a political context. Abortion is death. Whether or not that thing being killed is a "person" can be debated. But abortion just for the sake of not being incovenienced is like asking a vegan to eat a cheeseburger. As long as the candidates from the D party revel in pro-abortion (pro-choice), they won't make any headway here. Clinton at least had the right "sound". He said abortion should be legal but rare. I'm willing to settle for that. Abortion is sad. An expecting mother kills her child. I can't find any reason to celebrate that.
Second, find some compassion. I know, the jokes about Bush being a compassionate conservative. There isn't enough compassion in either the right or the left right now. Kerry stood up on his two feet and blasted the president in a way that I wouldn't allow anyone to address me in my house. No respect, no politeness, just crap and more crap. Even if it's true, it is harsh and cruel. Compassion starts in interpersonal communications, then we can move on to feeding the hungry and seeking justice. Those things need to happen. We need more of that. It would be nice if the Terry McAuliffes and Karl Roves of this world could find a way to make things work without it being a continual hateful conflict.
Third, ease off on the gay rights stuff. Obviously gay marriage is a dead issue. The whole ActUp thing is offensive, and frankly not too smart. If you want to make any headway with people who respect the Bible you're going to have to learn to be a little more diplomatic about it... maybe even read it and see where we're coming from... I know its a lot to ask.
And finally there's the issue of science, religion and intelligence. Some of the fundamental problem here is that people on the "naturalistic" side of the fence treat religion like some kind of intellectual disease. That is offensive. And it's not too bright either. Religion is one of the main driving forces in all cultures in our world. Whether or not you believe, you have to find a way to accomodate. Standing back and calling religious believers stupid will get you more elections like we had this week. Those "stupid" religious people figured out how the voting machine works. Not only that, anti-religious bigotry is not an intellectually honest point of view. Religion has been of great benefit, and great conflict to the whole world for all of known history. The freedoms we enjoy as citizens of the US are a product of both secular and religious thought. Science is a wonderful tool. But there is no way that Science alone could have produced the society we enjoy. Somehow in the past non-believers have been able to tolerate things like the "under God" in the pledge of alliegence and the 'In God we trust' on the money without finding themselves compromised. But there seems to be a generation of activist-minded folks who want to erase the history of faith in our country. That puts all believers on the defensive, and will result in a strong push-back.
Well, thanks for letting me comment in your blog. You have my permission to erase this if it messes up your train of thought or something.
# posted by 
: November 6, 2004 at 11:29 AM
: November 6, 2004 at 11:29 AM
I will not erase your comment and I am glad to hear from you. I wholeheartedly agree with your suggestion that the democrats need to stop insulting christians. I brought this issue up in a meeting of democratic volunteers on Wednesday. I believe you are right in suggesting that the reason our side lost was due to our ham fisted handling of people who are our natural allies but are deeply troubled by abortion. I believe that it is way past time for our party to address the abortion debate head on rather than continuing to count on the Supreme Court to handle this issue. Our position has tended to remind me of the NRA position on gun control. The fear has been if we give an inch they'll take a mile. This has led the party to be seen by abortion opponents as self centered baby killers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I stuck my neck out on Wednesday and suggested that until we reach out to the Christian majority of this nation and make a case that our beliefs do in fact come from a strong moral conviction, for many of us inspired by the example of Jesus, that we are our brothers keeper and we have a responsibility to aid the poor and the sick and the hungry and respect all human life. I proposed that Democrats should offer the following amendment to the US Constitution: Ban all 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions with an exception only for the physical health of the mother (the current mental health loop hole in Roe v. Wade is used to countenance late term abortions seen as appalling by a majority of Americans including democrats). The same amendment would require Universal Single Payer Health Care for all citizens; a further powerful deterrent to abortion and a guarantee of pre-natal care for the expectant mothers. We should call this amendment The Respect For Life Amendment. Due to advances in contraception and such innovations as RU486 and the morning after pill, 1st trimester abortions will be virtually unstoppable by the government in any case. It is the post viability abortions that are the most upsetting to people and the issue should be dealt with by our elected representatives rather than the courts.
This would remove the stigma placed on us as the Abortion Party and it would force conservative true believers in the sanctity of the free market to show their true colors. They would vote against this measure because their loyalty and devotion to the insurance industry trumps their devotion to stopping "partial birth abortions".
Thanks again for your comment.
Post a Comment
This would remove the stigma placed on us as the Abortion Party and it would force conservative true believers in the sanctity of the free market to show their true colors. They would vote against this measure because their loyalty and devotion to the insurance industry trumps their devotion to stopping "partial birth abortions".
Thanks again for your comment.
