Emotions are running high even today.
Yesterday at work, the whole faculty was waiting on me, the math teacher, the most politically active person in the school, to help them make sense of the aftermath.
All day I took questions from students who were also trying to make sense. I tried hard in my exhaustion to remain impartial. I fought back tears as I told stories that my grandmother had told me about her first vote. I answered questions about how long a man could stay President, about whether or not the provisional votes would be counted, about whether or not it was legal to have a woman President.
Around 12:30 I logged onto Daily Kos to see that Kerry had conceded. I was shocked.
In the evening, I watched Bush tell us he would work to heal the divide in our country and wondered aloud why his victory was being treated as if he was coming in for a first term. I don't understand how the man responsible for our divide could claim to be fighting it. I watched Kerry fight back tears as he thanked his supporters. Even in defeat, he seemed presidential. While unhappy with his decision, his word's soothed me as a leader's should. I conceded with him. We had been defeated.
Last night I took calls from friends and family fighting despair over the future of our country.
After it all, I still wanted to speak. I have a lot to say. Yet a funny thing happened. I decided to post three pictures with three very different articles on my blog until I could make the time to say all I wanted to say. I posted first for the fearful, then the conspiracy theorists, and last for the hopeful. I followed the same process I always do, but for the first time ever, an error occurred: only my post for the hopeful survived.
My friends, I urge you not to despair.
What We're Fighting:
- Our 9/11 president who achieved 90% approval rating just three years ago and who has capitalized on this tragedy to maintain that support.
- A media who was slow to criticize the President after 9/11.
- A wartime president. In our country's history, none have been defeated.
- Truth that was revealed too late.
- The most effective spin machine our country has ever seen- so effective that a significant percentage of our electorate still believes there are WMD in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
- A country so divided that reason no longer matters. Any Republican who speaks out against the administration has been effectively labeled a liberal commie.
- A campaign that effectively destroyed John Kerry where he was strongest: his military experience.
- A 7 electoral vote handicap due to redistricting since the 2000 election. To win, we had to win a red state.
- Fear: the ultimate motivator.
Why we lost:
Nobody wants to believe that America is corrupted. No one wants to believe that their President is a liar. Nobody wants to believe they have been fooled. Yet this was what we ran on. To us, it is painfully obvious. To us, it seems that America will surely wake up. To those we need to convince, we are conspiracy theorists. The news came too late. The fight was too big. Fear won over at the same time that we were painted as the liars. Stereotypes and prejudices have become so ingrained in our psyche and they won this election.
The "gay marriage distraction" worked. We knew it was a distraction. We know that the President doesn't even go to church. We can look at his daughters and Kerry's daughters and see for ourselves which candidate stands for values. We can look at the economy, and Iraq, and Halliburton and know that the President doesn't stand for values. We can look at the President's own resume and know that he doesn't stand for values. The problem is that we are fighting faith. I almost laughed last night when the Reverend who handles religious support for the President announced that the President doesn't wear his religion on his sleeve. That's all he does and it worked.
Religion gives people hope. As someone who was raised Catholic, I can tell you that participating in mass still calms me. I can tell you that in my darkest moments, a belief in some higher power has gotten me through. Is it any wonder that during one of America's darkest moments religion won?
With war and terrorism and job loss, people need their faith more than ever. Faith is in the White House right now. Bush's claim that God is speaking through him comforts many (and repulses the rest of us).
We needed people to see the darkness, to put aside their faith, to believe in a man from a state that has been painted as Satan's playground.
What We Won:
Despite all of the obstacles, we finished close. We made states like Virginia, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Virginia winnable. We kept all of our blue states and gained New Hampshire.
In a party that tends to represent a wide range of ideals, we found unity. In this election, it was the Republicans who were looking for an alternative. The same party that values party loyalty above all else had its members looking elsewhere. Every one of us knows someone like that. We bridged divides. We showed that we were inclusive rather than exclusive.
We saw the rise of loud liberal voices. These voices won't go away. The growth in political activism isn't going to disappear. Many people have just been given an even greater reason to fight.
We fought corruption, fraud, big money, and ruthless campaigning and came out even. To me, that is an incredible victory. Any of you who have read any article from Truth Out or All the President's Spin or seen Fahrenheit 9/11 or Outfoxed should appreciate what we were up against. Despite the secrecy, despite the lies, despite the backroom deals, despite intimidation of journalists, despite the fact that unbiased media means factchecking the same number of statements from the candidates rather than reporting on the severity of the misstatements, we came out even. All my doom and gloomers should really appreciate that.
Our side has only begun to fight back.
Why Four More Years of Bush Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing:
This is when my true nature comes out- I am an idealist. I believe that good will triumph over evil. After playing Anne Frank in the stage version of The Diary of Anne Frank (when I was also thirteen), I adopted as my mantra her assertion that "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." Brace yourselves.
I believe Bush will be held accountable for his failures.
I love Kerry. I think he has amazing leadership potential. I would have felt far more optimistic under a Kerry presidency. Yet we all know that support for him was mixed. We all know that with a Republican-controlled Congress he would have had his hands tied. We all know that the Republicans would have called out their attack dogs so that every failure would have been attributed to him. In the last four years, they have managed to blame Clinton for everything despite all the contrary evidence. During the campaign, they managed to blame Kerry and Edwards for every bad thing happening. We knew Kerry would have been fighting an uphill battle. We know that Bush has made such a huge mess that Kerry never could have fixed it in four years. Kerry would have risked a one-term presidency just to be a scapegoat for all of Bush's failures.
While a significant part of the population will remain fooled by the Bush administration, many others will begin to come around. All of the damning reports that have been held from the public because it was an election year will become public. With reelection no longer a factor, nobody needs to fool us anymore. Bush will push his agenda even further right. While it is scary to contemplate, this will wake up all the people who painted us as conspiracy theorists or anti-American
The media has started to come around in the last few months and with an increase in people who care about honest reporting, they will likely be forced to come around even more. Websites like Daily Kos and others will continue to hold other media accountable and to energize and motivate Democratic supporters.
The only thing I am really worried about is our Supreme Court. We now need to focus our energies on assuring our representatives in Congress cause a filibuster.
Hope:
I am a teacher.
I teach in a charter school in an extremely depressed city. Many of our students come from poor and broken families. They have few dreams about making a difference. They are the epitome of all the things people argue are wrong in our country (and arguably the reason "values" were such an issue). They represent the me-generation and show little respect towards adults or laws or principles.
After much soul-searching and after discovering how little my students knew about our political system, I decided to cover the election in my classroom. While admittedly most of my eighth-graders were uninterested, my seventh-graders were mesmerized.
I stayed away from corruption or fraud. I was careful not to state a preference for any candidate or issue, I continuously reminded them that party stereotypes do not always ring true. Instead I maintained hope in our democracy, implored them to see voting issues as nonpartisan, reminded them that they are the future of our country, told them they could still get involved even if they couldn't vote.
As an educator, the past few days have been the most inspiring of my career. My students not only paid attention to what was going on, but they shared the information in their other classes, brought the information home and did their own research, asked some of the most thoughtful questions I had ever heard, and showed incredible insight and maturity. Even one of the teachers thanked me for teaching them about how our system works.
They are our future and I believe in them.
Four more years does not mean we are doomed.