I know I'm not the only one here a little tired of candidate diaries. I think it's fantastic everyone is so passionate about "their" candidate. I feel the same way. I'm a Barack Obama supporter. I, for the first time in my life, donated money to his campaign over the weekend. Money I know I likely couldn't afford to spend, even in the small amount I gave. Barack Obama is the one I'll vote for on March 4th here in Ohio, but it could just as easily be for Hillary Clinton, and for the same reasons. I, for one, just don't believe the minute differences between the candidates policies are as decisive as others here most adamantly profess. But, like I said, this isn't a candidate diary...
This diary is about choices...and hope.
I'm not a college graduate, having instead elected to join the Air Force out of high school. That decision was based entirely on the fact my family could not afford to send both my twin brother and I to school at the same time. He was the more ambitious and accomplished student, and I didn't begrudge him the opportunity. I always believed my chance would come, only later. After serving for four years, I started at the place I'm employed at now nearly twelve years ago. I was single, with a decent job, and going to school part time. Yet, not long after I met my future wife, my dad passed away. My greatest regret has been the decision, which seemed the right one at the time, to suspend my education. Yet, I still had hope.
I haven't been back. Life took over. I got married, we had children. What once was just a good job, a way to pay the bills while I was single and going to school, became a career. Dreams change in the wake of neccessity and responsibility. I had health insurance, a tiny pension, and a family that was dependent on all of it. My wife's water broke at 28 weeks, and spent 11 days on hospitalized bedrest before my son finally decided he was ready to join our family. He spent exactly one month and one day in the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit. Though the premiums and deductables go up and up year after year, without that health insurance, my family would've been buried before it ever really had a chance to begin. Bankruptcy wouldn't have even been an option, as we had fallen into that same credit card trap so many young Americans fall victim to and had to declare nearly a full year before my son was born. We were lucky. And we still had hope.
Today, we still live paycheck to paycheck. We don't know what "disposable income" means. Nothing I earn is disposable. My wife hasn't worked since my son was born, and has since returned to school herself, more than 10 years after graduating from high school. The income my wife might realistically bring home without a degree, minus the outrageous cost of daycare, made staying at home with our son and toughing it out on my income alone until he was old enough to start free public school was simply a no-brainer. We pay for my wife's schooling on a precarious balance of grants and student loans. The hope lies in a career yet to happen, and a degree almost within reach.
We are a family of four, on a single income. While not the "working poor", our family walks that razor thin edge between "makin' it" and needing help. We have been very lucky. I have a job that, while not high-paying, is reliable. I have a family that is healthy, and the means to keep them that way. My wife and I wonder every day at our good fortune, and the hope that things will get even better. But there are so many Americans who haven't been that lucky. There are so many families that have lived without hope for so long, they've forgotten what it can feel like. Shouldn't we expect our government to offer that kind of hope? I think as Democrats, we do. Hope is our currency and our leaders the brokers of it. They hold it for us, we trust them with it, and expect them to invest that hope wisely. From public education, to college tuition programs, to daycare assistance, to healthcare and so much more, governance can be good and MUST inspire hope. That message of hope and change isn't just a slogan, and it isn't the sole providence of just one candidate, as inspirational as that one candidate might be. It is embodied in EVERY democratic voter, and I think it's imperative to remember and remind everyone what the alternative is. It's the title of this diary, inspired by the funny little YouTube video. It's more of the same, more of a bankrupt, false political philosophy that feeds on fear and intolerance, disguising a perverted corporate feudalism with terms like "bootstraps" and "individual responsibility", offering not hope, nor even competent governance, but empty promises, war, corruption, unending, irrational fear, and greed. Eight years in the wilderness,with light finally showing at the end of the tunnel, we can't afford to be divided by the belief that hope lies in only ONE candidate, that change can only come from ONE platform. We've got good candidates. And they both give me hope. (Just one a little more than the other.... ;-D)
And is THIS really a choice...?
To quote the great Stan Lee...."'Nuff said!"