"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter".... Cabin fever has reached epidemic proportions in Wisconsin. We've had snow on the ground since early November, and have received what seems like a never-ending series of arctic blasts and winter storms. Record depths of snow cover my part of the state -- 80 inches and counting!
It's an apt symbol of the long nasty winter of the last eight years. We've faced relentless cold blasts of lies, deceptions, scandals, outrages, corruptions, incompetencies, and assaults upon all that is right and good about our nation. We who hold this democracy dear have been insulted, ignored, browbeaten, marginalized, and abused by a gang of thugs who have ruled through fear and intimidation, have sought to turn us all into cowering subjects, and have made us pariahs among the nations of the world.
This morning, in Wisconsin, a state that has played such an important role in America's progressive political tradition, I will do my civic duty, walk down the street, enter my polling place, cast my vote, and help put an end to this winter of our discontent.
We're not accustomed to having our primary votes in Wisconsin mean much. It's a novel experience for most of us. I can tell you that, over these last two frigid weeks of February, when we would normally be hunkered down in hibernation, the fires of hope and determination have been a-burning. So, although much of Wisconsin looks like this these days....
...the hopes of my neighbors, my fellow citizens, poke up above the snow:
After I finish my cup of coffee, and post this diary here on the Great Electronic Soapbox, I will bundle up, head outside, and walk down the street, along sidewalks that are now just narrow pathways through the high drifts:
I will meet my friends and neighbors at the village hall to vote. Some of them, I'm sure, will vote in ways that I don't find very wise. But that's democracy, too. You gotta love it.
Other friends will come into town to vote from the nearby farms -- yes, real working Wisconsin dairy farms, still owned and operated by families who defy the odds and the economics and somehow stay viable.
I'll pause along the way and think about my fellow citizens all the way out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the balmy breezes blow and the hot lava pours. I'll pretend for a moment that I'm voting in Hawai'i today. And I'll imagine all of you out there, walking into your local polling places just a few hours from now. You will pass the same flag, and anticipate as eagerly as I do now this opportunity -- this obligation! -- to remove the dark stains from its folds.
And to all of you who have made phone calls to Wisconsin citizens, who have come here to canvas among us, who have thought more about us in the last week than you ever thought about us before, who have remembered a long-ago visit or a long-lost relative here, and who have invested your own hopes in our good judgment... I'll think of you, and thank you for YOUR patriotism and YOUR commitmment through these dark years, as the wintering bald eagles gather along our namesake river:
I know, as I cast my vote, that no president, no politician, no person, is perfect. I know that our work as citizens didn't begin with this vote, and it doesn't end with this vote; it continues with this vote. But I also know that, for the first time in a very long while, I will cast my vote today, in the snows of Wisconsin, with excitement and enthusiasm and hope. In part, it's because of the candidate I'll be voting for:
But mostly it's because I feel again, in a way I wondered if I would ever feel again, the capacity of this democracy to renew itself, and the determination of its citizens to reclaim the soul and spirit of a nation.
Here comes the sun. C'mon fellow Badgers! Join me. Let's make our country proud!