The Republicans were quite loud last night, blustering their way through Palin's big night (and what a night it was) with the same hate-filled rhetoric we encountered in 1992 with Pat Buchanan -- the same hateful, divisive words that George Bush has been using the past 8 years. Words that attacked Muslims, community organizers, and any family that wished to make their own choices.
And even though they were loud, part of me still thinks -- maybe hope is the better word, that we ultimately have the upper hand this election cycle. We're registering voters, dispelling myths, and when we canvass, we're encountering voters who are afraid to support Senator Obama in public -- but they proudly whisper that they're voting for him.
No matter what half-truths, six-degrees-of-separation character assassinations, and blatant lies the McCain campaign and the RNC will be using this fall, the goal is getting new voters registered and getting them to turn out. It's keeping people's hopes and dreams alive until election day so they have enough of a drive to vote.
I realize it will be a close election, most likely -- we all have our relatives who send us the smears and rumors via email -- but there's an untapped group of people out there. Maybe it's voters who were disenfranchised in 2000, maybe it's a young person who only knows the divisive politics of the Bush Administration, maybe it's a working class mother who, in Barack Obama, sees someone who actually gives a damn. A silent majority -- all we have to do is get them to the voting booth.
Maybe there's still hope to change the way Washington works -- even if it's just a little bit.