I really only had one political role model as a young adult. It was a Congress Woman from Texas. I wanted her to be my President. I also wanted her on the Supreme Court. She said something that we Kossacks need to heed and remember.
A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny. Barbara Jordan
Our common destiny is that we’re Democrats, we can’t really agree on anything and we can’t stay on message for more than a week but no matter what we’re Democrats.
We Democrats can’t prevail if we think, I didn’t get my way, I’m taking my ball and going home. Didn’t you see what happened in the 2010 elections? We didn’t come out and play and we got hammered. The next election is important to me and it should be important to you.
I know that the tax cuts for the rich got extended. They were going to get extended or all the tax cuts were going to expire. The President got some help for the unemployed. We can win in 2012 and implement the Progressive tax cuts or the Republicans can win and we’ll see tax cuts for the rich and corporations, privatization of Social Security and Medicare, the Acorning of Planned Parenthood, I could go on for a month but the need to retch overwhelms me.
Carter, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama and I’m going to vote for Obama again. Why should I? Because compared to the Republicans, Obama believes that a woman has a right to determine what is best for her, that a country is judged by how well it takes care of its less fortunate (he has some, okay a lot, of work to do here), that laws that disenfranchise voters to stop non-existent voter fraud is really to stop the poor and the minorities from voting, and that the Supreme Court shouldn’t be a men only club.
I would pray that 70% of Americans were Democrats and that we wouldn’t have to worry about the other 30%, we could just do what we want (a Republican view by the way) but my heroine had something to say about that also:
But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
Barbara Jordan would be a Kossack and she would scold us for losing sight of what is important. Governing for everybody not the privileged few.