For the sake of honesty and in support of full disclosure I start out by saying I was a solid, loyal and active Hillary supporter from the very beginning of her campaign. Actually, I was a carry-over as one of her staunch supporters from the 2008 bid for the nomination and I was actively engaged in working to elect the first woman president. Let me also confess that I dislike Bernie Sanders.
But I dislike Republicans far more than I dislike Sanders and I also like Democrats more than I dislike Bernie. Being a life-long blue voter, I consider myself a liberal and a progressive. For reasons I refuse to dish up here, Bernie didn’t resonate with me but had he won the primary, I would have certainly voted for him. But he lost and although I didn’t have to face voting for the other candidate this time, I certainly know how Bernie supporters felt who did. After all, I did it myself in 2008 when I voted for Barack Obama. So I’m not rubbing it in, merely stating the facts.
The primaries are now part of history and old news. Yet today I saw a blog post that brought all the nasty stuff front and center. Rehashing every point and rubbing salt in every old wound and all over my Facebook feed, I saw it posted with people arguing the same old points just as they did when the primaries were in full swing even though they have been over for months.
From one Democrat to another I implore you to stop picking these scabs before they become infected. We need to stop the bleeding and come together as one united party and one solid blue wall of resistance to The GOP and the Orange Hot Mess they put in the White House. They are the enemy. The former wants to take away healthcare, Social Security, and public education to give more tax breaks to starving millionaires and the other wants to use the constitution as toilet paper, deny us our civil liberties and human rights as he turns the US into a banana republic with himself installed as dictator. Seems to me, if we want to preserve our freedom and our way of life we need to do whatever it takes to stop this from happening.
As Democrats, we need to stop arguing about everything and turning each issue into a zero sum game. We should stop setting up purity tests about who is not far enough to the left and who is too far. We need to stop calling other Democrats Republican Light. Are you fucking kidding me? Republicans are leaning so far to the right now their ear is wiping the floor.
We shouldn’t be threatening a Democratic leader in Congress with “being primaried” every time he or she doesn’t do something exactly the way we want them to until we hear the reasoning and research their voting record. Please don’t take this to mean we cannot disagree with them, but we should keep it civilized. Finally, we shouldn’t be looking to any one person as the authority on every candidate or situation. Republican voters do that. As Democrats, we listen to many leadership voices to consider different options and opinions. This makes us informed voters.
As Democrats, we need to stop arguing about who is going to head the DNC. We have 2 great candidates that seem to be leading the pack, Tom Perez, former Secretary of Labor and Keith Ellison Democratic Congressman from Minneapolis. They are both qualified to do the job. Mother Jones did a great profile on both Tom and Keith that is well worth your time to read. But please remember it is our party leaderships’ job to vote, not our prerogative. They have insights we don’t, so trust them to make the choice and accept it, even if you can’t do it graciously. If you think that is too much to ask, consider the real enemy, the GOP led by his Highness Donald the 1st Earl of Orange and all the plans they have to make America a 3rd world country with a fascist government.
When you think every Democrat needs to pass your purity test or you won’t vote in 2018 remember these 3 facts about politics:
- You never get everything you want
- There is no such thing as a perfect candidate
- Politics is not a zero-sum game
When you evaluate who to vote for, instead of looking at a choice of “the lesser of two evils” look at each candidate, their voting record if they have one, what side of the issue they support and how that will translate into their style of governance. Then vote for the one who most closely lines up with your own value system and vision for America. What else makes any sense? Remember it’s the Republican voter that generally votes against their own self-interests, not Democrats.
When you start having doubts and that progressive purity test starts popping into your consciousness ask yourself which candidate is a threat to my country, my family and our way of life and which wants to preserve our society and work to improve it. Which candidate wants to build walls on the borders, deport immigrants, deny others their human rights, control a woman’s body, make diversity a crime, take away health care, steal our children’s education, shame us in front of the world, dump coal dust and chemicals into our rivers and streams, burn fossil fuels, deny science, tell us who to love, inspire us to hate, take away our health care, raise our taxes, drag us into senseless wars, and leave us vulnerable to the wolves on wall street.
We have far more as Democrats we can agree upon in our vision for America than we will ever share with the GOP. Don’t allow the opportunity to win back some control in Congress in 2018 pass us by while we bicker and brood about things we cannot change. If we do, it will be 4 years of GOP control in the House and Senate with the Orange Usurper rubber-stamping everything the flying monkeys in Congress want while he pads his family’s nest. Devote your energy to what unites us as Democrats and not what divides us. Let’s pour our energy into RESISTANCE and taking back Congressional power in 2018. Our families are depending on us. We can do this.