The following was sent out to a group of Obama supporters from a fellow supporter who has been feeling some frustration with Washington since last year's election. It is feelings like this that President Obama and the Democrats need to address if they wish to rekindle the energy that led to their success in the 2008 elections:
I could send you the links that have circulated widely on this listserv regarding the differences between the parties and I hate to be the cynic of the day, but I honestly don’t see much difference of substance between Democrats and Republicans anymore. We’ve been divided into three camps; Right, Left and Center. I’ve always tended to be more conservative (by the old definition) than liberal, perhaps in the same sense that Jesus gave by the example of his parables. We are to care for the poor in an ethical way. We are to take responsibility for our own lives, but never turn away from those who are ailing, hurting, suffering.
I think the right wing has had power for so long because of wedge issues and the media’s almost juvenile crushes on wedge issues. Just think about how much time and energy has been spent lately trying to get media personalities off the air versus advocacy for a single-payer health care system. These people are not journalists; they make their money by shocking people’s sensibilities and then editorializing the news. You’d think in this day and age we’d have 24/7 coverage of every news story, global to local, on live feeds with no commentary and reporters here and there to give the news context and cable news outlets would exist in abundance where we could find the editorial comment that fits our political beliefs. But, no, we’re limited to what “the powers that be” want us to see and the advertising every five minutes that tells us what we need to have in our lives to be happy, healthy, financially secure, etc., etc., etc.
I was a registered Democrat from 1976 until shortly after the election last year. I was active in party politics, was an elected precinct captain, worked on national and local campaigns and ballot issues. I also was an Election’s Board Supervisor for my county until Oregon finally finagled all absentee balloting (vote-by-mail). Instituting vote-by-mail became a political issue here to further one man’s career and in the end he crashed and burned because of skeletons in his closet and coziness with the mailing company chosen to contract out the mailing process.
I’d lost faith in the political and election’s processes until March of 2008 when I finally trusted and put my support behind one Barack H. Obama. Here was someone different than the "Clintonistas" who in my opinion had shamed the Democratic Party with their globalist compromises and personal foibles...I did as much as I could do to get Mr. Obama elected.
Reality sank in during the days following the election. Here was a good man who wants to do good things being hamstrung by political realities and filling key government posts with people who’d helped create some of the problems we’re trying to fix. I truly believe that if there had been a viable third political party in this country, we’d still have a President Obama, but he’d be neither Democrat nor Republican; he’d be a progressive with a Christian soul and beholden only to us, the electorate.
As Roman Catholics we’ve made many compromises to empower that which will in the long run save the lives of the unborn, protect the elderly and infirm, stop the death penalty, and allow for fair and lawful immigration into our beloved country. Those compromises sometimes become very political when the media gets involved or we go overboard in wanting to help the helpless. Am I a racist because I know that a porous border that allows my Catholic brothers and sisters to escape poverty and oppression also endangers their lives, allows for drug lords, gang members, and other criminals to freely enter this country without accountability, and does indeed take away jobs, healthcare and education from the poorest of the poor who are American citizens? Some would say so, but I know I’m more than any one label that people can stick on my forehead to quickly identify where I stand politically. When the H1N1 flu pandemic began last spring I was almost in shock that we didn’t put any restrictions in place on foot and car traffic from Mexico while we tried to figure out just what kind of health crises we were facing. I remember a government official; I think it was CDC, that said if we closed the border we wouldn’t be able to get replacement parts for respirators needed for the pulmonary effects of the flu. What? Cinco de Mayo is a beautiful day of celebration, but only a few jurisdictions had the common sense to advise people that there would be vendors traveling from Mexico for the events and to take appropriate precautions. Nope, we were told to wash our hands and sneeze into tissues. I hope this doesn’t sound racist because if you knew me you’d know how much I supported the farm worker movements, the grape boycotts, etc., during the 70’s. It was just common sense to me that we should at the very least be monitoring the flow of the new flu and its potentials as it migrated into the U.S. Most of our politicians have no backbone because their fund raising conflicts sometimes with policy making. I’ve had enough of that and am totally ready for publicly funded campaign finance reform.
I resigned from the Democratic party and became an Independent right after the election last year when Harry Reid allowed Joe Lieberman (who pitched a hissy fit) to keep his Homeland Security Chair and I’d finally had enough of the duplicity of Nancy “Impeachment is off the Table” Pelosi. Given my choice, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, et. al., would be awaiting trail for crimes against humanity.
Today we still have limited forms of rendition, we’re still spying on our own without warrants, capitalism operates without a conscience, and we allow ourselves to be divided by the latest “blah, blah, blah” from what used to be news but is now only tabloid stories between advertising.
The up side of all of this is that we have a man of goodwill in the White House who will listen to us. He can be persuaded by our reasoned and reasonable approaches to living and dying. I’m sorry to be on the soapbox so long today and really have no tangible answer to your question. The best I can do is to paraphrase our President and tell you that one voice can multiply and change the world. I think that we owe it to ourselves, our President, our politicians, our communities and the world to speak out our truth, whatever it may be and hope that our words will be the ones that make a difference.
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