Right off the top, let me congratulate and heartily thank every single person who reads this or shares it, for your participation in our shared democracy by your actions since January 20, 2017.
To all of those who attended or supported a Women’s March on January 21, 2017 putting the new Administration on notice that YOU WERE WATCHING and that you would continue to do so until his last day in Office — you were the first curling waves of what would begin to grow that day and continues to this day, a rising blue wave of (mostly) women candidates for Statehouse and Congressional seats. Of which about 75% of those running have already made it through their primary elections. To all of you candidates, your staff and volunteers? WELL DONE!
To all of those who responded to the bellicose battlecry from the Republican Majority in early 2017 of REPEAL OBAMACARE by calling and calling their members of Congress and attending Local Office rallies and writing letters to the editor and sharing and sharing on Social Media? Well, the wild and wooly Base of the Democratic Party finally found an issue we could ALL get on board with. We finally got to see what a “sum of the parts is greater than the whole” action in motion, and won on it, to boot. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been agitating for something like the PPACA for a very long time, and didn’t really think it was going to pass, after nearly an entire year in the Congress. But hot damn, the Left rose the fuck up and kicked some conservative, lying asses to the curb in the Spring of 2017 and saved Obamacare. We found out what winning feels like, and I believe in my heart that it was the start of the change which lead to the shift on the Left for gun reform, brought fully into the light of day by the (my god, it was only days later) student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting which took the lives of 17 students and staff.
In between saving the ACA and the recent months of the Mueller Investigations, came the rise of David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Emma Gonzalez and the father of Jaime Guttenberg (Fred) on the national scene with the simple message of #GunReformNow. Brought on by a group of steely-eyed teens who underwent a literal bloodbath in their schoolrooms and came out the other side unwilling to be silent and accept wishes and hopes for it to be the last time it happened in a school in America. They just stood up and started saying #NeverAgain are we going to just accept that THIS is the way it is and the way it will always be. No one’s child should have to live through what we did. It’s crazy, and there are ways to reduce the risks of this happening in the school your child attends. Help us convince statehouse Legislatures and the Congress that we need #GunReformNow and that your votes are going to candidates who support #GunReformNow and NOT to those who don’t.
Their message is clear and simple and from the numbers of Statehouse candidates who have won through their primaries running on it, it’s a WINNING message. A huge shoutout to anyone who is taking their message to heart and contacting their Legislators for firearms regulation, and helping register NEW VOTERS this summer and work GOTV to get them to the polls in November. Because THAT is the action which can make #GunReformNow a real possibility — by flipping the House and (it’s hardly likely but if the #KidsInCages don’t go away soon...) on the same odds as an inside straight in poker, perhaps even the Senate. So that new faces will join the old and take up bills and demand votes on them to regulate firearms and save lives. Full Stop.
So to all of you have done any of that? I thank you, each and every one. Because voting in this nation is most definitely pragmatic and not automatic (although voter registration in some states is now automatic) and until we replace enough of those Republican incumbents in both the statehouses in the States and in the Congress, we’re stuck agitating for a better life for ourselves and our children after us.
It means we have to work to get more voters registered and get them voting. We can do this!But please remember that we had a lesson during the presidency of Barack Obama which I fear far too many of us didn’t learn, because we didn’t notice a lesson was being taught. What was the lesson? Never give up, never surrender. Not for a single day. The other side never does and look where they are and where we are. They hold about 2/3rds of all of the legislative and executive seats in the States and Federally.
Now, ask yourself, are you truly surprised at the never-ending shitstorm which is the presidency of one Donald J Trump? Because I’m not, at least not usually; this latest scandal about taking innocent children as young as under one year old in diapers and locking them up in dog fencing cages because their parents may not be granted asylum as a recognized refugee — and although it’s not the majority of minor immigrants held in federal custody by either DHS or HHS, is any number of babies in custody without a parent acceptable?
But try and erase that for the moment and try and think ahead to January 20, 2021 (or sooner, any godz and/or Robert Mueller willing) and someone from the Democratic Party is now sitting in the chair beneath the Resolute Desk. Someone who isn’t a complete and utter disgrace as a human being, much less as a president of the United States of America. Someone who actually DOES bring in qualified and experienced people to staff his Cabinet and the federal Agencies. Someone who makes things start to work again, like they did under Barack Obama, for the most part.
Here’s where the warning applies. Should that be the near future? If the Left continues it’s amazing awakening and the under 35 crowd registers to vote this summer and casts a ballot this November 6th and unseats the Republican Majority in a whole lotta places that maybe haven’t seen Democratic Party representation in a generation; then you know what will happen.
For six months there will be a flood of legislation nationwide, to reverse engineer the damage wrought by Trump and all of the president’s #grifters. To make DACA the law of the land. There will be battles to be won, for sure; but in this future, those battles will come down on the side of Justice more often than not.
Within the first year, we will have started to recover from the Era of Icky, and as the next year passes, the horror of what we all lived lived through will start to fade.
DON’T LET IT.
That way lies complacency and an opportunity for the batshit-crazy conservatives to try again, only this time with a worse incipient-fascist than 45.
So thanks for all the hard work, it’s been great working with you all, and I am loving the primary election returns all over the place, with so many great Democratic Party women now heading towards the appellation The Honorable before their names.
Just remember — we can never take another election cycle for granted, no matter what the mass media is saying about things. Don’t ever look at current trends and expect them to continue until the next election day; because this new Media hell we live with can turn on a dime and change the entire outcome in just moments.
Should the nominee of the Democratic Party win the presidency in 2020, cheer your hearts out on election day and the next day? Get up and get out there and start getting ready for the next election. Until we run out of crazy conservatives who want to turn the clocks back to 1818.
Hey — someday it will happen. I promise you. I just don’t have a date certain for when that will happen. Sadly, I am not hopeful that I myself will live to see it. But I have a couple of grandkids who will begin voting in 2022 & 2032; and I’m pretty sure that they might well see it come to be.
If this becomes the motto of the Democratic voter and is true every election going forward, I am sure that future will come to pass:
No one is coming to save us IT IS UP TO USHelp a candidate you will vote for by volunteering and/or donating to their campaign.
Work with the League of Women Voters this summer to register new voters.
Canvass with your County Democratic Party this summer and fall, to turn out voters.
Above all, #Resist the trumpfuckery, it is spectacle designed to distract.
Pay attention to what matters — winning seats and saving the Republic from the horde of Grifters and Traitors occupying our Government at all levels.