I keep seeing people write in various comments about bad Republican polices, "This is what you get when you don't vote!"
Take a look in a mirror, because whether you, personally, voted or not, you got it, too. That's what you get when you don't inspire people.
The lesson I'm learning from Wisconsin is that, in the absence of national Democratic attention on motivating voters, the only hope for collective action is via reaction to raw power grabs.
In 2008, I donated and called and urged friends to vote, and convinced other friends that they really couldn't vote for Palin, and I watched the huge inauguration rally and shared the joy, and I cheered when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, because I believed it was going to be earned.
I tried to believe, I really tried. When the new Obama administration dumped the people who'd formed the campaign policies on Wall Street and the wars, and instead chose holdovers from the Bush administration, I bought into the idea that those legacy people were the ones being coerced, not me. When OFA turned every issue into a don't-believe-your-eyes-this-is-a-huge-win-and-HISTORIC (and please send money now now now), I thought maybe it was because the National party would take up the slack.
Here's what I thought I was voting for:
--End the wars, bring the troops home. Status: still bombing innocent people, troops not home, spending hasn't diminished
--Accountability for Wall Street. Status: record profits and bonuses, zero people went to jail, invited to White House for state dinners
--Accountability for torture and close Guantanamo. Status: not only no accountability, the practice continues, as do the huge overreaches in invasions of privacy in the Patriot Act
--Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Status: the Log Cabin Republicans fought it more actively than the Obama administration, which continued to prosecute people. Oh, and did you think it had been repealed? The 60 day waiting period required by the bill hasn't even been scheduled, much less started. Wikipedia says they are saying the waiting period may not even start in 2011.
--Single payer health plan. Status: bargained away by Obama to the pharmaceuticals before discussions could even begin in congress.
Those were my big issues. Those were what Obama was promising. I wasn't the only person fooled.
Obama forgot who sent him to Washington. It was the 50 State Strategy, it was the small donations from voters who then went out and voted, even in red states. He dropped us the minute he got into office for Wall Street and the Pentagon. We stopped being the community he was supposed to organize, and Washington became his constituency.
We voted for him to shake things up, and all he wants to prove is that he talks their language.
How about if he had announced some policy like saving energy, right at his inauguration, something that everyone could be a part of. If you have electricity, you can turn off a light when you leave a room, and if you shop, you can bring a bag. Everyone could feel like a part of something good, something useful and helpful, and we'd even have saved some money and wear and tear on the planet. But the bigger point is, we'd be pulling together, and everyone could help.
Remember the funny posters of Obama saying, Stand back, I've got this one? He was really just saying, Stand back, and we were making up the rest out of wishful thinking.
Do you know, if McCain had been elected, I can't help wondering if the recoil would have helped Democrats sweep in 2010. Maybe we'd have some of the things on my list by now.
If I could do it again, no, I'd never vote for McCain, if only because of the issue of appointing Supreme Court Justices, but I'd have kept my money and I'd have kept my opinions to myself. I'm going to need my money anyway, because as a federal worker, my salary got frozen but my insurance costs and food and gas prices didn't, so I'm going nowhere but down for the next several years. I'm going to make it, and I'd have been happy to do it if Wall Street had gone first, but freezing those salaries unasked was a crappy thing to do, especially for those at the lower level of the GS scale.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do in 2012. Voting for Obama because he isn't winning the race to the bottom is a poor reason. He's done a few good things, but none of the great ones he promised. I admire Kos and Rachel Maddow enormously for the zest they bring to the fight, but I don't have that inner glow.
I've got anger, if anyone wants it. But I'm also tired of being lied to, and used, and I've got a living to make among people doing difficult work and being treated like parasites by both parties.
That's what voting got me.
