No longer seeing eye to eye with the new party
I think it's clear many of us no longer align ourselves with the behavior of the party. The fact of the matter is Obama is the name on the ballot whether we like it or not but from what I read besides having great concern and pause over Obama being elected everyone's biggest problem is with the party itself and how they meddled and handled this primary.
I think now the question for many of us is are we closet republicans as Obama supporters would love to label us. Not likely one vote doesn't change your core beliefs, which is probably a big reason why Obama could not convince half this party Hillary is bad for the country over the one Iraq vote. It's also probably why he failed to carry the states that have the most casulaties from the Iraq war.
So where do we belong? I don't know the answer to that, I spent alot of time this primary wondering if as I aged had turned republican. The answer is no while there are some things about McCain I do not like, fact of the matter is there are just as many things about Obama I do not like.
But the one thing that stands out to me is party has moved so far over in a desperate attempt to regain power in Washington they have left behind the middle aged voters who built the party the last 20 years. Not a bad sin change is ok but not when you give speeches and interviews saying you don't need those who built the party to win, that your going to flood the party with republicans.
For me the only real answer is to do what I can to make a third party candidate run strong, let the party know my voice and vote means as much as it did 20 years ago in November and that I am not easily replaced with fly by night voters from the other party.
I think now the question for many of us is are we closet republicans as Obama supporters would love to label us. Not likely one vote doesn't change your core beliefs, which is probably a big reason why Obama could not convince half this party Hillary is bad for the country over the one Iraq vote. It's also probably why he failed to carry the states that have the most casulaties from the Iraq war.
So where do we belong? I don't know the answer to that, I spent alot of time this primary wondering if as I aged had turned republican. The answer is no while there are some things about McCain I do not like, fact of the matter is there are just as many things about Obama I do not like.
But the one thing that stands out to me is party has moved so far over in a desperate attempt to regain power in Washington they have left behind the middle aged voters who built the party the last 20 years. Not a bad sin change is ok but not when you give speeches and interviews saying you don't need those who built the party to win, that your going to flood the party with republicans.
For me the only real answer is to do what I can to make a third party candidate run strong, let the party know my voice and vote means as much as it did 20 years ago in November and that I am not easily replaced with fly by night voters from the other party.
I met more than a few people who survived in Hitler's German. My cousins' grandparents escaped Lithuania. Other people I know from Poland had grand parents or great grandparents who were not Jewish but did go to Auschwitz. I knew a German man who told me that he escaped from being in the Navy when he first heard about the camps. Of course, there are the WWII survivors and then the Great Depression family members. I have seen horrid photos of burned bodies that were sent to me from people in Europe to show me the horrors of the Iraq War.
With the list of items that we now have on our laundry bags, we are really only awakening as a mass conscience. All of those evil and vile things were occurring but they were hidden, more hidden. Our opportunity now is to see how the nature of being evil is something we can choose. We can choose to claim our own personal views of it.
Like the elephant in a room, at least we are going to each being touching some part of it, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it. The elephant is that there are elitists who think that they are the controllers of our world.
Now, that we know that they are truly absurd, truly in a world inside circles of hypocrisy, we can now understand why our world is filled with horrors. People we entrusted with the monies to operate our democracy are not as trustworthy as we had assumed. Transparency has begun. We are now in the age of looking into the eyes of the Wizard of Oz.
We now know those people are not seeing life from every perspective as if we are people. They are seeing as statistics. We are numbers... blips.
What can we do? We are the blips that created their power and authority. We need to use our first amendment rights, our freedom of speech. Stop being invisible. Be visible. Let them see us. Let's go to the Denver Convention, meet them face to face to face to face to face to face to face.
Never too left for me !!!
Clinton 08 !
Since Reagan the entire country shifted to the right. The post Reagan "center" was at best "center-right." Now the country is rediscovering the pre-Reagan political center. That is why the candidates are quoting Robert Kennedy again.
The left yearns for universal, single payer health care (like other modern, industrialized countries), but the political center can only opt for reforming the existing private health insurance market.
The right wing ignores the center and sees only the left, denouncing "socialized medicine."
The three Congressional elections show this is not 1988, the mood ironically is closer to 68 than 88.
There is not that much policy difference between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama -- a technical difference in their health care reform, but neither one is advocating single payer.
The older generation wants change, but change brought by a familiar figure, the younger generation wants change and believes it can only be brought by a younger person. Both are wrong in seeing only one path, both are absolutely sincere.
Politics sometimes skips a generation and now Senator Clinton finds herself in the same place as Senators Biden and Dodd -- as respected elders, but not the Presidential candidate.
The same relative youth that enabled Senator Clinton to elbow aside the experience and wisdom of Senators Biden and Dodd is now elbowing her aside.
Jim Callahan
Orlando, FL