General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Some People Can Not Afford to Lose the Next Presidential Election [View all]
In 2000, when some liberals sat out the election by claiming that Bush=Gore (bad math) and others voted Green as a protest and then Brother Jeb disenfranchised Black voters in Florida and the Supreme Court broke the law by voting based upon the identities in the case, it was bad for our democracy.
It was even worse for some of the most vulnerable members of our democracy.
At the time, I thought--and wrote an angry letter to Nader---in which I predicted another war for oil (We got two and an attempted coup in Venezuela!), delays in universal health care, negative action in reducing the world's dependence upon fossil fuel and global warming and a run on the bank, with the rich being allowed to plunder middle class wealth. It all came to pass, just as I and many others predicted.
2016 and here we go again. "Winning does not matter," we are told. "It is better to make a statement and lose than to support a candidate who is not liberal enough."
I am glad that so many people are doing so well that they can afford another 4 to 8 years of Bush style economics, environmental policy and war. Many of us are not doing quite so well. Some of us will probably die if we do not win the next election. These include:
The people who will lose their affordable health coverage right in the middle of treatment for their heart disease, cancer etc because the GOP Congress will not have a Democratic president to veto the bill when they get rid of the "no pre-existing clause" allowing insurers to drop policies for anyone who is sick.
The members of the military (including the National Guard and the military reserve) who will be shipped to Iran to fight another war for someone else's oil.
Children and adults with asthma who will die of pneumonia, because clean air standards will be rolled back once again in our major cities.
Everyone who lives on the coast, who will be at risk for rising waters and more violent storms like Katrina---which the GOP will exploit for social cleansing as they did in NOLA and Galveston.
Those who just barely scrape by on their Social Security and Medicare who will not get by at all when those program are "privatized" and benefits slashed to create more corporate profit.
Unions, which will see a decrease in membership as so called "right to work" laws become the rule of the land---which will cause all wages of all workers to drop.
Latinos, who will lose any chance of ever being more than underpaid, disposable citizens.
American born children of Latinos who will become the slaves of the 21st century, with no citizenship anywhere, they will be forced to work for any wage the employer sets in any condition the employer sets. And everyone else's wages will fall again.
Minorities will find that the DOJ is once against waging war on anyone who is not white.
Veterans will become sitting ducks again, easy targets for budget cuts.
Gay rights will be rolled right back to the Reagan era, when HIV was considered God's rightful curse on gays.
Women will lose their contraceptive options and end up stuck in pink collar ghetto jobs as they struggle to support children they were not prepared to have---
I am glad that some of us are doing so well that 4-8 years of another corporate fascist state won't impact our lives or our lifestyles. But some of us will not survive. Some women. Some children. Some old folks. Some immigrants. Some disabled people. Some folks really need to keep a Democrat in the White House to keep Congress in check and swing the Supreme Court back to the left and keep the military from being used as the private mercenary force of Big Business and to force the EPA and HHS and other agencies to enforce the law. Someone to follow in the footsteps of Barrack Obama, rather than the footsteps of Bush/Cheney.
Do not be like Nader, who back in 2000 declared that a Bush presidency would be good for the country, because it would mobilize the left. That is a fascist point of view which treats the most vulnerable of us as expendable. Instead, work to make sure that the GOP does not steal another election with voter intimidated, election fraud, Citizen United Money. Work to find and support the candidate who has the best chance of winning in the scary new post Citizen United election world of 2016---
If you aren't worried about your own future, do it for the women, the children, the elderly, the soldiers, the veterans, the immigrants, the unions, the gays, the minorities. They are just barely crawling out of the hole Bush/Cheney dug for them. They can not afford to lose.