The first election I paid any attention at all was the 1956 race between Eisenhower and Stevenson. There was a mock election at school after which I went home to tell my dad that he should vote for Eisenhower because most of the class did.
Dad asked if that was the only reason I had for choosing Eisenhower, I said, "Yes," and earned a long lecture on how we should choose to cast our ballots. The gist of it was that what others thought shouldn't be the decider. He said we should learn for ourselves what we valued and who best represented those values and then make our decision. I was eight years old. It went in one ear and out the other at the time. I was far more interested in how the Cincinnati Reds (then the Redlegs) were doing and that Frank Robinson was on his way to tieing the rookie home run record.
Now I'm sixty-eight, have seen many elections, and am well able to evaluate candidates for myself. That said, the current Republican nominee is less mature than I was in 1956. My dad, dead since 1961, simply would not believe the GOP could/would nominate such an ass. Neither would mom, who died in 1999. Hell, I can barely believe it myself. I'll describe it (with a little cleaning up) as an old millwright I once knew might have said. "I've been to Maine, Spain and Ft. Wayne, and I've seen goats (breed) in the market place, and I have, never, EVER, EVER, seen a pile of (crap) like this."
Some people are actually going to vote for T-rump. If you are one of them, God help you; you're a fool, a racist, or blinded by misguided hate, and if you work for a living you are committing suicide by ballot. Sorry, but it is true. Yes, I know you don't like Hillary. She wasn't my first choice; Bernie was. But the truth is, Bernie, as much as I love him, couldn't have gotten a damned thing through congress and (despite some polls) wouldn't have kicked T-rump's fanny nearly as thoroughly as Hillary will. The "Socialist" tag would have frightened some people too much. The truly good news of Hillary's candidacy is that she just might (read slightly) have a chance to put both the house and senate in play for the Democrats.
The best part of a Hillary landslide might just be to knock some common sense into the Teapublican right. Okay, I know it isn't likely but it is possible. At the very least it will force some sensible, moderate Republicans to come out of the closet and try and reclaim their party from the Village of the Damned. (Movie reference--look it up, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AUBlW5EWnI
Please, please, don't compare T-rump to Goldwater. Goldwater at least had principles and a sense of honor. T-rump has neither principles nor honor. . . Come to think of it he doesn't have sense either. He is simply a spoiled blowhard having an ego trip at the country's expense--and NO he's not self-financing his campaign! He has "loaned" his campaign money and will repay himself with YOUR contributions and those of rich oligarchs who are laughing at you while they prepare to grind you further into the dirt.
One final note--although I suspect you already are aware of it. When T-rump says "Believe me," that is T-rump speak for, "I'm lying again." Don't fall for it. Please. Please.
Hold your nose if you must, but vote for Hillary. Not T-rump, not Johnson and not Stein. Don't shame yourself or your country. Please.
Just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Buster. Just had to get it off my chest,
DeleteWise words
ReplyDeleteI'm a few years younger than you are, Wray, and my earliest memory of a Presidential election is the general election of 1960. I grew up in the community of North Hollywood, a neighborhood within the Los Angeles city limits. It was primarily white and working and middle class. Some residents had been living in around my neighborhood since second world war; other families, such as mine, arrived in the mid-1950s.
ReplyDeleteA straw poll was held in my third grade class. I recall one of the boys in my class asking me if I planned to vote for Nixon. He said something to the effect of, "You know he's going to win, so why not vote for him?" I told him I planned to vote for Kennedy, no matter what he believed the eventual outcome. Well, Kennedy lost. I think the results were 22 for Nixon and 12 for Kennedy and 0 for a third party candidate running as a Prohibitionist. (Why do I remember these things?) I felt bad, but of course, Nixon would lose by a slim margin in the general election, so all was good. I admit I was influenced by my parents, but after all, I was only 8 years old, and at least I was paying attention. Ten years later I'd be off to college, still supporting Democrats, but by then I'd learned enough to make up my own mind. At the end of the calendar year, I would get to register to vote in anticipation of lowering the voting age to 18.
It goes without saying that if one lives long enough, one sees history unfold and as events shape us and we shape them, we've been steadily losing our way. Neither of my parents are among the living and I, too, believe both would be hard-pressed to understand how far the republican party has fallen to have nominated such a supremely unqualified candidate as Trump. When they were in their very early middle years they voted for Stevenson over Eisenhower, but I doubt they thought badly of the general. I think the history of the Democratic Party (apart from the Dixiecrats)as a home for progressives and various ethnics, resonated with them. The republicans, polite and willing to engage in civil discourse, still weren't as inclusive as the Democrats. As I got older and became more interested and aware, I recall talking with my father and his explaining to me the importance of bipartisanism. Understand that on issues that are important to us personally, that we need friends on both sides of the aisle, he told me.
A year prior to the California Primary I was considering voting for Bernie, but didn't think he'd get the nomination, so I'd be voting for Hillary in November. But as the primary season getting off the ground, I changed my mind. As much as I thought he had great ideas, I felt his rhetoric was a problem. He was promising things that either couldn't be accomplished with obstructionist republicans in Congress or if possible, certainly not on a fast track. Most legislation does take time. Also he was being taken to task for re-registering as a Democrat and describing himself as a Democratic Socialist. Conservatives, many poorly informed, tried to compare that to Nazism, which was preposterous, given that Bernie's ancestry is Jewish, and while Nazism may have started out with a socialist platform, it didn't last long anyway. But such as it can be with the poorly informed who are given to reductivist thinking. I recall when Obama used the phrase "redistribution of wealth" in a stump speech in 2008. I figured the republicans would dog him with that. And they did for a long time.
Trump is the worst thing that could happen to the republican party, and it is the rise of the Tea Party wing that has allowed him to succeed up to the point he has. He's crazy, though--too crazy for many of the party faithful. I don't believe there are enough crazy republicans and independents to elect him, but we still need to be mindful of voter fraud in the way of scrub lists which could disenfranchise many Democratic voters. I hope and pray Trump doesn't steal the election, otherwise we will be in for the biggest crisis in our history.
Great job, Hilary! You and I think very similarly on many issues, and that is good, but I also respect your opinion when we disagree. Too bad we live so far apart we just can't sit down and gab for a time. I suspect we (at least I) would enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteI forget where in Indiana you live. I have been there exactly once when I visited with some friends in Columbus. Maybe next year I will persuade my husband to take a trip to the Midwest. We have family in the St. Louis area, but I'd just as soon fly directly to Indy. lol
DeleteI live in Columbia City (about 20 miles west of Ft. Wayne) and would love to meet you and your husband if you ever head this direction. Keep me posted!
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