On The Right Side With The Wrong People

Share this

Some of my friends have given up on me. Many of them just sigh with resignation that I just don’t get it. Others who were the first on the block to pronounce with perverse triumphalism, that “Obama is just like Bush”, shun me like a political leper.

Meanwhile I get indignant emails from angry listeners demanding that I justify my support for the president. But I am not an Obama supporter. I am a journalist trying to find out what is going on. I am not now, or have ever been, a member of anyone's cheer squad.

Here is a FACT to ponder...140 million voted in 2008 and only 75 million voted in 2010, thus allowing the Republican wrecking crew to take power in governorships, State Houses and the House of Representatives to break Unions, give what's left away to the super rich and ban abortion etc. I suspect most of my critics are among the many pissed off progressives who feel abandoned by Obama. But isn't it also true that Obama has been abandoned by progressives and is getting support where he can.

Who has his back? The left have left the field so why are they complaining that they are losing the game and the score is stacked against them? Elections have consequences. You get the government you deserve.

True, two years later Obama did not inspire those who showed up in 2008, so if you are looking for perfection then you made the right choice. The problem is that the bad choice won, making the good the enemy of the perfect.

Sure the decrepit democratic machine has been turning out that tired old tune for decades, warning that you have to vote for us otherwise crazies will take over the Supreme Courts. Well they have, and along with the totalitarian right and their Tea Party brigades, funded by billionaires, they WILL reshape America.

They are doing it now and this is a one-sided game that until Wisconsin, they have been winning by default. There is no doubt they have invented straw men like the “liberal elite” and the “liberal media”, but they DO have contempt for progressives. They DO want to eliminate liberals, not debate them, but destroy them!  

So my side is sitting on their hands nursing their hurt feelings while the motivated minority are driven to the polls by boiling hatred, stoked by bilious billionaires and their junk yard dogs on Fox and right wing radio.

What is the cost of punching your ticket every two years for democracy? Is voting a virtue to be protected and given only after considerable courtship. Or is it a practical duty to maintain an imperfect balance. Is it such a sacrifice? Is the choice between a gutless moderate and a corrupt corporate hireling or a venal and vindictive theocrat, too difficult to make or too much of a sellout?  Tell me.