My mind was racing this past Saturday, keeping pace with my bike as I made what might be my last two-wheeled trip into town without a jacket. Change is in the air, and not just with the weather.
I’d been agonizing over what to say with this, my last editorial before Election Day, so I looked for inspiration at a Saturday rally in Old Town Square to encourage the Hispanic community to vote. Though Federico Peña spoke, attendance was so-so. At times, clipboard-bearing volunteers hunting for the unregistered seemed to outnumber the attendees.
Considering what’s at stake, I’m confounded anyone would waste a vote. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen gas prices or the number of foreclosures so high. I’ve never seen America’s world standing or our own respect for our leaders so low. The gap between the rich and everyone else has never seemed so wide, the pleas for change never so fervent.
This is no time for voter silence.
There’s hope. A good friend of mine, a Fort Collins resident named Charlene, is sixty-five years old. For the first time in her life, after having sat out twenty-three elections, she registered to vote. I asked her, “Why now?” She didn’t hesitate, “Too many things need to be fixed.”
Voter registration is closed, so now let’s focus on follow-through. Perhaps you are ambivalent about the whole business. Maybe the arguments about small numbers of individuals determining elections leave you unconvinced, in spite of the hair’s width difference in votes in 2000 and 2004 that saddled us with the worst US president in history. Perhaps certain issues shaping the election, such as the war, oil policy and the meltdown on Wall Street, seem too distant. Maybe the advertising hailstorm pelted you numb, so you sigh, “Why bother?”
Please bother. And bother to vote for real change, not the hollow words that suddenly pepper the rhetoric of those who have upheld the status quo for years.
Words can get in the way. As a voter’s guide for the uncommitted, let’s strip away the campaign hyperbole and draw the distinction between Democrat and Republican in terms of money, your money.
Republicans support policy that retains wealth in the upper tiers of our society, with both individuals and corporations. They obscure that simple truth with distracting language about protecting Main Street instead of Wall Street, honoring patriotic Americans and rewarding those who “play by the rules.” They distract voters from that simple truth by escalating fears of enemies abroad. They tell us to fear those here at home who fall outside a narrow Republican definition of acceptable beliefs and lifestyle. Meanwhile, as the words fly and our paranoia rises — unless you are quite wealthy — their policies will remove money from your pocket.
Even if you don’t care about polar bears, trade deficits, foreign oil dependency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or ANWR, you do care about feeding the family, paying the bills and saving for your future. Therefore, vote against those who made this economic mess: Bush, Cheney, McCain and Musgrave.
Vote for those who will actively shift wealth from the rich to support those of us who are not. Vote for those– Obama, Biden and Markey — who will replace the politics of fear and greed with hope and fairness.
