The Chris Moeller Archives

Promoting abstinence

On this election eve, I want to remind all liberal voters of some words from Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs. After the president and the Democrats were finished bailing out Wall Street criminals, escalating wars against two countries and adding a third to the mix (drone attacks on Pakistan), denying habeus corpus and due process, and breaking almost countless promises to gays, the poor, and the uninsured, Gibbs said of Obama's liberal critics, "Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it's crazy... They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care, and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

So if you raise substantive concerns about the president's policies or publicly criticize him, you're an extremist. No, check that, you're anti-American-- wanting to shut down our national defense and turn us into a bunch of bastard Canadians. That was less than three months ago that his top spokesman said that, but now the president is asking you to fall in line. Jesus, people, are you really going to get played for chumps again?

There's a lot of plastic rhetoric every election cycle-- and it comes from all corners-- about going to the voting booth and doing "your civic duty." That's hogwash. You're not only "participating" when you vote, you're "endorsing." Their votes on policy, past and future, are your votes. That's you promoting bigotry in matters of sexual orientation. That's you arming American GIs to kill innocent civilians in what amounts in numbers to multiple 9-11s on foreign soil every year. That's you handing 'get out of jail free' cards' to banking and oil industry perps, and raiding the treasury to exponentially increase the profits of private insurers while the growing underclass goes without basic health protections.

These Democrats buddy up to you every two years, but they treat you like dirt the rest of the time. You're irrelevant to them. Most liberals long ago gave up voting for their own self-interest, let alone those less fortunate than they are. We've become resigned to the best they have to offer, and they offer shit because we demand nothing more that that. When Robert Gibbs says things like this in public, what do you suppose he-- and the president-- are saying when they're not in front of the microphones?

Here's what they say. They say Where else are they gonna go? They're not going to vote for Republicans. You're stuck, and they know it. You have dismally bad candidates to choose from because of a broken system and all they have to do is appeal to your sense of skewed logic in supporting the least objectionable. But guess what. The choices you have this cycle are worse than the ones you had last cycle, no? And the ones from the last round were worse than the ones before that. Yes, that strategy's working great.

Look at your ballot. Do you like either of the choices in that race? Has either of them actually earned your support as a candidate or as an officeholder? No? Than DON'T VOTE for either one of them. Vote for a third or skip it altogether. And if you don't like any of the candidates on the ballot, then by all means, STAY HOME. It's an abusive cycle that has to be stopped. Staying the course at this point is akin to a battered spouse staying in the home over worries about where he or she will be able to find financial support. And it can be tough out there on one's own, no doubt, but before you can do anything else, you've gotta get yourself out of that house. Do it finally. Take the kids and go. You can crash at my place until you get yourself settled somewhere.

There are worse things you can do on Election Day 2010 than doing nothing at all. Even the generally-clueless pundits have been forced to recognize and acknowledge this year that Obama and the Democrats have failed to inspire their base of progressive backers, and their candidates are going to pay a political price for it. That's a good thing. Now it's a shame that the group ready to take control of (at least) the House of Representatives has so little to offer and so nothing to inspire, but there will be a lesson in their victory. Our government no longer functions, and the Reactionary Right, at least, acknowledges this fact. I begrudge their poor focus and their general intolerance but not their anger, and not their cynicism. Those last two traits are justified, and someday liberals will recognize why it is exactly that the other side seems to get everything it wants in what has really become a steady, national march to the right: They demand things. They vote based on their principles. And guess what, it doesn't matter if you or I even respect those principles because their candidates do.

posted by CM @ 8:25 PM