These two dance to the same tunes, get married to each other and at the end of the day are friends!
So this week has been really tiring for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m recovering from a cold, I have a challenging seventh grade class, I’m busy with an online class or the crazy election results are buzzing in my head! Maybe it’s everything combined. My sister claims I’m upset about the election. I don’t really think so, as I could see it coming like everyone else. Really what is so different? Corporate Democrats have been replaced by corporate Republicans. They are both corrupt and it was hard to really fight for those Dems, because they so easily disappointed all of us.
However, there is a bright spot in this election. Many of those “Blue Dog Democrats” are gone. I didn’t care a bit for them. DINO’s should all become extinct as far as I’m concerned. I don’t like to see Senator Russ Feingold taken down though. I guess he’s a casualty of being “Obamatronned”.
President Obama really did everything he could to get rid of many Democrats. I have really wondered about what he really wanted. There was so much that he could have done, that he didn’t do. It’s hard to understand why he made the choices he did in the last two years and why he continues to disappoint so many of us through his leadership style. He hasn’t lead and that is the problem. He hasn’t explained anything which hasn’t helped at all. He’s governed in the image of GW which really frustrates any real left leaning person anywhere.
Yesterday I heard a couple of sixth grade students talking about Obama. One said to the other, “You don’t want to be a loser like Obama.” When the eighth grade students held a mock election, Rick Snyder, the self professed nerd, won for governor here in Michigan. My class of sixth graders erupted in cheers when they heard the news over the loud speaker. Strangely enough it brought back the same memories of when Obama won the mock election just two years earlier. I live in a very Republican town. Obama won our mock election big and so did the nerd win big for the governorship. The nerd is a Republican. It seems like the parents of my students here in Sturgis can easily switch from the package Obama was selling to the package that Rick Snyder was selling.
The big thing is both of these guys came in like they were something special that was going to change politics. Rick Snyder won but of course we’ll have to wait and see what his leadership skills really look like. We have already witnessed Obama’s leadership skills and unfortunately they are greatly lacking. I, like most people, don’t have a lot of confidence in what he’s selling. Earlier this fall Obama addressed the nation’s school children. It was really well received and I felt like the students really looked up to him. So I wonder what happened over the last two months that changed for them. Why did I hear a sixth grader speaking so poorly about Obama when just a couple months before they were so enthralled with him? I think there must be a lot of conversation going on at home or maybe it’s the constant blasting of the mass media. Some how in the last couple of months the students I teach vastly changed their feelings about the president. If Obama’s lost the youth and these young students are future voters, what does he have left?
It’s funny when I think back to the 2008 election and that “package” Obama was selling. It seemed like everyone was expecting a Democratic victory just as they were expecting a Republican victory during this election. Obama was handed the election. Much was done to assist him including dismissing Hillary Clinton. She was taking all of the “real” Democratic states if you will recall. The race was very close, much closer than people really want to remember. The two big states of Florida and Michigan were taken out with the game playing that was going on. Both of those states were the type of state that would probably have gone for Hillary Clinton in the end. My vote for John Edwards in the primary was basically stolen. It was given to Obama on May 31st, 2008 when the Democrats got together and decided how to “handle” us voters here in Michigan. At that time they even took votes away from Hillary, a very anti-democratic procedure!
Thinking about that election is interesting because it seemed like McCain didn’t have a chance in hell and he wasn’t supposed to have one either. He was supposed to lose. It was part of the plan. Sarah Palin almost made it possible for him to win. As much as she makes the left crazy a lot of other people are crazy about her. She turned McCain’s campaign around. If the October surprise, you know the banking crisis, hadn’t erupted, who knows what would have happened with the election? The point of all of this is I feel very much like we have been “played”. Each of these elections we were told how we were going to vote and what was going to happen. Last time the Republicans were supposed to lose and this time the Democrats were supposed to lose. I don’t trust politics and I frankly wonder who is really pulling the strings. Corporations seem to have the control over our votes now more than ever. We are fed garbage in and we regurgitate garbage out with our vote. My 6th grade students had all they needed to know about the governorship, the “nerd” won and the “angry” mayor didn’t. Hmmm, I wonder where they heard those meaningless words. Candidates are packaged to sell. Barack Obama was packaged as the “change” agent and Rick “Nerd”, oh I mean Snyder, was packaged as a businessman with both a brain and a plan. You know the smart guy that’s picked last for dodge ball in school won the election.
As much as the Republicans want to think they’re the cool kids in class right now, they need to remember that next time will probably be the Democrats turn to fool the American people.
This video says a lot to me about the disrespect shown to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election. It’s subtle but it still shows me a lot about the men in the party! I will always remember those words, “Likable enough!”
The last couple of months we have been hearing about how the Democrats are going to lose in November. There has been much talk about which seats would go and how many are needed for the Republican Party to take over the House or even the Senate. It almost feels like we have already voted. I always find in interesting when pundits tell us what we, the people, are thinking. I don’t know how they could possibly know what people are really feeling these days. Most people don’t participate in polls, many don’t have land lines, and many don’t answer their phones for anyone but their friends. This has made me think about what I’m thinking about all of this. From my viewpoint, if the Democratic Party loses it’s because they still didn’t repair the problems created from the 2008 election, and they have governed more like Republicans than true Democrats. If they lose, they deserve that loss.
Back in 2008 my primary vote was taken away here in Michigan and given to Barack Obama. I didn’t vote for him and if I had been given an opportunity to revote, I would have voted for Hillary Clinton. The Democratic Party then chose to even take some votes from Hillary and give them to Barack, a very undemocratic thing to do. This and what happened in Florida has set the stage for a lot of what’s ailing the Democratic Party today. The Democratic Party has for a long time acted in an elitist manner. They have assumed that they know what is best for their constituents, even if their constituents think otherwise. This is the main problem with the party. They don’t listen to their people. I called the Michigan Democratic Party when all of this was happening and I was treated poorly and even hung up on. It’s hard to trust a party when they treat you like crap. Well, fast forward two years to the November election.
It’s hard to see how anything has really changed. I had high hopes that President Obama would do something to make me trust the party again. I hoped that I could start respecting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid again. It hasn’t really happened. I’ve written on here that we should vote for the Democrats because the Republicans are worse. Isn’t that just a wonderful reason to vote? Neither party is worth a damn these days.
The Democratic Party and President Obama have framed the last two years so there are four things that come to my mind: We are still in these stupid wars. We have a health care bill that no one seems to understand. We have bailed out banks that didn’t bail out the American people. We have a president that much like his predecessor likes to go on vacation a lot, acts clueless when it comes to real people and their needs, and has even embraced some of his Republican policies.
When President Obama came into office I was hoping he could convince me that he was the right choice. It would be foolish for me or anyone else to want him to fail. We’re talking about our country here. I don’t want us to fail. However, after two years, it’s hard to see what has really changed. For all that talk about how things were going to “change”, much has stayed the same. Washington is as hateful as it always has been, it’s as corrupt as it always has been and it’s as clueless as it always has been. Even in the midst of economic disaster these politicians cannot seem to get anything done for the people. They are too busy trying to get reelected than to do their jobs! So if they lose their jobs this November, I have no sympathy.
Everything the Democrats have tried to do they have washed down so much that it looks more like a Republican plan than a Democratic plan. The health care bill didn’t fix anything. We won’t know exactly what it will do until 2014 when much of it kicks in. We do know that people with a more progressive agenda did not get their way. Single payer was taken off long before the bill was completed. John Edwards said if you let the corporations come to the table they would eat all the food because they’re a bunch of hogs. I know, there I go about John Edwards again. He is a horrible person and that’s what we are supposed to remember. What I choose to remember are the policies he talked about. He was right about this one. President Obama invited those pigs in and they ate all the food. Special deals were made. Drug companies and insurance companies must have been pretty happy after all of this because they now have new customers that must buy from them. It’s a closed market. We are forced to buy from a corporation without any real cost cutting measures in place. In fact, the people that supported a more progressive agenda for health care issues were not even invited to dine to supply their ideas on this discourse. The people that really wrote the deal were insiders for the insurance companies. You can’t play that slight of hand trick with the cards over and over and expect your people to continue to believe in you. Of course the Democratic Party knows what is best for us even if we don’t. This elitist attitude is what’s ailing the party. They just don’t respect the intelligence of their voters.
Many of us Democrats, or used to be Democrats, would like to see the money that is going over to Iraq and Afghanistan come back home and help our war torn societies. We have spent so much money overseas that we don’t have the money we need to run our city and state governments. Times are tough. Most of us want to take care of our own. Many of us would like to see these wars resolved and the troops brought home. President Obama was supposedly against the Iraq war but what he has done is really just shift the troops to Afghanistan. It’s like these wars will never end. If you have a child in kindergarten, chances are he may be fighting in the Middle East after he graduates! At home we have to down size everything in our governments which means less police, less service, less education, basically less of everything so we can keep fighting over there.
The Democratic Party is clueless to what was happening with the American people. The number one priority should have been jobs. James Carville was right when he said, “It’s the economy stupid!” It is the economy. The stimulus package did some good but it fell far short from what it could have done. The bickering over extending unemployment didn’t help. Making the unemployment issue into “politics as usual” didn’t help. When the Democrats cry that they can’t get anything done because they don’t have enough Democrats when they have so many, they appear ‘WEAK”. They make the Republicans look strong as opposed to appearing just plain bad. If the Democrats can’t figure out how to run things with the numbers they have, maybe they deserve to lose. The Republicans didn’t have those numbers but they always managed to get what they wanted when they had control. This tells me that either there are far too many DINO’s or Republicans are just better at the game.
Another thing that has really bothered me about the Democratic Party is their lack of female candidates. The Republicans were smart enough to realize that there were a lot of women upset after the 2008 election and the way Hillary was treated. I have noticed there are a lot of Republican women running for office. They sound a lot like feminists even though they have a conservative agenda. I want more women in office. I could be tempted to vote for a Republican woman just because women are so under represented. We are over half of the population and yet our laws are still largely written by white men! When the Democratic Party comes out and attacks these women much like they have this last week with Christine O’Donnell they are tugging at another old wound from 2008. Many of the women that I have come to know online since 2008 that were Democrats could easily vote for some of these women. Many would like to see more Democratic female candidates but we recognize that the Democratic Party treats their female candidates horribly. For as much as the Democratic Party would like us all to believe that they are a “big tent” when it comes to women, they still want us kept in our “place”. Much like the Catholic Church we are supposed to sit on the sidelines and be supportive. We are expected to be out at the grass roots level helping to campaign for the candidates. We can lick envelopes, pass out flyers, make phone calls, canvas an area and make a financial contribution but we aren’t supposed to run the place!
Now I finally come to President Obama. He governs much like his predecessor. In fact I think he is a Republican. He appears to be channeling Ronnie, not Jack or Lyndon and certainly not FDR! A few weeks ago I heard a woman on CSPAN refer to Barack Obama as a socialist. I can only wish he would have more of a social agenda. She is dead wrong. She said that the media didn’t do their job. If they had shown what a socialist he was, she and a lot of other people wouldn’t have voted for him. I thought that was ridiculous. He really is everything I expected from the election. I always thought he was more of a Republican and that’s why I didn’t care for him. I heard his speech the summer of 2007 at the National Education Association conference and he talked about “merit pay”. (I watched the video on the NEA website.) Merit pay has always been “union busting” talk from my point of view. This has been something the Republicans have pushed for years. It came true under a Democrat. Unbelievable, but true! I don’t know exactly how it will work. I do know that if you want teachers to teach for a test, that is exactly what they will do. The problem is; it’s just a test. It may not mean anything when it comes down to real education for your child! President Obama has also been absolutely insensitive to working class America. At a time when so many people are out of work and struggling to make ends meet, he vacations continually. His family vacations much like President Bush did. We have seen so many pictures of the Obama family on vacation that they don’t look like they have a care in the world. President Clinton could “feel our pain”. President Obama looks and acts like he is clueless to what the American people are going through. If he had a clue, he would dial down these many vacations. A lot of people gave up their vacations. Others haven’t vacationed in years because they can never afford it!
In conclusion, if the Democratic Party loses in November, they have no one to blame but themselves. It’s not because the Republicans are a better alternative, far from it. The Republicans are a horrible choice. It is because the Democratic Party forgot the people that put them where they are today. We voted them in and gave them their jobs. We handed the keys to the house and expected it would be taken care of. Instead when we got home it’s like the wayward teenager that had a party. Some stuff got broken and it didn’t get fixed. We’re mad as hell parents looking for answers to our wayward teen’s choices and we are getting ready to ground him. If the Democratic Party wants us to get fired up to vote them back in, they better start coming up with better excuses for their behavior than what we have been hearing! They better stop taking all of us for granted. They better repair the damage they created in 2008 and they better start respecting women! They also better stop sounding like REPUBLICANS! If we want a Republican in office, we will vote for them. They could take care of a big issue right now that would show what a true Democrat would do. They could let the tax cut for the wealthy expire. Instead we keep hearing talk of an extension which means in 2012 there will be another fight to either extend it or make it permanent. If they would act like Democrats right now and vote to extend the tax cuts for the working people and get rid of it for the wealthy, they could maybe save their party!
Truthfully, I should be thanking the Democratic Party. If they hadn’t stolen my vote in 2008, I might not be writing this today. I probably would never have even considered dealing with my thoughts on this website at all. When my son set this up as a place for me to write this past Christmas, it was largely because of the events that happened in 2008. He knew I was online a lot and writing comments on other sites. He thought I might like writing my own blog. I never had really given it much thought. Now, I have discovered my voice. In many ways I have always considered myself to be, “Silent Kate”. I would go online and even post many places under that moniker. I was a silent voice looking for a home. I now have my home. I just don’t have my party. This woman will be silent no longer. There are a lot of women out there like me looking for a political party that will actually represent them. If the Democratic Party would like our votes, they should step up to the plate and encourage more women to run for office and they should stop belittling every Republican woman that runs just because she is a woman. So, if the Democratic Party loses in November, they deserve it!
