Ten years ago, I hosted my extended family’s annual Thanksgiving get-together. Do you know what everyone was debating? How much longer Gore and Lieberman should continue fighting for the election victory they had won but been denied. My position was that they owed it to all the people who knocked on doors and made phone calls for them to fight to the very end. I think the consensus view was that they just wanted it to be over.
I spent the next eight years just wishing it would be over. Then, one day, it was. But even before it was over I realized that our new president would be subjected to unremitting criticism from all sides. So, it wasn’t over. There would never be any rest. It would never be over.
Ten years gone. Ten years wasted. <p
A new decade, now with More Stupid.
Ten years ago my grandfather died the day before Thanksgiving. My brother and I were coming into town and missed him by a few hours. He was a diehard FDR Democrat–the only one in his Orange County neighborhood.
We had dinner at his house anyway–the whole extended yours/mine/ours family–put his place-setting at the head of the table where it was supposed to be, and laughed and cried all night from the shock that he was gone and the happiness that he no longer felt any pain. The election was not something we were concerned with right then.
However, earlier that year, my aunt attended a Gore/Lieberman rally, and Lieberman was there. My granddad was pretty far gone by then but still lucid, and he would have gone to this thing if he could, so my aunt was preoccupied with this amidst the crush and noise of the rally.
For some reason (because she never does stuff like this) when the speeches were done, she pressed to where Lieberman was and held out a card or paper or something for him to sign.
“Senator, Senator, will you sign this for my dad?”
And Lieberman, who didn’t know her or my granddad, took it, signed it, gave it back, and maybe saw something heavy in her face, because he held her hand and said “Your dad will be fine.”
Interpret that how you will. I didn’t like him then, and I like him even less now, but to hear my aunt tell that story, at that time, made me a few shades less cynical and snide (I was almost 24 and full of that stuff, and I’d voted Nader).
Then again, my grandfather always said “People are no damn good.” He grew up in Cleveland during the Depression, after all.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Seriously.
your grandfather was right, too.
In other news, Advertising Age analyzes the 2010 Democratic strategy.
Democrats, Obama Failed by Abandoning Core Consumers
years wasted if Obama had some balls. His laying down in the road and asking the Republicans to run over him was an invitation to “unremitting criticism from all sides”.
When the President stands up I will gladly stand behind him.
This is Geov Parrish;s comment from the first post of this double posted story (I deleted the first one but copied Geov’s comment so it would not be lost):
No. Not wasted.
I’ve had this discussion with innumerable activists who got discouraged or felt burned out. We have to take care of ourselves, sure, but we also need to recognize the successes from our work that generally never get pointed out to us.
First, even when times get unrelentingly worse – and we have seen some progress in the past ten years, even amidst all the backsliding and grimness (Obama’s agenda, gay rights, to name two) – we never know how much worse they might have otherwise been without public opposition and resistance. How’d the invasion of Iran work out? Your Social Security stocks doing OK?
Secondly, even when we have no impact on public policy, we impact ourselves, each other, and the people and communities around us. We’re standing up for ourselves and modeling principled behavior to everyone who sees us. And that’s worth…a lot.
You’ve contributed more than most, Boo. It’s easy to get discouraged, but you’ve touched more lives, in a positive way, than you know. We all have. Buck up.
Martin: three words – You’re a father.
What does that mean? It means you take the long view. Ten years is a drop in time no matter how long it seemed to you, but in that time you met the love of your life and had a child and Bush was defeated.
You (as are we all) are engaged a long war now for the future of your child. Ever since my son was born in 1989, I’ve known that to be true for me.
In every war despair is our greatest enemy. Do not despair. You can’t afford that emotion, not with Finn;s future and the future of all our children and grandchildren on the line. The war is not over and you are one of its best warriors.
I’d nominate this for top comments if we had one here.
Not wasted, lived. You weren’t wrong, nor was your family. We have to fight the tendency to give up, and seek inspiration where we can find it. The political world offers very little of that.
Remember – No Satisfaction. Also “life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
Read Clarissa Pinkola Estes “You Were Made For This”
Really it was a good ten years if you narrow the focus a bit. You started a family and a community!
I recently finished reading Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow for the second time in 35 years. I was struck by two reactions to that literary classic: 1) We’ve made some progress since the 1920’s; 2)We’re still fighting the same damn class war. Ten years is nothing in this long struggle that has been going on for centuries. It may feel like we’ve lost ground but no effort is ever wasted in trying to hold the line.
Not to be overly technical…
but my recollection was not so much that Gore should concede but that both Gore and Bush were not serving the nation by dragging it out with lawyers. The point was an election settled that way would put a scar on the presidency and the nation. That both men, if they were worthy of being president would put nation first an find a way together to resolve the issue as honorable men.
I still don’t know what that answer would have been, but ten years on the players are more than ever singularly interested in making the other side look bad and winning elections, not governing.
Check that. I think it is clearer than ever that the GOP is singularly interested in this and better at it too. Sadly, because they are better at it they don’t have to be better at actually governing.
Two somewhat trite but relevant expressions come to mind:
“Don’t let the bastards wear you down.” Something my Dad always emphasized, meaning that if they make you give up they’ve won by default.
“You eat an elephant one bite at a time.” This one has a double meaning if anyone can figure it out, but I think it’s important to remember that each very small thing eventually adds up over time. We just have to keep taking small bites…
Keep the faith, Boo!
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