Driving home today, SiriusXM 70’s on 7 played Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign theme song. I was a foot soldier in that campaign and it brought back memories, hence the title of this diary.
It felt so good after 12 years of Reaganism to fight back. To be with comrades from all walks of life, from blue collar workers to University professors. I registered as a Democrat for the first time. In the Chicago suburbs your best bet to affect policy was to register as a Republican and vote in the Republican primary. But as the title song says:
“Baby, baby, where did our love go? Ooh, don’t you want me? Don’t you want me no more?”
We were betrayed by the Centrists who just wanted our votes but stripped away the last vestiges of the New Deal in their infatuation with Wall Street and it’s money and power.
“Baby, baby, where did our love go?
And all your promises of a love forevermore!
I’ve got this burning, burning, yearning feelin’ inside me
Ooh, deep inside me, and it hurts so bad!”
Howard Dean and his incendiary San Francisco speech picked me up from the floor, raised our hopes again and I gladly became an acolyte, shaking his hand at a scorching hot Navy Pier campaign rally. I wonder what happened to the black lady that shepherded me through the crowd. “You want to shake his hand? Follow me!” and she started pushing people aside as I followed in her wake. Barack Obama was starting his Senatorial run and I saw several placards in the crowd. I was surprised when the black lady told me she didn’t trust him. She didn’t like his record in the Illinois Senate. I went to the meet ups and contributed to the campaign. I had wanted to go Iowa but my wife dissuaded me stating she needed me at home to help her with the three grandsons that were suddenly in our care. Then after he lost, it seemed that he sold out to Wall Street and the Centrists as well.
Before you won my heart (baby, baby)
You were a perfect guy
But now that you got me
You wanna leave me behind (baby, baby)
Then I joined a group that was trying to establish an independent Democratic presence in the Suburbs. Independent of Chicago, that is. Rahm Emanuel squelched that, running ex-Republicans against us in the primaries, using DNC money to do it. I’ll hand it to him, he knew how to run a professional campaign with paid petition takers and canvassers. Requiem in Pacem, hopes for a suburban voice.
What can I say about the horrors that followed? Barack Obama’s fellation of Jamie Dimon and the other Wall street moguls, ignoring the outright fraud that stripped millions from their homes. His enthusiastic embrace of the Forever War. His thirst to cheat retirees of their earned Social Security benefits. But the Party had decided that “Demographics is Destiny” and started open race hatred of “old white men”. You’re old! You’re white! You’re a man! You’re the scum of the earth and the embodiment of everything evil. Besides, you live in flyover country,Hicksville, and the beautiful people live on the Coasts. Bringing us to the present day and the official disdain of “old white men”.
You came into my heart (baby, baby) so tenderly
With a burning love (baby, baby)
That stings like a bee (baby, baby)
Now that I surrender (baby, baby) so helplessly
You now want to leave (baby, baby)
Ooh, you wanna leave me (baby, baby)
“What becomes of the brokenhearted who had love that’s now departed?” asked Jimmy Ruffin. The Republican Party is no answer. That’s just leaving a two-timing bitch for a syphilitic whore. The Green Party seems to be a bunch of dilettantes who want to play at running for office with no real strategy, just like the Libertarian Party is.
Baby, baby, baby don’t leave me
Ooh, please don’t leave me all by myself!
I guess the answer is celibacy, joining the majority that don’t vote at all. If you don’t vote, you won’t be betrayed. If you don’t love, you won’t be hurt.
