From this perch on the outer edge, America, that vast ..um…inbetweenness that separates the coasts, can look like a murky cauldron being stirred by others. Who knows whats going on in there?
As I write, half the news stories are about how although there were no gaffes, no game-changing disclosures in the recent presidential debate, the election is a whole new ballgame, a virtual tie.
Whoops.. . I’m wrong, new poll just in: Romney now leading. What’s going on?
Obama’s lead had made sense to me. It’s clear to me how my fellow Americans should be voting, given well-known statistics defining the self-interest of major constituencies, and the philosophy and traditional behavior of the two parties. What doesn’t make sense is that debate style–a guy having an off night– should still be having any influence at all.
I mean, how many of us can there be who find themselves hankering for a return to the good old days pre- Roe v Wade? That one issue alone should be enough to decide in favor of Obama , since a vote for Romney will mean Supreme Court appointments that are very likely to result in a reversal of the 1974 ruling.
If all you want, as the author of a letter to this paper put it, is just to be “left alone “to “live your own life,” then sure, you vote the party of small government, reduced entitlements. But how many of us can there be who are that naïve?
Surely “entitlements” is not a dirty word true for most, but rather We the People taxing ourselves to give ourselves what we feel we need under the circumstances. Unless for some obscure reason social security, graduated income tax, medicare and the like strike you as a mistake instead of a crucial and much needed intervention, then and now, you vote the party that presided over their creation, the only party committed to protect them.
In a letter to this paper recently a writer “wishes to declare that I am one of the 53 percenters.” and recommends that path to everyone. I understand why such a man would vote for Romney and Brown. But I resist believing that there can be many of us walking around with this writer’s smug, self-made- man delusion with its built-in contempt for half of humanity.
There’s that 47% loser quotient so infamously cited by Romney. And, according to recent “New Yorker” article, 56% of people at retirement age have less than $28,000 in retirement savings. If your reaction to these figures is: Well that’s about right, we can’t all be winners (afterall, we don’t blame the game of tennis for its paltry 50% win rate), then you know what lever to pull.
But surely most people reject the tennis analogy and see it as an indictment of the way the pursuit- of -happiness game is set up that at least 50% pursue it unsuccessfully. (That exact figure of course depending on your definition of success.) That ‘s known Democratic Party thinking.
How many of us can there be after 2008 who don’t get it that capitalism and democracy are, to put it mildly, strange bedfellows–chickens and foxes—and that the chickens of the 99% need government big enough to stand up to big business foxes in our behalf. There’s only one party that sees things that way.
I read that some of our billionaires have begun to speak of themselves as a minority victim class, since Obama is out to take some of their loot. I can see how some of them might entertain such self-serving nonsense. But surely we don’t buy it?
I’m told that there are fellow citizens who get a vicarious thrill at watching the very rich get even richer. Such people know which vote will secure that. The Republicans, including our avowedly middle -of -the- road Scott Brown, have made it perfectly clear they have no intention of returning to the much higher tax rates on the wealthiest of 30-40 years ago.
But come on, that can’t be most of us. Can it?
Given all logic I can make it out, this should be a shoo-in for Obama and Warren. Clearly, as we await the second debate, I’m missing some key to the thinking of fellow voters.
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