As many of you might know, I have been doing my political predictions. I must admit that it has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. Going from state to state isn’t exactly easy, especially when you are doing mathematical calculations for every Congressional race along the way.
But I just finished my most recent election prediction in which I picked Jack Conway to defeat Rand Paul in the upcoming Kentucky Senate election.
And, honestly, writing about it made me sick.
While writing the prediction, I tried to take all emotion out of the equation and make a pure prediction based on the numbers. But sometimes I have to make a gut decision…and my gut says that people won’t stand for a candidate whose supporters throw a woman to the ground and start kicking her. Again, I hope my gut is right. And if my gut is wrong, God help this country!
For the last year, the Republicans, especially the Tea Party supporters, have tried to intimidate liberals into not voting. They show up with guns to events, not to “support their Second Amendment rights”, but to intimidate liberals.
They throw money at an Alzheimer’s patient, not to show compassion for the man, but to belittle him and make him feel shamed.
The Republican Hispanic groups run adds telling Hispanics not to vote.
The Republicans do wrong time and time again. And yet time and time again, we let them get away with it.
The first person that I am going to blame for the Republicans getting away with this type of violence and lawlessness is myself. With this blog, I have a forum in which I could express my opinion. And in the past, I have said some pretty strong things against the Republicans. Still, the fact that I don’t continue to attack them is totally my fault.
The second group of people I blame is all of you liberal supporters. Just like myself, we let this happen. We don’t protest anymore. We don’t demonstrate anymore. We don’t work to fight for what we believe in anymore. We just don’t do it anymore. And the fact that we might lose the House in seven days is all my fault and yours as well.
But the third group of people I blame, and I blame them the most, is the Democratic Party. For years we have been playing this game of moderation. We have had this illusion that we can “get along with Republicans”. We think that everyone will sit around a campfire and hammer out a health care reform bill that will please everyone!
Sorry Democrats, but you are dead wrong!
The health care bill is just one example where you sold out to the GOP. We see Democrats do it time and time again. While there are a few brave Members of Congress that will stand up and fight for their principals, like our Congressman Alan Grayson and Ohio’s Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a majority of our Democratic Members of Congress, state legislature and other government bodies work to “compromise”.
Those days are over. We are now at war!
There is a big difference between people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi and ourselves. The first two fought against injustice, no matter the price. Both men fought for equality. Both men died for their fight as well.
But we do not fight. We write letters to the editor. We maybe have a rally. We maybe do some stuff that nobody really cares about. But if we think it will mess up our hair or our nails, we have second thoughts about doing things.
That is the difference between MLK and today’s average Democrat.
During the “town halls”, we saw a number of Republicans nearly breaking down doors to make their point. We looked at them, pointed at them and laughed. Now, they are poised to take control. We can’t let that happen.
Like I said, this is now a war. But this is not just one war, but two wars.
The first war is the obvious war. This is the war against the Tea Party and the extremist that look to turn our country over to the right-wing extremists and the corporations. They look to destroy equality, and only support helping the wealthy. This is the obvious war that we are all, kind of, fighting today.
The second war that we have is in the Democratic Party itself. President Obama ran on “Change” while at the same time promoting compromise. His “red state, blue state” speech was basically one big compromise speech! We need to change this!
While I hate the Tea Party with an extreme passion, they did teach us one thing. They taught us that a group of people within a political party, who aren’t part of the party establishment, can take their party back and actually be quite successful in doing so. And with the takeover of the GOP by the Tea Party, party leaders are now bowing down to the Tea Party leaders. They are now in control.
We liberals in the Democratic Party need to do the same thing. We need to run progressive and “liberal” (yes, I use that word proudly) candidates against incumbent Democratic candidates that are basically Republican-lite. What is the use of voting for and standing for Democratic principals if you elected someone that does not want to live by those principals? Therefore, in order for us to get our party back, we need to have a “Tea Party type movement” of liberals…running for office…conducting protests…not shying away from the tough decisions, in order for our democracy to work.
But, as I said before, we need to stand up to the GOP and the Tea Party. We need to let the Tea Party know that their guns won’t keep us away from anything. We need to let the Tea Party know that if you want to assault a woman, we will not stand idly by. We need to let the Tea Party know that if you are going to push legislation that will harm America, and turn our country over to the greedy corporations, we will pound on your door as well and make our presence known at your “town hall events”.
This is war.
We need to organize. We need to not be afraid. We need to let them know as well that we are no longer afraid. And if we lay down and cowardly let the Republicans destroy America, we can only blame ourselves.
And of course, like in any war, there might be costs. One of these Tea Partiers might pull out a gun and shoot a liberal. We don’t know. But we can no longer make this scare tactic of theirs work. We must stand strong.
In the movie Gandhi, Ben Kingsley, portraying Gandhi, said a quote that has always stuck with me, and that can sum up our cause. Here is that quote:
“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me, then they will have my dead body. NOT MY OBEDIENCE!”
How much does this country mean to you? How much does the intimidation by the right-wing mean to you? How much does right versus wrong mean to you?
If you are ready to fight the good fight, we all need to join together, take back our party, and take back our country.
But if you don’t feel that you are ready for this commitment, then please step aside, because the rest of us are ready for war.
And, I would like to end this post with this final video. Maybe it will help you understand what we are up against.
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