A Day at the Races

My politically plugged-in friends and I are taking bets on the upcoming election. Who will take back the House? By how much? Will we win in MN-06? Will Webb eke one out against Macacca? Lamont/Liebermann? Oh, it's all gold! Come November, I'll probably have fifty dollars riding on the midterm elections.

In some ways, politics is like sports for me. I've got my home team, the guys I want to win. I'll jaw with my friends, cheer when we win,  and cry, I mean punch the wall all manly-like when we lose.

I don't know if it was Mr. Olbermann's jaw-dropping critique of Secretary Rumsfeld and the Bush administration; I don't know if it was reading the names of the dead on the News Hour With Jim Lehrer tonight; I don't know if it was the heartbreaking, infuriating, beautiful Katrina diaries here on Dailykos. I don't know what it was, but something is different now.

I feel, well, embarrassed.

I've never felt embarrassed by this before. And even now, I know I shouldn't be. We would all lose our minds if it we didn't have a little fun. There are too many terrible things out there for a person to bear. Politics can be an ugly, brutal place. And as we all know, the world today is not want for tragedy.

But I've been treating politics like a game. Like a spectator sport. Sure, I've volunteered, interned, gave a little cash, and written some here. And to be sure, I've felt anger stronger than I knew I could feel; I've felt compassion more deeply than I knew I had; I've felt these things because of a deep and sometimes overwhelming desire to use politics to make things better.

But sometimes I'll become detached from why I fight. I'll get too caught up in the fun of politics, and I will forget that people's jobs, people's homes, people's lives rely on that which I would so cavalierly play.

Katrina reminded us, again, of the hubris of this administration and it's all too real consequences. It reminded us of the cold and despicable differences between rich and poor, black and white, the remembered and the forgotten.

Those dead in Iraq and Afganistan, in Israel and Lebannon, in Sudan and Rawanda, in every place where war's cruel shade has fallen, they call to us.

The downtrodden and the weak, the hungry and homeless sleep tonight in my city with only the bleakest hope for comfort. They sleep tonight in every city, in every state, in every country.

It is a time of withering hatred and unweatherable strife. And we can--we must strive to make things better. It is chaos at its most beautiful and most terrible. A butterfly flaps its wings, and it rains in New York, a man in a village, far, far away loses hope, and buildings fall.

As Dailykos has shown me, politics doesn't have to be a spectator sport. The Act Blue Netroots page took in thousands and thousands of dollars. Campaigns will be waged because of us. Senators will fall because of us. Freepers will weep because of us.

I'll have my fun still, I'll bet on elections, talk and speculate about the "show that doesn't stop." I'll have my moment. But when it's done, I'll remember this, from the late Senator Paul Wellstone:

Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.

•  Tip me

  then go tip the home team.

  by Shef on Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 12:57:05 AM PDT

•  Great post

  I'll recommend.
  I couldn't sleep well last night because I kept thinking about Olbermann's sign-off speech and Rocky Anderson's inspiring speech in Salt Lake City.  I hate to get too excited, but I do sense a change in this country.  Lets not beat the Freepers, lets convert them.  We need everyone on our side in order to make the necessary changes in this country.

  by myrealname on Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 04:21:40 AM PDT