So a bunch of us are going to the YearlyKos convention in Chicago and some right-wing shock-merchant is selling lies and spinning half-truths.
What else is new?
When the ping-pong game of the news cycle gets to be too much and the latest artificial outrage threatens to overflow the banks of even my capacity for purple prose, it's time to get back to the roots.
The most important people in Democratic politics don't even know it.
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It's the kid with the anger in his eyes I saw on my way to the swimming pool...anger at the injustice of a school system that's written him off in the fifth grade...anger at a society that tells him every day that he is less than a full citizen because of the color of his skin just like his dad and his uncles.
It's the overweight mom I see in my neighborhood. The one with two young children who has pre-diabetes and doesn't know it yet. She lives in a society that won't give her preventative care or nutritional education, but which underwrites big corporations that sell her super-sized food that is silently eating away at her body.
It's the small town single mom sitting at the kitchen table late at night smoking a cigarette...taxed to the last dollar like all the working poor...trying to figure out how to pay the electric bill and still have rent money on a cleaning woman's wages.
It's the hard-working, middle-class 60-year-old facing an outsourced job and a failed pension who's shown up on time, paid his dues, but is now looking down the barrel of a retirement plan that's gone up in rust-belt smoke.
It's that hopeful nurse in a rural hospital who spends her day cradling low birth-weight babies in a society that stopped caring about some of its children with the rise of the political party that's "abstinence-only."
It's a 34-year old father from the exurbs looking at his third tour of duty in Iraq...and his seven-year-old daughter watching him go.
It's that bright scientist who left his job at the university and whose therapeutic breakthrough will now be the property of a major pharmaceutical. It's the 47-year-old uninsured dad with credit card debt who won't be able to afford that therapy...and the mid-level insurance executive who will break the news to him. It's a mom with breast cancer thinking about her children.
It's the immigrant worker in the lettuce fields whose daughter is a United States citizen. He breaks his back in the hot sun so she can have a better future even though some folks in this country would split up his family.
It's the career government servant who has seen her department turn from a commitment to public service to a commitment to serving politicians.
It's the police officer in a big city who can't afford a house in that city. It's the teacher in a suburb who lives with a roommate and drives forty miles to work. It's the farmer on the edge of a growing town who knows that he's going to have to sell his land to a developer. It's the federal prosecutor who got fired to make way for a political appointee. It's a gay man who can't talk about his partner at his place of employment.
It's that girl I saw on the subway who looked at me with that curious stare. She doesn't even know about global warming.
It's the homeless mentally ill man whom I know is somebody's brother. It's the nanny waiting for the bus at 5AM. It's union janitors and garbage collectors and meat packers. It's the American citizens we left behind after Hurricane Katrina.
It's the salesman in the elevator who straightens his tie on the way to make the sale...and jokes about the emptiness of it over a martini. It's the white collar employee who realizes his kids won't be able to afford the college he attended. It's the retiree whose best friend sneaks off to work a part-time job. It's the grandmother in a nursing home slipping off into another reality.
It's the parent of a soldier serving in Iraq.
It's the mother cradling her daughter to sleep in Kirkuk. It's the father watching his children fall asleep after a long day's work in Bangladesh. It's the lone sibling in a family with HIV in Uganda. It's the dad picking through industrial refuse in a dump in China.
None of these people care about Democratic politics. None of these people care about YearlyKos or Bill O'Reilly.
But if you can fully understand what they are going through, the policy implications, the political task-at-hand, what steps we need to take in our system of government, the laws we need to pass...if you can put yourself in their shoes...then you can also understand what I mean when I say tonight:
the most important person in Democratic politics is you.