As you sit whining over your beer, your wine or your weed, depending on your persuasion, complaining about being betrayed, may I suggest you take a deep breath and consider what you really want to happen in the election and what you really want to start happening next year?
Sorry, I'm an old lady and I'm feeling a wee bit tetchy at the moment. Why? Because I've fought these damn battles before.
Civil Rights, Vietnam, Watergate, loss of the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievance, executive privilege, COINTELPRO, your dad's a commie so we'll fire him (even though he never was, really) and on and on.
What is she talking about?
She's talking about peaceful civil rights marchers being fire-hosed and attacked by dogs.
She's talking about 18000 marchers being arrested and locked up in the stadium in Washington, D.C. for holding a peaceful march against the war. Hell, we were subversives, don'tcha know? And when the parade marshals kept pushing the unruly back into line and telling them to behave, the D.C. police decided to cause a riot by teargassing us. (Sound like Chicago?)
Every generation or so, we have to take back our Constitution. Those who want to do it overnight are obviously young or inexperienced in the ways of men and government. You have two choices: outright revolution, or massaging the system.
Well, let me tell you: The American Revolution didn't happen overnight either. Years of bloody conflict preceded the day when our Founding Fathers could actually sit down and start to write the Constitution, and even then it got ugly because the southern states refused to agree because they had smaller populations and thus would have less representation and hence the despicable 3/5ths of a man rule about slaves. (Compromise is a bitch, isn't it? But Constitution or no Constitution was the question at hand... and sensibilities were a bit different in those times.) In return, we got the Bill of Rights. That very thing you're up in arms to defend right now.
So skip the revolution. Heck, when we had one, only a third of us supported it anyway.
So back to petitioning for redress. The idealism of youth is a powerhouse. It makes noise, stands at barricades and generally makes sure folks are paying attention. Then us old gray heads wake up to the noise and think "Hell, it happened again. We have to fix it."
Yeah. As a former idealist/protester/fighter for all that should be good and right in this country, including my freaking First Amendment rights, I can tell you something: the idealists power up and rattle the roof. Then the gray heads, the pragmatists, start moving.
It's a slow process. It takes time. You measure victories in little bits, like when the Supreme Court ruled that the NY Times could publish the classified Pentagon Papers. Like when a federal judge said Nixon could not withhold his White House tapes, like when a lumbering congress finally got around to having the Judiciary Committee examine the possibility of Articles of Impeachment.
Anyway you slice it, when it comes time to take back our rights, it takes time.
So the question now is, do you want a more responsive government than we've had since the Gingrich Repugs took over Congress in 1994? Because if you do, then you'd damn well better make sure the dems win by a landslide. Not by 51%, but by a landslide. That means rucking up, sucking up and pressing on, even when you're not 100% happy with the party or a candidate.
Because there's one thing I know for sure: The Repugs don't give a damn about the average Joe, whatever his color. The Dems aren't perfect, but they give more of a damn about what you and I have to say, and always have. And since they're looking for their dollars from our little pockets, they're going to listen even better.
But if you keep on whining and threatening to drop out, and crying betrayal... we won't get that landslide. We might even get Bush McNuggets.
So kwitcher bellyaching and keep your eye on the ball. A landslide victory across the board will give us power, people. Power. And enough authority to exercise it.
And that, my dear idealists, is where the change really begins.