I was six years old during the first presidential election I remember, the Kennedy-Nixon match-up of 1960. I had seen both of the candidates on TV quite a bit, and I knew that every grown-up was going to have to choose between them. I remember very clearly asking my mother, who was then about thirty-seven, "Who are you going to vote for, Mom, Kennedy or Nixon?"
She replied very matter-of-factly, "Never vote for a Republican. They are for the rich people. They don't care about the little guy."
Why did she say that? Because her family and my father's family had always been among the "little guys." Her parents remembered how cheap-labor Republicans fought against the forty-hour work and child labor laws in the early twentieth century. They remembered how the Republican mania for unrestrained markets and unchecked capitalism led to the Great Crash of 1929, and how Republican refusal to help the little guy turned the crash into the Great Depression. My mom herself remembered how Republicans fought against FDR's attempts to help the little guy by means of public works programs, welfare, and social security.
The only Republican she ever showed even the slightest respect for was Dwight Eisenhower, because he at least understood the value of investing in infrastructure and curbing the Republican obsession with unlimited defense spending.
Both she and I saw how Republicans fought against the civil right movement, against medicare and medicaid, and against all Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. We both saw how Republicans tried to stifle the women's movement in its first stirrings.
When I became old enough to vote, however, I registered as an Independent. It seemed to me at the age of eighteen that my mom was being closed-minded. I thought it was unreasonable to assume that someone couldn't have a good idea just because he or she was a Republican, and I didn't want to limit my politics on the basis of party labels.
Time went on. Both mom and I saw how Republicans ran out the clock on the Equal Right Amendment, leaving women unprotected against gender-based discrimination. We both saw how Republicans under St. Ronald of Reagan and Bush I bamboozled the nation into believing in "voodoo" or "trickle-down" economics, while at the same time busting unions and eviscerating social programs and environmental regulations of the earlier half-century, all in the name of prosperity—only to have the deficit skyrocket and the economy collapse after less than a decade of their misguided policies.
We both saw Cheney/Bush II arrive in the most outrageous election since Tilden-Hayes, and immediately proceed to reenact the Reagan-Bush I policies, but on steroids, handing cheap-labor, big-business conservatives their wildest dreams by slashing taxes and devastating regulations. We both saw our nation under Republican leadership attack another nation that had not attacked us.
Mom died in September 2003.
Then I watched Cheney/Bush II continue to destroy the nation by spearheading more tax cuts while at the same time pumping up military spending to unheard-of levels but refusing to pay for their wars. All of which led to a second Great Crash, and the beginning of what might have been a second Great Depression had it not occurred at the end of the profligate Cheney/Bush II administration.
It was just facts, just a awareness of actual history (both transmitted through my family and lived for myself) that made me see the truth: Republicans have tried over and over to impose their low-tax, cheap-labor, unlimited-military-spending, starve-government fantasies on America. Every time they got the chance they exploded the deficit, and America had to elect a Democrat to straighten out the mess.
After the most recent crash, Conservatives in England, our closest ally, tried the Republican starve-the-government approach at the same time President Obama began instituting his policies. How has that worked out? England went into a second recession; the US has seen slow but stead recovery. This experiment always has the same result. Do we really need to try this again?
All the Republican nonsense that Mitt Romney is peddling in the current campaign has been tried before, both here and abroad. And it never works—unless your idea of "working" is further crushing of the 99% by the 1%.
It took me a long time, as I guess it takes a lot of people, to understand that my mother was, in one respect at least, a very wise woman. Like many people, I had to live through my own repetitions of the experiences that had given her that wisdom. About two years ago, I changed my registration from Independent to Democrat. After watching Republicans consistently trying to stop any progress for the "little guy," after observing the devastation caused by their utterly selfish and completely delusional cheap-labor economics, it is now absolutely clear to me—and ought to be to anyone in the 99%—that a vote for a Republican anywhere is a vote against the People everywhere.
"Never vote for a Republican. They are for the rich people. They don't care about the little guy."
Wherever you are, Mom, I hope you can hear me say what I should have said while you were still with us: Mom, you were right—SO right!—and I was very wrong.