That’s my Grandma Brooke, standing proud and tall, just as I remember her. She was a proud West Virginia Democrat. And yes, that’s me looking out from the door behind her, a mere lad of 7 years in Jan. 1959. She was Mae Lynch Brooke, of Point Pleasant West Virginia. She moved to Huntington, where she met & married my Grandfather, who passed before I was born. She was the Democratic Precinct Chair for Huntington. West Virginia was overwhelmingly Democratic then, even left leaning. The first televised Presidential debate of 1960 was held in the heavily Protestant state of West Virginia, between Catholic John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, the pundits said a Catholic couldn’t win in West Virginia. Kennedy won over 60% of the vote in West Virginia primary, effectively ending Humphrey’s campaign, and JFK carried West Virginia with 53% in the very close 1960 election.
My Grandma Brooke would no doubt be dismayed appalled at West Virginia’s tilt to the Republicans. In 2000 George W Bush was the first Republican Presidential candidate to carry West Virginia since FDR, and it's been solidly Republican ever since. I was born in Huntington in 1951, we moved to Columbus Ohio when I was only 4. I remember my father saying back then there was no future in West Virginia, there was only coal. West Virginia fell hard in 2016 for the con man from Manhattan who said he “dug coal” and praised the lie of “clean coal”. I’ve been around coal, we used to burn it in the fireplace. Coal is smelly, dirty and nasty, it’s smoke spewing out in the air we breathe is even dirtier and nastier, and leaves behind coal ash which can contain a slew of toxic heavy metals. Coal is best left in the ground, and to win back places like West Virginia we need to be honest and tell them that, and tell them we’ll replace it with investment in the technologies of the future.
But back to my Grandma Brooke: I remember that she had practically a shrine to Franklin Roosevelt in her room, pictures and other memorabilia, and one I remember very well: a bust of FDR with the highlights of his Four Freedoms Speech:
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Worship
- Freedom from Want
- Freedom from Fear
Three of those Four Freedoms are under attack today.
- Freedom of Speech? If they dare criticize tRump? Fake News!
- Freedom from Want? The deficit is ballooning from our tax cuts for corporations and the 1%, we need to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicare!
- Freedom from Fear? tRump tweets: “a very scary time for young men in America”. Yeah, how dare those women hold their abusers accountable? Be afraid, if women speak up we’ll drive them from their home into hiding with death threats, and call what they say about their abusers a lie.
Grandma Brooke’s shrine to FDR made me a Democrat, and JFK & LBJ and especially Barack Obama made me proud to be a Democrat. Grandma Brooke would never say “Screw ‘em” like bondad’s mom, she was much too much into manners. I’m glad for that, because Grandma Brooke taught me to behave as a gentleman, not as an asshole. Too bad Trump and Kavanaugh didn’t have a Grandma Brooke.
What Grandma Brooke would say is “Fight like hell!” Fight like hell in the spirit of the man she admired so much, one of our greatest Presidents who in the dark hours of the Great Depression told us:
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.
It’s been a rough week. Oh hell, it’s been a rough two years. We just have a month to go, let’s fight like hell and take back the House. Let’s fight like hell and carry every incumbent Democratic over the finish line and bring Beto O’Rourke, Phil Bredesen, Jacky Rosen and Kyrsten Sinema along with them for a Democratic Senate Majority so there are no more 50-48 Trump judges. And we once again get to enjoy all four of FDR’s Four Freedoms.