I am as upset as the rest of you are, but I beg you to read all the way through what I have to say.
This article might ramble some, but I hope it will be nonetheless helpful, if not inspirational.
My read on people, outside of our liberal blue-base, is that they simply do not care if a candidate is too old, crazy, a woman, or whatever color. Sure, there are a lot of people who are ageist, sexist, racist, or whatever, but on the other side of the coin those issues are just not enough to rally people to your side by proclaiming:
“I’m old, but HEY I’M NOT CRAZY!”
“I’m not old!” or,
“I’m a woman of color! Vote for me!”
Most people, many of my friends and family included, react to such statements by asking, “okay, but what does your being a woman do for me? What does breaking a ‘glass ceiling’ do for the price of food, gas, housing, and for inflation? What does it matter that you can check off multiple racial boxes? So what?”
Yes, I know, Democrats are the correct choice on all of these issues — but it is clearly not obvious to the masses.
Whether or not Harris was the better choice, who the hell knows? Was it messaging? Was it the mainstream media? Was it just pure plain bigotry combined with liberal apathy? Russians?
I do not have definite answers to those issues. I had come to believe, despite my initial fears (
www.dailykos.com/...) that Harris would be able to pull it off. Despite us having in hindsight worse odds than in 2020 (Biden or not), I had convinced myself that Trump had hit his ceiling
and that we would surpass it. As it would turn out, Trump had hit his ceiling by not receiving any more physical votes than he did in 2020, but we fell far short of surpassing that [glass] ceiling. The words of many proved to be prophetic — the Latino/African American male voter swing indeed proves that more of us are not ready for a woman President than we feared. I also fear the Democratic in-fighting surrounding Biden proved to be fatal, as we completely failed to sell Biden’s economic successes. As was said at the time, “how are we going to sell it that Biden was a success while simultaneously stabbing him in the back?”
I felt downtrodden when Biden was ousted as the DNC Presidential Candidate. I felt perhaps Biden was not the right candidate for truly defeating MAGAism, sure — but given the circumstances I thought it would be suicidal to have Biden kicked to the curb after the primaries.
What difference does it make?
What difference does it make to switch candidates only to lose anyway?
Regardless.
Whatever your take, what WAS done did not win us this election. You can make whatever arguments you want about how “Biden would have been worse.” We lost anyway. We must have a reckoning within our party, but that is all a conversation for another day.
I say all of this to explain why I stepped away from writing for DailyKos regularly. Despite what I am about to describe, constantly being “plugged in” was extremely bad for my health and was making my condition worse.
I have mentioned it before, but I contracted Covid-19 in February of 2023 while working as a Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney (ASA). This infection turned into Long Covid (
www.dailykos.com/...). The Long Covid attacked my mind and my body, crippling me and leaving me with complete cognitive dysfunction. Since that February, I have clawed my way back out from the brink. I went to physical therapy. I retrained my body to not destroy itself anytime I moved. I worked to regain my mind — my soul.
All the while, my experiences as an ASA, and other memories of my life haunted me. Prosecuting and convicting people that you have good reason to believe are innocent changes your perspective on things (a long story for another time). By being sick for so long, I lost my job anyway — not that I wished to return. To add to the fire, I had found someone that I loved very dearly in 2022. She left me the same week I contracted Covid-19 for a mutual friend. Those issues are just the tip of the iceberg for what happened last year going back through my life (I took the BAR Exam four times, only to be greeted with all of this later on).
Saying I had (have) depression would be an understatement.
The only thing that my mind could grasp, however, was history/politics. It was my mother who encouraged me to start writing here on DailyKos, as a means of re-learning how to form thoughts and express them.
I have never been so humbled by or appreciative of a group before in my life. The beautiful treatment shown to me here not only encouraged me to continue to rebuild my mind, but also showed me what I could potentially do with my life: teach.
I had hoped I could, through being an ASA, enter the world of politics someday and thereby live out my dream of making this world just a little bit of a better place. Those hopes were dashed by Long Covid. Long Covid (and everything else surrounding it) nearly killed me, body and soul. But it was by being here that I learned my voice has a greater reach and a greater impact than I ever realized, and as such my hopes were reborn. As an ASA, I could prosecute a number of individuals everyday to no gain. As a Professor of History, however, I could reach out to tens of thousands.
As a result, I have been applying to PhD Programs in History, with the exact aim of living up to Thomas Jefferson’s words:
“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”
So you see, after everything that has happened, am I scared about these election results?
No.
I am resolute.
I will be that guy who says it out loud.
We will be okay.
I have looked Death in the eye. I rejected His offer of embrace.
Long Covid did not kill me, and neither shall this. I did not let Long Covid kill me, and I will not let this kill me.
2016 did not kill you, neither shall this. You did not let 2016 kill you, and so you shall not let this.
Whatever may come, we shall persevere, together.
I encourage you to find strength in my words and my experiences to remind yourself of the real power of the human soul. Think about something that happened in your life that you felt was the end of everything for you. You are still here reading this sentence right now, are you not?
I am determined to win. I am submitting my PhD applications this week, and then I am going to spend some time to be happy with my friends and family…
...and then I am going to fight like I never have before.
Will you join me?
