Boy, have I got a case of election fatigue. This has been going on for two years now. Two years of fund-raising, speechifying, non-announcements followed by announcements. Scandals and controversies (real or not). Now we’re down to the final week. If I’m wiped out, how must the candidates themselves feel? But a couple of things stand out: 1. This race has brought out some ugliness in people. The other week on NPR a woman said she feared that blacks would start pushing white people off the sidewalks ‘if Obama won’. (She preceded this by saying she ‘wasn’t a racist’). McCain supporters openly yell ‘kill him’ at rallies, while McCain just stands there with that inane, slightly gassy grin on his face. I once had a great deal of respect for John McCain; that’s evaporated in the last year. And when conservatives like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley (William F’s kid!) throw their support behind the Democratic candidate, the entire GOP is in trouble. Few of them seem to notice. No, God promised them an election win. God knows what will happen if they don’t get it.
Now Republicans use the language of war to describe the election. Weirdly, they also use the language of victim hood, mistakenly believing that ‘persecution’ means not getting your way 100% of the time. They claim to represent the ’majority’ of Americans, but they’re constantly besieged by ‘the Liberal elite’ ( a term no one has ever explained clearly to me). They control two branches of government and most of the wealthy corporations, yet somehow they’re always being picked on. I don’t understand that. I thought only wimps complained of being picked on.
2. Elections are too long and too expensive. This sounds like a Big Fat Duh, but it can’t be said too often. The actual post-convention ‘season’ is much longer here than in Europe, where campaigns last eight to six weeks before elections. No wonder so many people don’t vote; by the time the election gets here, they’re too sick of it to care.
All of this campaigning costs money. Yard signs, placards, bumper stickers, TV ads, those slick mailers printed on that glossy paper in full color, buttons, field offices (even if most of the staff are volunteers). That’s why fund-raising occupies such a prime spot on a candidate’s to-do list. Watching all this, I realized that we’ll never have campaign-finance reform until we have campaign reform. I won’t hold my breath. But I will think of needy millions, for whom some of that cash could have done a lot of good.
Meanwhile, nothing gets done. Millions of people still have no health care, and in the self-proclaimed greatest/richest nation in the world, that’s worse than a disgrace. Roads and bridges continue to erode. College gets further and further out of reach of more and more worthy students. People here go without heat while Iraq sits on a huge surplus-and while the rank-and-file Iraqi still has no clean water. The list could go on for pages.
Why don’t more people care?
Tags:
barak obama, campaign reform, campaigns, elections, health care, iraq, john mccain, racism
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