Let’s Get to Work, Democrats
Election Night, 2006.
I watched Democrats win control of Congress in a little bar tucked away in Arizona called The Desert Martini.
The stranger wearing a straw hat next to me declared, “This is a historic night.”
I could not believe it! A country that had twice elected George W. Bush as president was really picking progressives to run the country. When Rick Santorum officially lost to Bob Casey Jr., I almost bought a shot for everyone at the Martini.
Enough nostalgia.
After four years of setting the agenda in Washington to move the country forward, this Democrat is not ready to give it up in 2010. There is too much at stake:
- Republicans are salivating over their delusional opportunity to repeal the health care reform law signed by President Obama. Congressman Gerlach would vote to repeal (and has said so on-the-record). Congressman Pitts – well you know how he would vote.
- Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett sued the federal government over the Affordable Care Act mentioned above, which would help millions of people obtain health care through private providers (not the government). Corbett would continue this crusade if he gets the keys to Harrisburg this November from outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell.
- Remember tax cuts for the rich? Well, it would see a renaissance in a GOP Congress.
We have so much more to accomplish in Obama’s first term: climate change legislation, infrastructure investments, high-speed rail, education reform, stem-cell research … you name it.
But the Party of ‘NO’ has other plans. Hijacked by the tea party uprising – one that features the same tired flavor of the John Birch Society and other anti-government forces – the Republicans are counting on you staying home on Nov. 2. Our candidates are practically running from Obama.
Republicans want you to be tired, listless, and disheartened. They want you to forget about hope and change.
E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post wrote a column early this summer entitled, “Buck up Democrats; no time to run scared.” He says Democrats ought to be proud of tackling health care, reigning in Wall Street excesses, and rolling out a bold economic stimulus that experts agree saved jobs.
Dionne wrote, “Obama is often criticized for being too professorial. The irony is that Republicans who have little to say about how to solve the nation’s major problems are dominating the country’s underlying philosophical narrative.”
The cure for Dems’ malaise, he concludes, is to “have a self-confident sense of purpose and to act boldly in its pursuit.”
Former President Bill Clinton delivered a similar message at the Dan Onoroto fundraiser in Philly last month. Hey Dan, Sestak is campaigning with Obama soon. Got any plans to use No. 44?
Chester County Democrats, and liberals everywhere, would do well by embracing these principles: Purpose. Pride. Progress. (This is also the motto of a municipality in southern New Jersey.)
Barry Goldwater, conservative presidential candidate in 1960, gets the last word in this column. Consider it a speech from the future if we continue down the lackluster road we’re on.
“We have lost election after election in this country over the past several years because (we) get mad and stay home. This country is too important for anyone’s feelings … for any man to stay home and not work just because his feelings are hurt. Let’s grow up! Let’s get to work!”
Michael Hays, the author of this post, is communications chair for the Chester County Young Democrats and a Spring City councilman.
I would like to share what the Gerlach campaign is saying about Trivedi, becuase for some reason they decided to mail me an entertaining piece of conservative literature.
On the front, we have a gigantic pencil eraser depicting the erasure of the word “jobs” with the caption “Our future is disappearing right before our very eyes…” In my humble opinion our future was in trouble since 2000, so lets open this thing up and see how he plans to make this about jobs.
First we have “Why is Trivedi, so fringe, so far-left?” Ok, so far he’s doing a really good job at securing Trivedi votes. This header proceeds to states that Trevedi wants “bigger government and spending the $1 Trillion stimulus” This sounds interesting, considering this is funding that is already in place, and could be used to create jobs now instead of padding pockets on Wall Street. This doesn’t sound like an attack on Trivedi’s ability to create jobs so far, it sounds more like reassurances of why we can’t trust Gerlach with taxpayers money.
The second large header “Trivedi’s just Wrong!” well thats saying a whole lot, so I read farther under for the caption which reads “He’s on the far-left fringe on all major issues. (the word all being underlined) I find this quite amusing, becuase it sounds like the same scare tactics the republicans used before. All this sentence is trying to do is equate the words “far-left” and “wrong”. The entire section of the mailer says absolutely nothing about the issues that matter people.
The article goes on to show concern that Trivedi would never join the fiscal conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats, more rhetoric about the “failed” stimulus and the other word they like to use in excess “taxes” I hope this article doesn’t get too much more entertaining, If those reading it hurt themselves from laughing so hard, Gerlach blocked less expensive perscription drugs from entering the country years ago in order to protect large drug companies, voted against the healthcare bill, and is now talking about being fiscally conservative and attacking heathcare reforms at every turn.
There is a giant depiction of Speaker Pelosi on the left side with a dark background, and rather blurry picture. At the bottom we have a gigantic wooden stamp with the word “wrong” printed underneath.
Everything from that point on uses the same tactics we’ve all seen before. Scare tactics and fear mongering. The claims are that he will “rubber stamp” Pelosi’s failed tax and spending policies, will raise taxes, supports “socialized goverment-run health care”, and my personal favorite “massive new wasteful goverment spending that will triple our national debt and bankrupt Social Security and Medicare” Thats news to me, The Republicans have had control of the white house and congress for years, and they already seem to have done a fair amount of wasteful spending, neglecting social security and medicare, and somehow managed to turn a significant surplus in to a massive deficit. All partisan politics aside, does he honestly think people have fogotten these simple underlying facts?
This is exactly why we should be concerned. Jim Gerlach knows he can’t defend his voting record, and he can’t attack Trivedi’s experience, so he is doing what any incumbant Republican in his position would do to try and keep his seat, try to label Trivedi with the notorious “L” word, that is supposed to scare away voters.
There is a lesson to be learned from what we’ve seen in the last ten years.
Liberal is not a bad word, and we shouldn’t be afraid to use it.
If Republicans want to attack our candidates with rhetoric about taxes, spending, rubber stamps, and use scare tactics again, we need to stop going on the defensive and start attacking them on the issues that really matter to average voters. Present voters with the facts and motivate them to come to the polls, they will deliver. This may not be a repeat of 2008 elections, but if Democrats and Independantly minded thinkers alike simply sit back and do nothing, we will have a repeat of the 1994 Congress. Simply imagine how much more good that President Clinton could have done for the country, had the people been able to put serious reforms on his desk.
We are only a little over a year in to the Obama adminstration, and there have already been some of the most significant reforms that we’ve seen come out of Washington in generations. Contrary to this rhetoric from the right, I hear Democrats in congress saying they want to keep the tax cuts for families making less than $250K a year. The Wall Street reform bill was simply a no brainer. Building on heathcare reform so that healthcare is a right of every american is not rationing care. Reintroducing the “pay as you go” method of the 90′s is not big government spending, its a recognition that economic stability was priority, and now its time to be responsible with taxpayers money instead of hiding the millions of dollars in spending, because they didn’t want people to know how much we were spending on two wars.
Now is not the time to have any doubts or regrets about wanting to see change. Now is the time to decide that its time to continue down the path to recovery, not roll back everything that people came together and worked so hard to see come to pass.
Trust someone who was in Iraq and truely understands the issues we face with healthcare from personal experience, not Jim Gerlach. If anyone should be talking about rubber stamps, just look at Gerlach’s voting record during the Bush years, and let that speak for itself.