Tomorrow is Election Day

This will be the last post until after tomorrow's very historic election. Tomorrow, voters across the country will have the opportunity to write a brand new chapter in the history books of our great Republic. Tomorrow not only will we be able to begin the correction of eight years of diminished civil rights and government abuses, but we will also afford ourselves, the electorate of America, a shot at redemption.

The first year I was eligible to vote for president was 1980. My choices were the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, the challenger Ronald Reagan, and a third party choice, Republican Congressman John Anderson of Illinois (at left) running as an independent. I cast my ballot that year in Dottie Priddy's garage, home to precinct C-84, later called B-127, and now called H-148. I voted for John Anderson. Ronald Reagan went on to become a beloved leader of the neo-conservative movement in the country, running the Republic into debt of a deeper depth than theretofore ever achieved. He was re-elected in 1984 and brought with him several new members of the Senate, including Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr., the then-Jefferson County Judge/Executive. For the next ten years, Republicans slowly but surely moved the country from left to right, from moderate to conservative, and from a secular nation to one infused with religion at every level. In 1994, what they hadn't already taken control of, they then did. Thus, from the time I was 19 until I was 33, our country was in the hands of the oppostion, people with whom I disagreed on a number of issues.

The off-year federal elections in 1996 saw the defeat of Democratic Congressman Mike Ward by then-State Representative Anne Northup of Kentucky's 32nd House District. It was the first time since 1971 that Louisville had not been represented by a Democrat in Congress. Mrs. Northup had been a moderate in the Kentucky House, but spent the next ten years aligning herself ever more and more to the right, a re-alignment which never waivered until one night in 2006 when she called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, a call she made about three months too late. Thus, from the time I was 35 until I was 46, Louisville's resident members of Congress were two Republicans, Mitch McConnell and Anne Northup, each disciples of the non-elected executive selected by the United States Supreme Court to serve as Commander-In-Chief in the debacle of 2000.

George W. Bush has led our country into war, into debt, and into isolation with the rest of the planet. He has almost single handedly destroyed the integrity and pride of the United States of America. He had been aided and abetted in this travesty by his Vice President, Dick Cheney, a former congressman and Secretary of Defense from Wyoming. He has further been aided and abetted by voters all across the country who reelected him in 2004, or more properly elected him for the first time, as it is totally unprovable that he was ever elected the first time.

Thus, since I was a young man, other than the eight years under the centrist Bill Clinton, America has been governed by people who believe liberalism is a bad thing, people who believe government is a bad thing, and people who in their hearts believe governance is a bad thing, given their absolute abhorrence of taxes and the good they do. I have often wondered in these last 28 years if I would ever live to see a restoration of the America which disappeared in the 1970s, a restoration of the liberation theology, of brother- and sisterhood, of giving of oneself for the good of the whole, of people who believed in the words of the president elected the year of my birth when he said on January 20, 1961, "And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Another lesser known line from that speech, President Kennedy's Inaugural, was "The world is very different now. For man holds in his hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." For the last eight years specifically, and for the last 28 years generally, our country has focussed on the latter power of abolishing human life, abolishing the soul of America, rather than focussing on the former, our country's ability to eliminate poverty and the manifold problems stemming from it. There is much work left to do. Some of the poverty President Kennedy knew of in 1961 still exists; for the last two decades we have often heard that the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. We have created more poverty by reducing our government, yielding to the bitching and moaning of the Grover Norquists and Howard Jarvises of the world whose only interest was and is themsleves with no concern for the greater good.

America is greater than Grover Norquist, Howard Jarvis, Newt Gingrich, and Ronald Reagan. In the congressional races of 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2006, I worked very hard to unseat our congresswoman, working in various capacities in the campaigns of Chris Gorman, Eleanor Jordan, Jack Conway, and John Yarmuth. In 2006, we began to prove America's resolve at reclaiming our heritage by returning control of the House and Senate to the Democrats while here at home electing Democrat John Yarmuth, a well-known liberal Democrat to represent the Third Congressional District of Kentucky in the 110th Congress. This blog began the day the 110th was called into session by our new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

So, we know we are better than the 28 years of yesterdays I've wandered through in my adult political life. And tomorrow we can prove it. Yes we can! Si, se puede!

Tomorrow, Let's Elect Barack Obama President of the United States.