The US midterm elections will be held in five days. The Senate is up for grabs and there is a strong possibility that, come January, Republicans will be the majority in both houses of Congress. The over-riding question for the election is: Will the vast sums of money being spent by the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers and other conservative groups along with voter suppression laws and tactics in Republican controlled states beat back the get-out-the-vote effort being mounted by Democrats and progressive organizations? Too bad US elections aren't more like those in Brazil or Australia where voting is mandatory for citizens of legal age. Oh, that's right, in our country there are some intent on making sure others do not easily exercise their democratic right to vote or, preferably, at all.
I've been calling progressive voters in swing states in MoveOn's get-out-the-vote effort. Reactions range from enthusiasm to apathy to weariness to just hanging up the phone. And these are the progressive voters! This week I've called voters in Colorado and New Hampshire - two states that voted for Obama in 2012 but whose Senate seats are "in play" and could easily be lost to Republicans. If, as has been predicted for the past couple of months, the Democrats do lose control of the Senate, at least we know that we tried to get people to the polls. There are still a few days left and if you want to help out, you can do so at the MoveOn Shift Sign-Up page. The system uses a "Hub-Dialer" and a brief training session is held at the start of each shift.
Wednesday night, the blue-state San Francisco Giants beat the red-state Kansas City Royals. It was the third time in five years that the Giants had won the World Series. That they did so was due in large part to their 25 year-old pitching ace, North Carolina native Madison Bumgarner. Bumgarner now ranks as the all-time World Series ERA leader with an incredible 0.25 Earned Run Average. For comparison, pitching greats Sandy Koufax, Christy Mathewson and Mariano Rivera have career World Series ERA's between 0.95 and 0.99. What does this have to do with the elections? Probably nothing but, like many sports fans and ballplayers, I am slightly superstitious. Could this Giant victory be an omen of the Dems holding onto the Senate? Could Kay Hagan retain her North Carolina Senate seat? Or does the Giants' victory predict an outcome similar to the 2010 mid-terms, when the Giants also won the World Series. That year marked the biggest loss of Democratic Congressional seats in seven decades.
Tomorrow is Halloween. Halloween is an especially appropriate holiday for Republicans in an election year when their fear-mongering reaches a fever pitch. Is there anything the Republicans and their media mouthpieces don't want you to be afraid of? Death panels, a national gun registry, crime, Ebola, Guantanamo closing, immigrants, Muslims, people of color exercising their right to vote, people of color...the list is nearly endless. No, like most of the Republican agenda, these fears are just bullshit. What I find much more worrisome is the specter of total Republican control of Congress. Not so much because it will make an immediate, drastic change in our lives - it won't...Republicans already control the House and our centrist President Obama can serve as a firewall against any truly insane actions. Rather we should worry because of what a Republican victory in the Senate would say about the gullibility and apathy of the American electorate. True, there have been enormous roadblocks thrown in the path of democracy by way of Supreme Court voting rights and campaign financing decisions, by rampant gerrymandering, and by voter suppression. But these all happened because the conservative Republican agenda won in past elections, resulting in the court appointments and state legislatures that have turned American democracy into one that caters to the interests of the ruling class and where income inequality is among the greatest in the developed world. Republicans have done nothing positive in the four years they have been in the House majority. Congressional approval ratings are in the 11-12% range. And yet Republicans are on the doorstep of total Congressional control and all that means for Federal Court appointments. A scary thought indeed.
In the end, the Senate races may come down to something like the bottom of the ninth in the final game of the World Series. The Giants up by one run, two outs, a man on third, and Bumgarner on the mound, pitching his fifth inning of relief on just two days' rest, Let's hope the result is as good for the country as Bumgarner's final pitch was for the Giants.
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