WOO HOO!

It's exciting to get out there and start contacting Obama supporters again. I've made over 40o calls, connected with 213 of them, and think our OFA House meeting next Tuesday should be a great time.

The good news is that everyone I've actually connected with understands the importance of keeping the troops fired up and ready to go even though President Obama isn't on the ticket this time. They understand that, without Patty Murray and Adam Smith on his side, President Obama's battle will be more uphill than it already is. 

It's amazing what he has been able to accomplish in such a short time.  There are at least eight huge accomplishments already. And to watch him accomplish them despite the anti-Obama and anti-DEM rhetoric that's out there has been surprising -- and heartwarming -- to me.

It's also heartbreaking in a way. So many of the people who are buying the talking points from the GOP don't understand what the new changes in policy will do for them.

The Democrat Party has been the party of the working man and woman for more than a century.  It has given us the help we need when times are tough, the resources and resiliency we need to survive.  It has stood up for the midddle-class, the poor and the disadvantaged and given us real hope that we won't always end up with the short end of the stick in spite of holding down multiple minimum-wage jobs.

I was talking with a supporter yesterday who was eloquent when describing how her Republican friends "just don't get it."  Well, you know, it's hard for them to get it when all they're looking at and reading is GOP propaganda from morning to night. 

MOST of her GOP friends aren't wealthy, so they're the kind of people who should be on the bandwagon with Obama, but because their parents were Republican (it was a very different Republican Party back then, a party that crossed the aisle and dined and drank with their DEM friends in Congress), they feel obliged to stay with the party. What claptrap.  When did they give up their own search, their own free will, and study the matter?  They subscribe to the magazines that slant toward their politics.

I do, too, but I also listen to the other side.  Usually what I hear is laughable because the GOP has ceased to make sense. They're so busy berating what the DEMS are accomplishing that they have said nothing of substance in more than a year.

They seem to want to hold onto a past that no longer exists. If we don't recognize that, we're ostriches. If it scares us, well... maybe it's out of a sense of guilt.  Because we have not created a level playing field, even as far advanced as we are today from the segregated 50's and 60's. And we know it.  We just look the other way and hope the advances that have been wrought (look, a black President!) will be deemed "enough" to those who are not "of our tribe."  Many blacks have risen above the stereotypes that have held them down; too many of us (black and white) are just real slow to recognize it and embrace the new reality. It is no longer bald-faced racism at our core in most instances; it's our hesitancy to embrace the changing face of America. By 2050 white Americans of European descent will be in the minority.  At that time whites will be singing a new tune to reflect their new staus: WE'RE ALL OF ONE TRIBE: THE AMERICAN TRIBE.

Until then, too many of us will pit ourselves against each other because of race, creed, gender, class, sexual orientation, or politics. And every time we do it, we will diminish our potential. We will cripple our own futures.

So I don't feel I'm "pitting" myself against my Republican friends when I'm out there getting out the vote. I know I'm actually helping a lot of them.  They just don't know it yet.

Did you know that whenever  Republicans take family leave to care for their sick loved ones, whenever they apply for a college grant, whenever they get a checkup or surgery while on Medicaid or Medicare... in fact, almost every time they turn around, it has been a Democratic policy that has helped them.

True, Republicans also supported many policies, but they didn't originate many of them. When it comes to serving and protecting the vast majority of Americans, it has been Democrats who have spearheaded the reforms -- at least since the 1930's.

I have no beef with Republicans who truly believe that less government is the best government. But that only works when everyone in power also behaves like a good citizen and treats others the way they want to be treated. Sadly, that has rarely been the case in America, and it has been just awful the past few decades. The Party of No has also been the Party of Me; as long as they're happy, why isn't everybody happy?

Take a look around and answer that one for yourself.  We've got a lot more work to do to dig ourselves out the the mess that has been made since the turn of the 21st century and since the 1980's when the "trickle-down" theory was first espoused and applied by President Reagan.

Something has been trickling down, all right. It smells like urine.