Will There Ever Be Another Democratic President?

I joked with several folks on Friday that I wanted McCain to win - because whoever inherits this mess of a country is going to be blamed for not being able to clean it up within the next four or eight years.

So let McCain get elected, deal with the mess, then Barak can run and win. Yesterday I really believed I had come to some peace with the idea of a McCain victory. But today as I watch myself sink into yet another election-induced depression, I realize now (and should have yesterday) that I was whistling in the dark.

I despair that we will ever have another Democratic president. While that sounds like an exaggeration, I don't think it is. Nora Ephron's take on the debate last night was one of the first time I've heard one of us liberals speak the truth about how we choose our elected officials. She really, really gets it -- that elections in this country are no longer about substance or issues. They are ONLY about appearances.

Obscene wealth and and years of media deregulation engineered by Republicans (and signed on to by Democrats in Congress) have created a country where many of us simply don't care about reality. Liberals want to believe that many Americans don't understand that the war in Iraq isn't about terrorism. They're wrong. It's not that we don't know; it's that we don't care. As long as there is an appearance of taking action (kicking some ass), we're happy.

I felt some hope after Barak's nomination acceptance speech, which I summed up as: Barak to McCain, "You want to go? Let's go." My dad's response was "Finally a real fight."

And then came last night, when, as Nora Ephron said, "we watched Obama miss opportunity after opportunity to score a knockout punch...." She also commented on "Obama's shirt, which was too loose around his neck, and which was another reason why I thought he had lost the debate -- that, along with his incredibly irritating habit of closing his eyes while standing up." Many people in America make their decisions on who to vote for based on whether candidates "appear" in charge. And sorry, dude, but looking like you got a scrawny chicken neck sticking out of your shirt isn't going to do it for crowd that wants a maverick, "manly" president.

Could it be that women are far more able than men to see who really won - and who will win in November - precisely because we tend to pay more attention to appearances?

So I'm back to those art supplies and reminding myself our country might survive a McCain presidency. I believe Democrats can successfully govern our country. But I'm going to have to do some mental gymnastics to fool myself into believing that we have what it takes to actually get elected.

Taking the Problem Out of the Solution

I forgot.

I had a conversation last night with some friends about all the ways the Republicans are manipulating voters through the media (they own it, after all). I was sick with anxiety and depression afterwards about the election and what the country could look like with a McCain presidency. I was so wound up I made an appointment to talk with my counselor today.

Her response was that she's been stockpiling art supplies. (She also said Palin is a non-issue. If she becomes VP, she'll have no power except tie breaking and if McCain were to die and she became president, the survivalists would take her out because they wouldn't tolerate a female president. Interesting theory.) My counselor's not an activist, so she's going to hunker down and focus (literally and figuratively) on cleaning up her own backyard. She said her husband told her, "We got through the Civil War and World War I. We can get through this."

He's right, of course. This country survived Vietnam, too. And many people lived through the Holocaust. People have made it through many scary political times. As my counselor said, they just did what they had to in order to get through. They connect with their friends, they cook food and eat it, and they survive until things get better. Thinking about it that way makes me feel like I can breathe again.

We talked about how caught up I was getting in anger and opposition, and here's the thing I forgot: the power of taking the problem out of the solution. It's been a frustration of mine for years with the liberal community. How much time and energy do we spend telling ourselves that we're right and our opposition is wrong? OK - move on. Quit focusing on the problem and move on to the solution. It's like my favorite line in the AA Big Book: When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away.

I'm not naive enough to think that McCain is going to go away. But he can go away in my head. I can quit (to use another AA cliche) giving him room in my head rent free. Instead of talking about how much more Democrats care about the fate of ALL Americans, let's just move it into the practical realm and get to work. As Dorothy Day said, "No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do."

While I see the truth in that, there are times when I need to sit down and feel hopeless. In fact, it might be more accurate - for me at least - to say: Sometimes I need to sit down and feel hopeless - because there's so much work to do. It's a s@@@ or get off the pot kind of thing. It's when I don't allow myself to fully experience my feelings that they follow me around for days or weeks - like the cloud of filth that always accompanied Pig Pen in the Snoopy cartoons. I stopped trying to "buck up" for a little while this afternoon and let myself feel the depth of my fear and sorrow (and let tears fall for a minute or two). That's all it took. I stopped fighting the feelings and allowed them to surface. Shortly after that I felt more hopeful and cheerful than I had in a couple days. Now I can focus on the solution, which tonight means vacuuming and doing the dishes, then getting ready for my day tomorrow. I'm going to keep it that simple for today.