Half-watching CNN this morning as I got ready for work, I caught an interview with Lou Dobbs, who host his own nightly CNN show. What caught my attention was Dobbs’ prediction for the 2008 Presidential election — mostly because it’s something I’ve been saying I’ve been hoping for all year long since the usual suspects started campaigning.
Dobb believes that none of the current candidates, Democrat or Republican, will be elected President; his opinion is that the next President of the United States will be an independent populist, a man or woman ” of great character, vision and accomplishment, a candidate who has not yet entered the race.” He thinks that the independents and centrists will come together and elect someone who puts the people of this country and their wants first rather than be influenced by the power of a few elites.
It’s a lovely dream. I really want to believe it’s true. I would back such a candidate. I’ve said all along that there isn’t any of the current candidates who I really like and I truly hate the supposed “forerunners.” They make me want to not vote at all — I’d vote “none of the above” if I could. However, I believe that you should vote or forfeit your right to comment or complain.
Anyway, I’m tired of the Democrats and the Republicans. They don’t seem to be doing much of anything but destroying our economy and our country. They certainly don’t seem to be actively and productively concerned about the things that really concern the average American. We should stop voting for candidates just because we think we don’t have any other choices. We need to start finding other choices for ourselves. We need to find a way to make our representatives truly represent us or get out of political office so we can put someone there who will. We shouldn’t have to settle. We deserve better than that.
I’m ready to vote for a candidate with great character and vision who is for the people and of the people and truly represents the people and I think there’s more like me out there. What about you?
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OK, I’ll run. Will you vote for me?
Absolutely. Especially if you take that spunk you’ve been exhibiting in the public school/charter school debate to Washington D.C.
So, here’s the thing. No politician is going to save us. Any politician that could save us is going to find it difficult to work with the ones in charge. Politics doesn’t work that way.
You have to elect people who are at least more or less responsive to the general public. And then you have to put constant, annoying, tedious pressure on them to do the right thing.
I say this because getting disgusted with both sides and looking for a political savior is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It removes you from any sort of political influence and makes it easier for the crooks to take over. And once the crooks have taken over, it’s damned difficult to get the place back. We’re making a little headway on it since 2006, but that was only a year ago and there’s a lot of fighting –decades of it — left to do on the local, state, and national level. People disengaged from politics in the seventies, and this is where it’s gotten us. It’s time for the normal people to do their part again.
Personally, I don’t see progress. I see Congress wasting just as much if not more time now than when the Republicans were in control. I see a government that is out of touch with what the public wants and needs. I see a Congress wasting time in committees investigating things but not getting answers and not doing anything real about it. I see a Congress that makes promises but doesn’t keep them and keeps compromising and bending to the will of the Republicans and the President despite the fact that the Democrats actually have the power. I don’t think there’s anything different from the Democrats and the Republicans but a name anymore. People have got to stop listening to the words and the rhetoric and start paying attention to what is actually getting done. As Mark Twain said, Thunder is impressive but Lightning gets the job done. I don’t want promises anymore. I want progress and action.
I think you’re looking in the wrong place for progress. First of all, having hearings on administration abuses *is* progress — we didn’t have any before. There was no oversight at all. Now at least there’s something. And that’s a result of the very real progress Progressives have made in the last two years in taking back the Republican party.
The DLC — the centrist pseudo-republican organization that used to run things when Clinton was in charge — is now wholly discredited. ActBlue and Move On are starting to become real, influential forces. Most of the Democratic candidates for president showed up at the Kos convention which would have been unthinkable two years ago. There’s now a loud progressive/liberal movement. People and candidates are starting to talk about national health care and our national infrastructure. When I think back on what things were like two years ago, four years ago — when you couldn’t even suggest government might be able to solve a problem without being called a commie — I’m pretty impressed at how far we’ve come in two years.
I’m impatient for real progress too, but I think we’re reaching a tipping point. And if our attempts to force the Democratic party into behaving itself fracture into many different tiny “independent” parties and goals, all that pressure will go away. Independents have done nothing for the last several election cycles except siphon off people — and pressure — from the folks who are in charge.
Well, I’m an Independent, but I’ve been voting 100% Democrat since 2004.
I guess I feel like these hearings are just a lot of show — an illusion that something’s being done while nothing’s being done. Nancy Pelosi has already said that impeachment is off the table; she won’t even allow it to be considered. Ridiculous. That’s as bad as the Republicans in giving Bush and Cheney a free pass. Why bother investigating?
I find it fascinating that when someone wants to discuss flag burning, whether gays should marry, enforcing that the “Star-Spangled Banner” be sung in English only, or whether or not a husband has the right to have the feeding tube removed from his brain-dead wife’s throat, Congress is suddenly all accounted for and getting down to business, but when it’s something that they should be doing, they’re campaigning, asking the White House for the 15th time for those papers they really want and this time they mean it, or with their lawyers trying to figure out how to best spin a bad business deal or a sex scandal.
And, honest to God, if you thought I was upset when Congress voted for the Patriot Act the first time, when they voted to renew it, I thought every single one of them that voted for it should be voted out of office and run out of the country, particularly those who spoke out against it like John Kerry. Feingold’s the only one in Washington who’s stuck to his guns.
And that’s why it’s hard to get behind any party these days. Whatever they say they stand for, it’s not likely to be how they vote when they get into office.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be quite the challenger.
This guy would get my vote if he ran as an independent!
There is already a draft movement and a petition going – visit http://RFKin2008.com to learn more.
btw, wonderful post! will come back and visit your blog often.
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