Lost or Found Ground?

I am not happy with the election results, but eh, it is 2010 and most people only vote when there is a Presidency at stake.  No need to worry because many of the folks who stayed home yesterday will probably go to the polls in two years...

Yeah right.

I don't know how else to say this without seeming so monumentally pissed, but if my generation does not wake up and get serious about something, we will continue to fail at everything.  EVERYTHING!

We failed because I read a statistic (and I am still looking for verification) that said only 4.7% of African Americans voted yesterday.  Only 10% of young people under 30 voted yesterday.  And these are the main groups of people who complain about getting screwed all the time.  Well, yeah, that happens when the people in power have your permission to screw you when you don't show up to vote.

I read an article about three interesting newcomers to the political stage (two others were not mentioned, but I will mention them here): Susanna Martinez (R), governor-elect of New Mexico; Tim Scott (R), elected to Congress from South Carolina; Alan West (R), elected to Congress from Florida; Nikki Haley (R), governor-elect from South Carolina; and Marco Rubio (R), senator-elect from Florida.  See a pattern here folks?  These are all brown Republicans...guess we can't make the argument that the GOP is full of racists  especially when the Democrats were trying as hard as they could to disavow their brown candidates.  And guess what, each of these folks were elected from the SOUTH (ok, so New Mexico is the Southwest).

This is a bit stream of conscious, so bear with me...but I see the ground that we lost yesterday as typical.  The fact that the GOP got to reclaim the House is not that upsetting, although it is for me personally because I really like and respect Nancy Pelosi for her balls (I wish I had a third of her guts).  I am upset that the Democrats got beat again because they were playing checkers when the game is chess.  Are we going to learn?

a. Apparently, the Tea Party is not as racist as you claimed since at least 5 Tea Party candidates who won yesterday were people of color.  Yes, there was Sharron Angle, but it seems in all of the attention that was paid to her stupidity, these five snuck in under the radar.

b. Running away from Obama didn't help.  Embracing Obama didn't help.  So maybe you need to grow a spine and stand up for what YOU believe and not worry about Obama.  Maybe this election really was about you.

c. But since we are on the subject of Obama, please clean house.  NOW.

d. And as for those folks who stayed home, well what can I say?  You disappoint me.  I hope the next two years work well for you.  As for me, the next two years have offered me a challenge--how to convince you never to sit out another election again.