In my yard stands an Obama for President sign. Plastered on my back car bumper is an Obama ‘08 sticker. Yes, I feel he would be the better President for our country in the challenging years to come.
But if he doesn’t win, I won’t blame Republicans.
Well, sure, I’ll blame Republicans and Democrats alike for being foolish enough to rely on Internet emails and Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart for their political understanding of the candidates. And sure, I’ll be wild-eyed in wonder at the Republican state of mind, such as it is.
But mostly, I’ll blame Democrats who talk big and walk small.
To wit:
A close friend who won’t ask his parents who they’re voting for in the upcoming election. His family doesn’t talk about politics, he says.
I love my friend dearly, but I’m discouraged by his reluctance to fight for his country. I’m disappointed by the ease with which he passes off the burden of fighting to put a different kind of administration in the Oval Office to one man named Obama.
He’s smart enough to be scared about what a Palin/McCain administration would do to this country, but apparently he’s just not scared enough to have an uncomfortable conversation with his parents.
After all, it’s not like he’s going to be drafted, make less money for equal work, or get pregnant.
Before the conventions, a guy in his 30s told me he wasn’t going to watch the conventions, he’d just tune in to Jon Stewart for the highlights. Now, Jon’s a wicked insightful, funny-as-hell comic-cum-pundit, but watching him for 20 sarcastic minutes to understand the several-hour dynamics of the two most important political events for each party, is, while admittedly a whole lot more fun, a little lame.
A business colleague told me she’s no longer sure she’ll vote for Obama because he didn’t choose Hillary to be his running mate. There’s such a yuck factor in that thinking – reminds me of all the married women who tell me they withhold sex from their husbands until they get what they want from them. Double yuck.
A couple of women, both over 50, have told me they won’t put an Obama sticker on their cars or put signs in their yards because of possible disapproval from coworkers or neighbors, or possible retaliation from McCain supporters in the grocery parking lot.
They’re both lovely women. They both live alone. I understand their hesitation.
But I don’t accept it.
This is no time for commitment in half measure.
And me? I should talk. For all my sign-posting, sticker-sticking, column-writing, and friend-bashing in this blog, I haven’t been able to bring myself to respond to one of my best friends from high school and ask her about the pro-Palin e-forwards she keeps sending me. I just ignore her emails and feel badly about myself and cringe at my own cowardice. Would it hurt me to at least having a respectful dialogue with her about Palin?
Our country is literally on a precipice, and I’m afraid a woman I haven’t seen since high school will stop liking me if I challenge our relationship by discussing politics.
We Democrats can talk passionately about how inept Bush is and how trippin’ Palin and McCain are.
But it all means jack unless we’re willing to put ourselves on the line for this country the way soldiers and presidential nominees do.
To risk an uncomfortable conversation with friends or family. To risk getting our houses egged. To risk having our cars keyed or tires slashed. To risk feeling disappointed that your VP choice isn’t on the ticket. To risk losing a client who sees your sticker supporting a candidate he does not. To risk perhaps losing a friend.
If even one Democrat is truly afraid to show or speak support for Obama, then there might be others who are afraid — and if one person puts a sign out in their yard or a sticker on their car, it might make others feel safer doing so as well.
To risk is to serve. And every time a Democrat chooses to not risk – to keep silent in some way about the dangers of a Palin/McCain administration, we are complicit in our own demise as a party, as a country, and as a people.
If we refuse to help create groundswell support by posting signs and sporting stickers, if we only talk with other Democrats who are already supporting Obama, we’re spinning our wheels and desperately losing critical ground.
We’ve got to be willing to risk whatever we think we might lose – whatever repercussions we think we might suffer.
Because if the Republicans win this election, we’ll be losing a helluva lot more.