Time to Take the Gloves Off

By Lynn Norwood

August, 2006

We are a civilized society and a relatively educated group. We try to temper our thoughts before forging them into words so that they will survive the light of day. We like to think in positive terms, can’t stomach an unfair fight, and don’t want to become the enemy so we play fair, we dig in, and we work hard. We knock on doors. We invite our friends and neighbors to participate in the process and our faith in humanity skips upward. And then we lose.

What went wrong in the last two Presidential elections? We didn’t understand our opponents. In the years since Bush was “elected”—it seems like decades considering the damage that has been done—we have taken the time to study the language of the right and why it was so effective. We’ve read Moral Politics and Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff and paid closer attention to words and how they resonate with the American people. We’ve read books like Take it Back, our party our country, our future, by James Carville and Paul Begala for an insider’s view and hard criticism of what went wrong during the Gore and Kerry campaigns. We have looked inward to see what we did wrong and what we could do to make it right.

We were fighting a battle of ideas, but our opponents were fighting a battle of ideals. It was a much more insidious game. They straddled the issues they wanted to claim and effectively stole them. Values, faith, ability to keep the nation secure, patriotism, even the flag became theirs and theirs alone; and we let them take it. We watched, incredulously, as they took the strengths of our leaders and turned them into weaknesses, took the medals from our war heroes and turned them into meaningless bits of tin, took our fights for equality and freedom and made them unpatriotic, took our contribution to the debate and called it traitorous, took our very right to vote—the most basic of democratic necessities—and suppressed it. And we let them.

We didn’t win the last two Presidential elections because we were fighting different battles. We stood by and watched helplessly as the bullies of the playground established their own ground rules: illegal redistricting in Texas, voter suppression in Florida and Ohio and other states, illegally sending us off to war. We have read about the fiasco that is the Iraq war and the destabilization of the Middle East, and we shake our heads at the incompetence and horrible, horrible waste. We see the unprecedented profits being made by oil and energy companies and we are appalled. We stood by and watched helplessly as they blatantly disregarded the Constitution, our reputation as world leader, and cruelly, our sons’ and daughters’ lives.

We can’t simply brush the playground dust from our torn jeans, turn the other cheek, and go home. They have taken our home. The home that was built brick by brick with the blood of the soldiers, civil rights workers, suffragettes, labor unionists, and many others who lost their lives in protecting it, the home a small group of bullies wrapping themselves in plastic flags have mutilated in a few short years.

Well, enough is enough. Our country and everything it stands for is at risk. It is time to pick up this grand experiment called Democracy, dust it off, and propel it forward. With midterm elections months away and a Presidential election looming in 2008 it’s time to take the gloves off.

In states across the nation the goal of the Republicans in power is to suppress voter turnout in unconscionable ways, to their advantage. In Florida they have done nothing to correct the errors of the previous elections and continue to have no verifiable paper trail. They have made it legal for roving bands of partisans to challenge voters at the poles and on their say-so alone, prevent the voter (think inner city, lower education, targeted ethnic groups, Democrats) from using anything but a placebo ballot, one that is discarded if the voter doesn’t return with written proof they are allowed to vote. There are new voting rules that place restrictions on voter registration campaigns, the fines for violations so stiff that politically neutral organizations like the League of Women Voters were forced to suspend voter drives for the first time in 70 years for fear of being fined out of existence. (Each misplaced blank registration form can cost a penalty fine of $5000. Just 16 misplaced blank forms, even if destroyed by a hurricane, could cost the Florida League $80,000 -- its entire annual state budget.)

We hear about how our troops will stand down when the Iraqis stand up but not about the soldiers, far from the safe green zones, in small groups of fifteen or fewer who are holed up in dangerous areas with the Iraqis they are training, Iraqis of dubious loyalty in an unprotected area, and how they have to struggle to get the ammunition they need to protect themselves (40 grenades) while in the green zone they eat prime rib and enjoy butter sculptures carved into the shape of the Statue of Liberty.

What can we do? Organize your precinct, spend a day helping one of the campaigns to doorbell, make phone calls, or address postcards. Help with the initiative efforts with letter writing, with emailing. Every little bit helps. Think of this election cycle as the setting the groundwork for 2008. Practice makes perfect and we want our new President to have a strong Democratic congress at his or her back.

Preventing citizens from voting is un-American. Not protecting the soldiers we have placed in danger is criminally unpatriotic. Our strength is in our values and our values are protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Discarding the rights of the people with illegal torture and illegal wire tapping is anti-American.

We need to start calling a spade a spade, loud and clear, day by day, a citizen’s son or daughter’s life depends on it, a grandmother’s right to vote depends on it. Wake up America, the time is now.