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Guest Editorial
The Morning After: A Letter to My Fellow Democrats
Written on the morning after Election Day
Angela Boyd
Guest Editorial Archives
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page 17
I saved some of my emails from November 8, 2000. This morning I read them again. People took to their Yahoo accounts in great despair, saying "This is the darkest morning of my life" and "How did it happen?" A friend reflected that "Straight, rich, White men in my dorm rejoiced tonight. I went to the queer center and everyone was crying." This morning, November 3, 2004, my email was silent. My phone didn't ring; no one knocked on my door with a look of confusion or deep sadness or rage.
True, there were bleary eyes across D.C. this morning, but that's to be expected from an entire city of political wonks, policy analysts and Hill staffers who pulled all-nighters watching the returns. But in the faces of those who just yesterday proudly wore Democratic campaign buttons, I saw resignation and that frightened me more than a stolen election.
In 2000, we knew we were robbed. We knew we had won rampant in the state that decided it all. We narrowed our eyes at the Republican Party and vowed to fight.
And when five weeks later the election didn't go our way, we clung to that fighting spirit and reminded ourselves, and each other, that justice would eventually prevail.
For justice we looked to the 2004 elections as, if not a rematch, a chance for us to prove that we would, without tricks or fraud or hanging chads or the Supreme Court, retake the White House as an assertion of the mandate the popular vote had given us four long
years ago.
The Black community looked too strong, if somewhat unconventional, leaders in P. Diddy, Al Sharpton and Russell Simmons. The Latino community, without a real place to turn, began to turn to the Republicans, giving Bush more of our vote. The gay community, going through what we will look back on as its own civil rights movement, was disregarded this year, as eleven additional states voted to constitutionally ban gay marriages and in some cases civil unions.
Before the primary season was even over, the youth of America were barraged by entreaties to please, please vote. Rock the vote. Choose or lose. Vote or die. Eminem, largely regarded an unstoppable force in pop culture, last week released an evocative, powerful call to (nonviolent) arms by young people with his video 'Mosh', speaking directly to us about the power of our collective vote.
Thousands of us signed up to work for the DNC or MoveOn or Emily's List or any of the many other Democratic voter registration and get-out-the-vote operatives. Thousands of us walked the streets, going door to door, pleading with people that "This is the most important election of our lives." And it was.
Our guy undoubtedly won all three debates. An intellectual, a decorated war veteran, a 20-year member of the United States Senate, he persuaded enough of us to vote for him in the primary - including myself - and not to vote our conscience, which was tinnily shouting to vote for Howard Dean. Why? He was more "electable," more sanguine, better able to stand up to the GOP on foreign affairs. And we bought it.
Going in, we were confident. We looked to the Middle East, to Iraq and Osama bin Laden, and said that the American people were fed up with this mess and the loss of the lives of our loved ones. We looked to the trillion dollar deficit and high unemployment. We looked at escalating poverty rates and a government whose policies were never intended to be "compassionate." We looked to the pure hatred of the president by our neighbors, a byproduct of an election that was questionable at best and outright plundered
at worst.
And we lost. This president, a man who was truly elected for the first time last night, received more popular votes than any other president in history. And this election was not decided by a little more than 500 votes, like last time. This election was decided by more than 3 million votes, a staggering statistic to those who embroiled themselves in this campaign.
The question for me is not so much why did John Kerry lose, but why did George Bush win, virtually unscathed and with a near-mandate from the American people to do whatever he wants for the duration? Over the next four years, Democrats will struggle to figure this out. After all, communities that have traditionally under-voted made strides yesterday, as people waited to vote for as many as nine hours in an election with record voter turnout. This was supposed to help us.
I cannot make sweeping statements as to the seemingly insurmountable social issues that continue to divide this country, except to say that they have contributed to the election of a man whose party has managed to separate the social from the economic, resulting in votes from poor folks in the Bible Belt and elsewhere who don't realize they're electing the very people who are working to keep them poor.
I can, however, issue one last plea, which is to keep the faith. Live strong, if you will. John Kerry may be conceding the election as I write, but we as Americans, as progressives, as people of color, as the marginalized, as descendants of farmers and
blue-collar workers, and yes, as "liberals," cannot concede the next four years to a self-interested, uncompassionate, divisive administration that will continue what it has already begun: to unravel decades of social progress in this country.
Please keep the faith. Hold this great progressive momentum. If you voted for the first time in this election, understand that your vote did count, regardless of whether your state was blue or red. I heard you. We pulled out all the stops this time – or at least we thought we did - but there will be a next time, as there always is, and we must be ready. The next time may come sooner than we think. The Supreme Court, arguably more important than the presidency when it comes to the laws of this land, may see as many as four justices retire in the next four years. That, my friends, is serious.
I don't want to see resignation in any of your eyes. Although many of us thought it might, the sky did not fall this morning. We have many things to do, and if we don't have an administration behind us we're going to have to do them ourselves. We have families to house and children to educate and a problem in the middle east that needs to be resolved. Just because this president was elected does not mean that we can give up on the people out there who still need our help. In fact, they will need our help even more.
Take this day as a day of mourning for what might have been, and then move on, with a renewed spirit. Let being the underdog make you come out swinging rather than slink away with your tail between your legs. Just because we have lost one fight does not mean we have lost the battle.
God bless. And by the way, stop letting the Republicans own the
God issues. |
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