| See the whole thing here.
If you wish to only see his take on what comes next, jump forward to the 13:00 marker or so.
The quotation form FDR is his way of saying that the pressures to NOT deal with the fundamental changes we need won't go away after the election. President Obama will need us to support reforms , indeed to provide the political muscle and cover for some of the more demanding and wrenching reforms in particular. Already, you can see in McCain's attacks last night the mantra of the opposition after the election. Obama is going to bring back Big Bad Government and take over your life.
Their efforts now to discredit the outcome (voter fraud, ACRON, etc.) is their effort to deny Obama sufficient political capital to do what he has promised. That will allow them to then attack his administration as a failure, as one of broken promises. We need to fight this meme. Left unchecked, it will fail to turn the election against us, but it could cost us dearly later.
I know the election is still 20+ days away, but attention must be paid to how we frame the meaning our victory in November and what is will mean for the next 4 to 8 years and beyond. Big Money never sleeps, it can hire plenty of flunkies to stay up 24/7 in pursuit of their interest.
Who would have thought that after the Great Depression we would ever be back in this economic mess again? But , we are. The reason why is several fold. First, a generation of powerful lobbying by rightwing think tanks and radio. Second , a rewriting of our collective historical understanding of the role of government and regulation as the bedrock of our prosperity (thank you MSM). Third , we simply got tired and let ourselves believe that someone else would look out for us. We were wrong. Politically aware persons such as you dear reader and myself can't ever let this happen again.
In the years beyond November, we must find a way to keep people engaged and interested. That DOES NOT mean the same old diet of boring meetings and committees. It means we find ways of building communities of supportive progressives who politic together, have fun together and continually educate each other at the same time.
One such model may very well be blogs like this one. Another such one for me will be "Speakers for Democracy" a small group of people I hope to train and educate in methods of interactive education and listening to small groups.
Stay tuned, whatever you do, keep paying attention both now and especially after the election is over. |
