Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are not the Democrat’s great problem — we are.
We, the big and little “D” democrats, who want to protect the existence of fair elections, that Manchin and Sinema are blocking in the Senate, who haven’t already begun to work on defeating Republicans around the country in November.
There is no legislative difference between the Republican Party and their Trump leader. They are pursuing the policies that they believe are best for getting the people they don’t want voting out of the way, and the people they don’t want to live with out of the country.
Our Republican neighbors have become unwilling to share either their tax dollars or their interests in anyone’s else’s civil rights, or health care, or education, or climate future. And they have turned against sharing our electoral democracy with those they disagree with.
The Republicans are deeply committed to what they want for themselves, whether it is guns, or conservative judges, or tax breaks, or limiting the civil rights of minorities and women, or blaming their problems on immigrants and the poor. And all they need to advance their cause is to keep control of one of the two houses of congress in the coming election.
Too many Democrats (and democrats) act as if protecting the vote is for Black people, and the cost of education is for students, and the minimum wage was for poor people, and the sky high cost of health care was for the sick. And though they are willing to vote for the greater good, they expect those who are more political to work on the elections for them.
Let’s face it: there is something less compelling about working for other people than working for yourself, and until more of us realize that the coming election is a matter or life and death for ourselves, they will be more interested in complaining about how well the Democrats are doing, than in what they are doing themselves.
It is not other people’s interests on the table this November. It is our interests, And they are a matter of democracy or not, and a matter life or death for us and for our children and grandchildren.
Which party is elected this November will determine life or death through COVID-19 for hundreds of thousands of Americans over the next year. Which party is elected this November will have a direct effect on lives and deaths of our children and grandchildren, as the emerging climate catastrophe edges toward irreversibility. There were California-sized wildfires in Colorado this year, and much worse ones in Australia.
The Democrats don’t just need to win the Senate in the next election, to pass the progressive legislation now bottled up there. They need to sweep the House of Representatives and the Senate in order to protect us from both this pandemic and the next one. Modern transportation and the global economy mean that every new virus will now be international before it can be effectively detected.
Another Republican presidency ignoring the pandemic and the climate disaster may be enough to cripple any chance of avoiding the equivalent of a “nuclear winter.” It will definitely make the chance for a fair election all but impossible. Each of us needs to contribute all we can to organizations fighting the next election.
Whether it is phone banking, postcard writing, giving money to organizations like the Movement Voter Project, we need to start on it now.
Massachusetts is essentially sewn-up, so we need to contribute to those working in other states.
On the Senate side, Democrats Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly in Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire are fighting for reelection in November. We can go door-to-door in New Hampshire.
Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor, is running against incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. The Amherst Democratic Town Committee is fundraising for the Cabarrus County Democratic Committee in North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Richard Burr is up for reelection in a state that Biden only lost by 1.5 %.
On the House side are hundreds of contests, which you can Google to find the ones most important to you.
Starting yesterday, we need to alert everyone possible to educate others and to come out and vote as if their lives depend upon it, because they do.
Gary Tartakov lives in Amherst.