It was Thursday night. I was sick as a dog, and nobody would cover my closing shift in a little gas station in a little town. I sludged through mopping the floors, coughing and shivering, and I figured as sick as I was, nothing could possibly agitate my illness any further. So turning on the GOP presidential debate couldn't have been too risky, could it?
It turns out I was wrong. With a head as stuffed up as mine was, every laugh is a painful explosion of sinus pressure. And watching the GOP debate, I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I laughed some more. Because it's humanly impossible to come up with another group of 10 pasty white guys who have even less of a clue or who are further stuck in the past. Not a minute or two went by without the name "Ronald Reagan" slipping from somebody's lips, whether to remind people that it was his presidential library the debate was being hosted in, or a candidate was trying to liken himself to the Great Gipper in the Sky. His name had to mentioned twice to three times as many times as any of the other candidate's names.
You'd think the B-actor had risen from the dead after three years and, completely disregarding the constitution, had declared a Reagan '08 bid for the White House! Look, everyone: it's Post-Mortem Morning in America!
I watched with glee as the Republicans got out their shovels and started digging themselves into holes. Save libertarian, anti-war maverick Ron Paul, who stands no chance of course, all the GOP had to offer was...yesterday. Actually, not even yesterday; they were offering yester-year. Harkening back to the good ol' days when Ronnie was in office winning cold wars and ignoring AIDS and running up deficits and telling us all to "just say no" to liberalism and other drugs.
Now I'm not a big enough political junkie to go all the way back to 1988 to read transcripts of the GOP's debates of that year. But I'm willing to bet that Mr. Reagan's name wasn't even mentioned as many times in the year he was going out of office as it is now, 20 freakin' years later!
And suddenly, it occurred to me. We don't have to worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is gonna be alright. No candidate can run a campaign based entirely around the tenure of a man who left office twenty years ago, especially when they have no chance of escaping the shadow of the current Occupier-in-Chief. None of these Republicans are going to win, and I can't believe any of them are even bothering to run.
You've got Guiliani up front, waffling like he was John Kerry on the abortion issue (it'd be OK if Roe was overturned, and it'd be OK if it wasn't, and everything is OK!) You've got John McCain sounding and looking crazier by the moment. Romney is flipping and flopping like a salmon out of the Great Salt Lake and...what were the other guys' names again? It's quite clear: out of those ten people, not a single one took over. They gave the spotlight to a dead guy, and made it clear that the Republican party is stuck in the past at a crucial time when America needs to look towards a better future.
In short, we've got November 2008 in the bag. A Democrat is going to win the General Election. So what we need to focus on, as Democrats and progressives, is making sure the RIGHT Democratic candidate gets to lead the ticket in November by participating in the February primaries like never before. Quite frankly, the next President of the United States will not be chosen by all Dems, Republicans, and indie kids alike. It's going to be US. ALL US. And by us, I mean the proud members of the Democratic party. The Primary IS the General Election. Everything after February 5th is just a rock show.
So...what does that mean? Well, it means we're not actually 19 months away from selecting a president. We're nine months away. And to make sure those primaries end up selecting the right person (for me and most of us, former Senator John Edwards fits the bill) is spreading this meme: The next President is going to be a Democrat; If you want to vote for your next president, you need to REGISTER TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. And then go VOTE in FEBRUARY.
It's as simple as that. Got friends who are registered non-affiliated but can't stand to see Hillary in office? Tell it to them: if you don't register Democrat and vote for Edwards/Obama, then she'll walk away witht he nomination and waltz into the White House. Hell, I told that to a Republican-voting friend of mine who abhors Hillary and she instantly realized what a good idea it was!
When the other side has nothing to begin with, we've got everything working for us. 2008 will be all about the Democratic primaries, and as a result, 2009 will be all about the healing of a nation in a way we haven't seen since Reconstruction. Start spreading the word, people!
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