Imbolc Valentine Moon
I remember the campaign rhetoric that this election was a battle for the soul of the USA. Would we be one people, bent on personal enrichment at the expense of everyone else, or would we be one people, bent on enriching persons at the expense of everyone else? If this election was such a battle, the liberal forces won. The new demographics of young people, gay people, Latinos and blacks all together with a strong cohort of white women and few of cranky old leftist males flexed its biceps. And the shirt ripped.
It wasn’t such an election, of course. Those are base rallying slogans, make sure the Tea Party folks get their tricorn hats and their strait jackets on before coming to the polls in great numbers. Or, likewise, push the left edge of the Democratic out of their cynical chairs on polling day.
What this election was, as Barack Obama’s surprisingly good State of the Union speech reflected, was a turning point in a slow motion melding of a new coalition, one that did not rely on the Solid South or the Moral Majority, but one that patched together gay and lesbian citizens yearning for full lives with a rapidly expanding Latino population, part undocumented, most not, wanting the same thing and the two of them with a rising liberal voice among the young and white women, all grafted onto the traditional Democratic core of blacks, what labor remains and the few bona fide lefties like myself that are no longer pining for revolution.
It has been, for me, a joyous realization that perhaps for the first time since the early 1970’s I can hear my own political thoughts in the mouths of elected officials. I’ve given up on the idea of a socialist America, not because I no longer want it, but because I don’t see the conditions that would make it possible. Still, my political heart bleeds for safety nets, welcoming immigrants, accessible health care for all. That sort of thing. At least now these hopes will not be shouted down. And I’m glad.