DEMOCRATS TAKE NOTICE: MAKE YOUR APPEAL TO THE MOVEABLE MIDDLE

Will the American Dream become the American nightmare for the poor and middle class?

(photos and commentary by Ove Overmyer)

Rochester, N.Y.--  Not long ago, a flair for rhetoric, a passing familiarity for biblical verses, and a real need for a "following" could be enough to land someone in a small-town pulpit. Today, it seems, it is the recipe to a political office and a top-tier Republican candidacy-- or perhaps even becoming President. Sarah Palin and Delaware's Republican Senate candidate Christine (Witchcraft) O'Donnell immediately come to mind.

This new defintion of conservative leadership is one lesson we can take away from the August rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and the recent primary election results. In Washington, D.C., Fox egomaniac and Mormon convert Glenn Beck kicked off the get-out-the-vote phase of the 2010 election with a revival aimed at the GOP base.  Plus, the stunning victory of angry-man Carl Paladino over GOP designee Rick Lazio in the Republican primary for New York Governor has sent shock waves throughout the Empire State.

Like the frenzy of McCarthyism that drove GOP gains in 1950 or the 1980 turnout that Jerry Falwell spiked with revivalist fervor, Republicans are eyeing 2010 as a once-in-a-generation chance to alter the political landscape. With the completion of the census and reapportionment now upon us, it could also furnish them authority to remake the maps of election districts in their favor.

Beck, Palin and the new standard-bearers 

Beck may surpass Palin in on-screen exposure and a knack for mimicking the language and cadence of scripture, but he is her understudy in another skill-set now prized for Republican candidates—scapgoating and being irrational.

Palin's intolerance, by contrast, is more focused and more expert at playing on fragile emotions for political advantage.  Her use of glittering generalities, gaffes and lack of specifics support the notion that she is intellectually bankrupt when it comes to Civics 101.  Someone asked me my opinion of Palin, and I responded without hesitating--  "She is a disturbing, poor actor in a bad movie that I hate watching.  She is all fluff with no shread of substance or knowledge of national public policy-- despite her lofty perch on the far right of the political continuum."

Palin isn't the only conservative dressing up appeals to intolerance in a wardrobe of new words. Riding her coattails is a host of characters exploiting hard times, the power vacuum among Republicans and a scarcity of reporters and editors well-versed in both religion and politics. The absence of scrutiny and silence by fellow Republicans eager for electoral gain are allowing the opportunists to remake themselves as the standard-bearers for the right.

Personal attacks and innuendo against immigrants and religious minorities, including the Christian faith of President Obama himself, have joined traditional diatribes against gays and black people in the GOP script for getting votes this year. This is just fear-mongering and finger-pointing at its worst. They echo in the rally cries for Republicans now vying to take over our Congress and statehouses across the country.

GOP policies will perpetuate unemployment

Leading the ranks of the gate-crashers are those responsible for the very unemployment crisis they like to blame on the Democrats.  Here is a perfect example of Republican logic--  multimillionaire California Senate Republican nominee Carly Fiorina sent more than 9,000 U.S. jobs overseas and fired 30,000 employees in less than 6 years.  She was forced to resign as Hewlett-Packard CEO in 2005 for poor performance.  Now she wants to create jobs in California.  Get real.

Farther to the right of Fiorina, who has called for overturning Roe v. Wade and voted for Prop 8, are Senate candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky who assail landmark laws against discrimination, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. A series of other GOP candidates including O'Donnell, Florida's Marco Rubio to Alaska's Joe Miller, espouse the extreme goals of fringe ideologues, such as ending Social Security and claiming either that equality is artificial or that the imposition of social equality is detrimental to society.

The Tea Partiers, for all their contradictions and energy, have raised the stakes in this election. It's about far more than who prevails and who concedes on Election Day, November 2. It's about the direction of the country and whether the intolerant far-right will gain the upper hand and stop any progress the Obama White House and Congress has made in the past 22 months.

A sense of urgency

I've never been more motivated and frightened in my life than I am right now.  This includes the turbulent 60's, when I was an unknowing tot vicariously living through the lives of my older brothers and sisters.  I know some may call me hyperbolic, but I did predict that we would be in this mess back in 2001 when then President George Bush and his Congress passed his tax cuts for the rich and started to deregulate Wall Street and the banks which crippled our economy some ten years later. (Source: see archives of the Empty Closet Newspaper at the turn of the 21st century.)  And believe me, things will be a lot worse for poor folk and the middle class if the likes of Congressman John Boehner from Ohio becomes Speaker of the House. Perish the thought.

Fluency in fringe ideology and appeals to intolerance now substitute for leadership among conservatives. What probably will happen in November will skew the course of decision-making rightward and backward. That means rehashed fights about posting of the Ten Commandments, citizenship and voting standards, enforcement or overturning civil rights and pro-gay legislation, access to contraception, and the legality of the clean-water and emissions standards, the minimum wage, and fighting for Social Security. It means a diminished state of our democracy and our standing in the world.  Tea-Partiers and conservative voters want to turn back the clock.  If this doesn't motivate the Democrats to get out and vote, I don't know what will.

Progressives perturbed at the pace of change in federal law or the stances and statements of the Obama administration do not have the luxury of simply holding the president's feet to the fire. A very different fire is at hand. We are at risk of losing everything we have been fighting for, and it's time we put aside the debate of the liberal versus blue-dog complexities of Democratic rule.  To be fair, we also have to admit that the compromised meat and potatoes legislation that has been signed into law since January 2009 has not matched the lofty rhetoric of the Obama campaign.

We must unite and send a strong message to those moderate voters that, sure you may hate the Democrats because they are in charge right now, but it was the Republicans and conservative ideological thinking that has gotten us into this mess in the first place. That should be enough to tell you who you should be voting for on Election Day.