Tomorrow Always Knows

From where I sit, it is now 4:50 AM. The polls in New York state open in exactly twenty-five hours and ten minutes. Everything is set to go. The suspense is palpable. The future of this once-great nation depends on a victory for the minority party tomorrow night. The decision made by the electorate on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006, will be felt by the great-great grandchildren who will never even know our names. I've got my fingers crossed and my hands folded. I'd love a couple of good stiff drinks right now but it's way too early in the morning for that - even for me!

I never thought I would live to see the day when I would be a shill for the Democratic Party (Note to the Republican National Committee: it's pronounced, "Democratic party" not "Democrat party" you fucking idiots!) I left the Dems in 2000 when I became disgusted with their obvious right-ward shift. At the time, I naively bought into Ralph Nader's line that the two parties were nothing more than "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb". Six years of a murderous, half-witted little piece of shit like George W. Bush and a GOP-controlled Congress calling the shots have changed my mind forever. While the Democrats leave a lot to be desired (a whole heck of a lot) they are, for the time being anyway, our best hope. I pray that it's only a slump they've been in and that they will finally wake up and remember that they are, in fact, the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That we have to continually remind them of this has been the most frustrating thing of all and is the reason I left the party to begin with. It would do them well to realize that we already have a right of center party in this country - decidedly so. The only reason their natural constituency has stayed away from the polls in droves in recent years is because they haven't had the motivation to vote. My advice to the Democrats? Motivate the buggers!

Where will this all end? In forty hours we should have an answer. Tomorrow night at 9:00 eastern time, we'll know whether or not America is set on a course where it will be able to heal itself. For twenty-six years the right-wing has waged unrelenting war against the poor and the middle class. If you would like to see for yourself where they want to take America back to, read the book, "The Jungle", by Upton Sinclair, the man Teddy Roosevelt was referring to when he coined the term, "Muckraker". Written in 1905, it exposed the deplorable working conditions of Chicago's meat packing district. During that period, working men and women had virtually no rights what-so-ever. As far as the ruling class was concerned, they were a disposable commodity to be exploited as ruthlessly as cattle. When Sinclair died on November 25, 1968, over thirty years worth of legislation set into motion by the New Deal which guaranteed worker's rights had made his famous book all but obsolete and by the late sixties it was pretty much forgotten. I think it is telling that in recent years "The Jungle" has had somewhat of a resurgence.

It was because of the farsightedness of FDR and the very gifted people who comprised his administration that the middle class really came into being. It is now on the edge of extinction and the results of tomorrow's election will either mean its death knell or its possible resuscitation. The decision is ours to make.

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net