What about the voters?

We look at ourselves a lot to no avail on DU, but what about the general population? What do they want, how are they engaged and how are they being led to the polls this fall? In terms of sensational flame wars someone quotes a firebrand denouncing that part of the black base that has doubts about Obama. Well, stop a minute. A black co-worker asked me if I thought Obama could win. A typical question on its face but not in the tone. Did the news spread that doubt which seemed stranger and stronger than the nauseous adage "the country isn't ready for a woman president" that I still hear at work(in New York)? So much for a fired up base with a passionate symbol, a first almost revolutionary thrill, a liberal fruit finally falling from the tree. It is not just doubters, but the presence of doubt. Do they know about the sate of the nation and world and what they can really do about that?

Do they know about rigged elections the media only teases at in a way that nothing is even suggested that needs be DONE about it? As they are used to being told about their fervent desire for election finance reform and health care and energy, etc. Do they feel justified in their small life preoccupations by seeing that BIG PICTURE priorities otherwise are banal and trivial celebrity news stories? Do they want good jobs, health care and election reform and peace and economic justice but finding this not to be too clear even in an election year have doubts about all that too? Does anyone care to LET someone try and wake the people to their own knowledge and power as something other than MSM induced camp followers to celebrity politicians and the news hacks that follow then for their respective tabloid and corporate soapboxes?

If the bases that are powerful to win a nomination are embarrassingly, substantively, perhaps irreconcilably divided, isn't that alarming in a year when any rational person must be deeply concerned and conjoined with every other rational, patriotic or just plain fellow human traveler? For their own survival? Are the people, vote deprived, poisoned in mind and body, murdered by war and law and lawlessness on high, sold short for the strategy of mere power and finding some of the Dem gambits rather secondary? Are they merely parroting memes from campaigns that seem to touch them, or when they believe them, is there something more important they are crying out for- and hoping will happen or be planned in secret or subject to sudden change for the better upon being crowned President?

Within that unvoiced and unaddressed blind hope, hopelessness or rage or whatever, as they ever more weakly defend the foibles of candidates weakly enabling the blindness, are we going to generate the temporary excitement of a mere contest or a longterm revolution? Or some struggling or doomed thing between?

And if one were to choose a candidate, would the first thing be to dare to lead the people out of the chains that exist today, right now, or pretend this is a personality contest based on side issues, strategy based on power and money presumptions- and smoke? With all the debates, the people in general following mainly the media spin about what is unfolding and what it all means(to the frustration of ALL) we end up with dissatisfactions that will lead to doubts engendered by past criminal defeats never challenged? Why allow this? Why is it deemed necessary to some campaigns?

Never mind the candidates for a moment? Where are the people, really? And are they going to stay there except for a tired paroxysm of crazy quilt voting where a decisive number will not even bother to try and very many will just be glad(and be told they they think so) that it is all over. And that one is as good as the other and that the expectations will take on a surly note that will quickly be led by media spin all over again. Is anyone from the commanding roost up there really going to bother to lead and rouse and empower the people? Do they want reform more than undoing the anti-reforms of the past eight years or weak tea compromise legislation they will no more read about than Senators read the patriot Act? Isn't this where all the underlying doubt comes from? How can we be satisfied with campaigns that need choose this side effect of their person and presentation? And how to break out of the mad determinism from on high that keeps people down, vaguely but certainly knowing they have no power and less a voting right each year?

Are we going to churn out another typical party GOTV like butter in a gauntlet of fraud based on ignoring and ignorance and optimism, restrained by DLC reserve and wisdom? Are we going to rouse and enlighten and enable people by TV ads and yelling at them? Is inertia all there is to political reality today? That and reaction sinking into the quicksand of bi-partisan gridlock and the incumbents fortifying themselves with tyrannical protections against the Samson in Gaza mob.

We firmly hope or believe that upon awaking the day after election, hope and possibility will be enough of a beginning, the relief of not being driven insane by a petty crooked tyranny and its fawning court. We need not deferentially sneak up on that from the side, cross our fingers or proceed by vagueness, half-measures or stiff necked repetitions of losing ways or we might not get even that rather bland victory of merely stepping back from the brink. The "lame duck" we are trying to ignore has crony candidates so lame that there exists even the option(to us, unthinkable) of installing Jeb Bush or some surrogate into the real world process we do not take head on.