08/19/2023
The beauty of this campaign is that it offers a new possibility, a different direction at a time when the path we are on is so clearly dysfunctional. I remember when Obama was running in ‘08 and he talked about hope and change. Millions of us really believed that, and voted for him with faith that it was real. For whatever reason, once he became president the direction taken was basically high and corporatism. Yeah, better than the Republicans. But during the eight years of his presidency way too much suffering occurred among way too many people. And we should always consider large groups of desperate people a national security risk. The phenomenon becomes a petri dish out of which all manner of personal and societal dysfunction becomes inevitable. The Democrats had the White House for eight years, and during that time too many people were left behind. No one should think that Trump arose out of nowhere.
For whatever reason, the Democratic establishment has difficult time looking in the mirror. Yet that is what it is called for now. We need to be brutally honest with ourselves as a nation - yes with compassion and forgiveness toward ourselves and others, but also with a mature and clear eyed dedication to cutting the cord that binds us to what was and creating with passion and excellence what can be. No more kind-of-sort-of making things better. We need to make a run for it. We need to forge a new path. Embrace a new possibility. It’s not going to come from some otherworldly place. It’s going to come from us.