Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Mickey Mouse

November 8, 2008

Three days in to the President-Elect term for Barack Obama and the critics are already out in full force. Criticism is always expected and should be welcomed but there is a fringe element of it that seems to delight in twisting reality to fit their doom and gloom mentality. These fringe elements spent the last six months trying to dissuade people from voting at all; claiming that no votes were going to count and that the election was already stolen – nothing you could do about it. Oops. Guess they didn’t realize, as I stated in numerous articles, that you cannot steal but a certain percentage of an election. The Obama wave was too great for the election theft machine.

Now the same crowd moves past their election theft claims to pretend that Obama is merely a Bush in hope’s clothing. Nonsense again. No matter whom he picks for his cabinet it is met with derision and some kind of proof that he just another part of the skull and bonesmen-illuminati-CFR – or whoever is the boogeyman this week. They of course offer no real solutions, just a mockery of anyone who voted for Obama. We the kool-aid drinking crowd. Their mantra is often heard accompanied by the proud claim of “Don’t blame me, I voted for Nader” (or maybe McKinney).

Look, Obama is part of the machine. I have said that repeatedly. But to pretend that there is no difference between he and McCain is simply a dangerously ignorant position to hold. I have heard people bemoan that no one can defend why they voted for Obama; so I will. This country had a choice three days ago. That choice was between Obama and McCain. A vote for Nader was a throw away vote; plain and simple. Until the 2-party system is eliminated and third party candidates are allowed to freely participate, this is simply the reality in which we live and vote. Now maybe this year the throw away votes did not matter in the face of the Obama landslide but it sure mattered in 2004 and 2000. It was the throw away votes that contributed to giving us Bush and Bush II. So, I could blame you; thank you very much.

On economics the differences were stark. Obama ran on restoring sanity to the tax code and ending the giveaways to the super-rich which were a staple of Bushonomics and would have been continued under McCain. He believed in a bottom up approach to McCain’s trickle down philosophy. That alone should have been enough to convince responsible people to vote for Obama. He also ran on closing loopholes designed to encourage companies to ship jobs overseas and tax credits for companies creating jobs in this country. None of that was in the McCain plan. On healthcare, Obama ran on the hope of universal coverage and while I am not sold on that yet, it was a far cry better than the scam McCain ran on of giving a $2,500 credit to shop for healthcare that routinely costs $12,000.

On foreign policy, I honestly believe that Obama will save literally hundreds of thousands of lives. I believe him when he says we will get out of the Iraq War. I also believe that his bluster on Afghanistan was necessary to not appear soft to the pro-security crowd. I think he is smart enough to realize that we will need to get out of there eventually as well. Let us also not forget that McCain joked about nuking Iran and Obama intends to be far more diplomatic than the reactionary McCain. On foreign policy it should be obvious that the responsible thing to do was to vote for Obama.

Lastly, we have the Palin factor. Sarah Palin was the biggest insult to the collective intelligence of this nation ever. Now that the election is over we are finding out that the shallowness ran even shallower. Not knowing who was in NAFTA and that Africa was a continent. Even if I disagreed with Obama on everything and thought he was the second coming of Herbert Hoover, I would have had to vote for him out of sheer duty to this country to ensure that Sarah Palin never resided in the White House.

Yet here we are, three days removed and already the progressive vultures are circling the Obama corpse they are trying to create. The man has named one person to his cabinet and already the doomsayers are looking toward who the Constitution Party will nominate in 2012. Do I think that President Obama will solve all our problems? Heck no. Do I think that he is the panacea to all that ails us? Heck no. But he is clearly intelligent and after the last eight years, that is a welcome sight. He had some good ideas, which I voted for and I think will surprise some people with how even handedly he governs. I think he will govern middle-left; which is a wise tactic to take.

I know that is upsetting to some who like the politics of division. They liked the labeling of everyone in America. You’re left and I am right. You are red and I am blue. It seems the problem for a lot of these people is not that the last eight years saw an oppressive government but that they were not the ones doing the oppressing. That is truly sad. They hide behind no solutions, just this droning, “Don’t blame me!”

Heck, Ralph Nader? Why not just say, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Mickey Mouse.” Or maybe try, “Not my fault – I voted for Goofy.” The result would be the same. You purposefully looked at everything discussed in here and thought so little of your vote that you threw it away. Who cares if that action led to a Bush III, in the person of John McCain? As long as you had the coverage you needed for yourself personally. As long as you can say, “Don’t blame me.”

Well, I do blame you. I blame you for coarsening the dialogue in modern politics in America today. I blame you for thinking so little of your country that you would throw away your electoral duty. Look, I like Mickey just as much as the next guy. He is cute, got those big ears, and heck – who doesn’t like a cartoon mouse? But he was soft on terror and had no visionary plans for the future of this country…

Seriously, the problem with Mickey or Ralphie – is that they had no chance of getting elected. Is the 2-party system a cancer eating away at our republic? As Palin would say, you betchya! Wink wink. But three days ago was not the time for petulant protest. It was time to do what was right for this country. Thankfully, most people did. Now is the time to support Obama and see what he can do to right the wrongs of the past eight years. Now is the time to hopefully heal the wounds of division that have bled for so long now. Now is the time to ensure that as Americans, we will not have to worry about who to blame in the future because we are working together in the present.  

I pray for a future where blame is not the focus. I pray for a future where Mickey and Cynthia, and Ralph all have a voice at the table of political discourse and at the debates. But until that magic day, I will continue to vote for the person who stands the best chance of solving our problems and actually get elected. If I turn out to be wrong, I will take the blame for my vote; no problem. At least my vote was not for a cartoon character so I could absolve myself in advance for anything that might go wrong.

With apologies to Mickey- who is a fine mouse and a damn good American.