The Last Battle, John. You Should Have Stayed to Fight It.
By Sheila Samples
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurane of those whom they oppress."~~Frederick Douglass, former slave and one of the most prominent African-American lecturers and authors in American history.
So that's it, then. Like John Kerry says, it's time to get over it. Move on. Get on with our lives and our jobs -- let the healing begin.
Sounds good, John. But I don't intend to budge until all the votes are counted, because when I started this journey I committed for the long haul. Jumping ship to avoid putting the country through the "agony" of investigating and challenging another sordid election coup de'etat would never occur to me -- especially if I had 17,000 lawyers fired up and ready to do battle. If, as you said, this was the single most important election in our lifetime -- our one last shot at salvaging democracy -- it looks like you could have, as a minimum, hung around until the results were in.
Maybe you'd have to stand in line for two hours in a frigid, blowing rain like I did, John, to understand the determination to do whatever it takes to cast a vote in Jim Inhofe Country where Democratic votes don't count. Or, maybe you should mingle among the millions of others throughout the nation -- the youth, women, Hispanics, Blacks, et al, that you alone inspired to endure gruelling hours in long lines because you awakened them to the truth that four more years of George Bush would make their lives, their jobs and healing impossible?
I can only imagine the elation Ohio voters felt -- many of them doggedly standing in line until 1 a.m. Wednesday to cast their votes -- when your running mate John Edwards told a crowd of supporters in Boston that ya'll were in it, as former president Bill Clinton likes to say, until the last dog died. Edwards was speaking on your behalf, John, when he said you "would wait until all the votes are counted before deciding whether to concede the election or claim victory."
Looking back, I wonder whatever could have provoked such an outburst, especially at 2:30 in the morning. Maybe it's because Edwards really IS a man of the people, or maybe it's because he's the only member of your team who was gonna be out of a job if you lost, but I believed him when he said, "It
