Well I just finished working field on the Kerry campaign/Democratic Party of Wisconsin and I think it's now safe to say how I feel about all that. I started this year interning in Senator Feingold’s D.C. office. I came back to WI in May and was hired to intern on his campaign in Green Bay. John Kerry came to Green Bay sometime late in May and I gave my resume to the state field director – a few weeks later I was hired. I was sent to Sheboygan, made office manager of the Sheboygan office, and field coordinator for Manitowoc, Sheboygan, and Ozaukee Counties (until "ConnectiKate" showed up to take over Manitowoc County ops for me.).
After all that, am I alive? Well, more or less. There was a lot of sniffling around the room during John Kerry’s concession speech in the Madison office on November 3rd... but then we killed the sad the brain cells that night at Club Mystique. One of the senior staff compared what we as staff are experiencing to post traumatic stress disorder. I think that's fairly accurate in many ways.
On the night after the election, Governor Doyle invited the Democratic Party staff to his residence for a cocktail party. I chatted with him for a while and that was very uplifting. I found irony in that the first time we met, I was in sixth grade, graduating from the D.A.R.E. program. He gave a very good speech about how we can't be ashamed of ourselves. We built a structure for future campaigns that is unmatched anywhere in the country. We kept the best senator in the business in office. We kept WI blue and doubled our margin of victory.
If JK had won Ohio, the Sheboygan office would have been written into the history books. As it is, we'll be forgotten. We were the best performing office in a battleground state that stayed blue. So does that make us the best performing office in the nation? Hrmmm... Goals were never high enough for the office. We smashed our contact goals, crowd goals, and volunteer recruitment goals.
The fact that we did so well has made me extremely frustrated with the end result. We did keep Wisconsin blue, return the best senator in the business to D.C., etc… but we did not get a new president. That is very frustrating. As long as I keep busy, and watch some comedies, I'll be fine. It is going to take a while for my body to adjust. I haven't slept all this year. My eyes look like I got in a hefty fight.
It was, overall, a hefty fight. As long as guys like me are getting blown up in Iraq, people are being discriminated against in this country for any reason, the nation is being bankrupted, our environment being shat upon, kids going through school with half an education, jobs being created that are half-assed compared to those that were lost, and people out there who want to kill us but aren't being sought after well enough - we shouldn't give up this fight. We started an amazing movement and there's no reason for it to slow down or stop.
I made friends with a lot of people of all ages that I will stay in contact with and never forget here in Sheboygan, all across northeast Wisconsin, and all over the country. There is a surprising number of really good people in this world. The emails, calls and visits I received in the days following the election were truly amazing - from the Governor to a reverend, from the state representative to the local UAW president, from ward leaders to the13 year old twice weekly volunteer who carved John Kerry's face into a pumpkin. There are too many good memories to dwell on the loss right now. We have four years for that.
I have an interview Wednesday with the state coordinated campaign's director - my boss's boss's boss. He's a very well connected man and hopefully I can find something interesting to do in D.C. this spring through him. I feel very sorry for those who put their lives on hold to work for the campaign, and have nothing to return to, and little to look forward to. A lot of the staff was banking on getting D.C. jobs if we won - and they would have. We did breed a lot of very confident, well-qualified, talented young campaigners - that will be a great asset next time around.
What can we expect in the next 4 years? Well, social progress may be set back 250 years with the appointments of a new chief justice and the potential for three new justices. I doubt there’s much hope in getting universal health care for all Americans. I doubt we’ll see responsible environmental policies that test our ingenuity by seeking energy independence and new alternative fuels. I doubt we’ll see a change in foreign policy or respect from our traditional allies. I doubt tuition increases will be matched with aide increases proportionally, or No Child Left Behind become less than a cliché. I doubt we’ll see an increase in minimum wage. I doubt we’ll catch, or even relentlessly pursue those terrorists who threaten us. I doubt we’ll give all veterans in need the basic benefits they earned. I doubt we’ll see any semblance of fiscal responsibility. I doubt we’ll see tax cuts for the middle class. I doubt stem cell research will continue to its full potential, or HIV/AIDS funding will continue to countries that are desperately in need. We sure were fighting for good things, huh? I’m not a pessimist, these are all realistic concerns.
We’ve had four years of a Republican president, two of those years with both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans, a Republican leaning Supreme Court, a majority of state legislatures controlled by Republicans, a majority of governors were Republicans. When will enough be enough? 2006. In those four years, moral values voters have gotten next to nothing of what they want – nothing on gays (except the eleven who banned it – we’ll see how those hold up in court), nothing on guns (assault weapons ban was repealed – boohoo, it didn’t do much anyway), nothing on abortion (partial birth ban was deemed unconstitutional).
There are a lot of reasons we lost, chief among them are the stupid people that vote on these things. While I won’t argue that these are important things to dicuss – they were NOT ANYWHERE NEAR THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES OF THIS ELECTION. Whoever it was that said, “It’s the stupidity, stupid,” was mostly right. That person was referring to Bush’s unintelligence, but it applies to his supporters. I guess it would only follow that stupid people would vote for a stupid person, and there sure are a lot of stupid people in this country… a little over half in fact. If they want their politicians to be puritan-like, fine – but if they know even a shred of truth about politics – they’re in for a rude awakening. John Kerry would have been a great president, and George W. Bush has already been nearly the worst. Hopefully we won’t see just how fucked up things can really be.