Since last Tuesday, I feel like I’ve been going through Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross’s seven stages of grief, except not in the right order. Wednesday was grief for sure, grief and denial. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and was on the verge of tears all day. First time in my life an election has affected me that way.
Thursday was acceptance. We lived through 12 years of Reagan-GHW Bush, so we can survive anything. Except survive is exactly what I’m afraid some of us won’t do, in a second imperial Bush presidency. Literal survival just got tougher for US soldiers and our allies’ (all three of them) troops, as well as for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Financial survival isn’t looking so great for those of us who aren’t bigwigs at megacorps, those of us who won’t benefit from more tax cuts for the wealthy (and that’s, what, 98% of us), those of us without health insurance. Emotional survival’s looking bad all over, unless you’re just patiently waiting through all this for the Rapture and the End of Days to arrive.
But still, I told myself on Thursday, we’ll all make it through. Let’s start counting the days until 2008. [sigh]
Friday, fuck all that. Anger kicked in, and denial came back–specifically, denial of the idea that we should just sit back and accept things. We need to start planning, thinking, strategizing for how to change things. Not just avoid making the same mistakes again–though God knows the Dems are good at doing just that–but actually get things right. (And of course, by “we” here, I mean “they,” since I’m not a party organizer. But call me for money when the time comes, please.) When I think of how we can get things right, I think about reclaiming two fundamental notions that played a part in last week’s debacle: patriotism, and moral values. See, I have strong moral values, and so do all the Dem voters I know. We believe in fairness, in justice, in helping our fellow citizens. And moral values had a huge amount to do with why I voted for Kerry and against Bush: one mostly shares my moral values, and the other not only doesn’t, to me, he epitomizes a bankruptcy of moral values, couched in the buzzwords of evangelical Christianity but embodying no *real* Christian values. Hate and intolerance are not moral values. They’re not Christian values.
And when I think about someone who not only mostly shares my values but can speak about them in a genuine and affecting way, I think about Barack Obama. Not in 2008, probably (although I think you have to see him speak before deciding that you’re absolutely opposed to that; the man is so compelling that even though I find some of his policies, particularly fiscal ones, a little too centrist for my tastes, after seeing him at the convention, I’d follow him anywhere). But 2012, for sure.
And till then, who? Not Hillary, though it pains me to say it. Maybe John Edwards, though it might be hard to get the taint of loss off of him. Maybe Evan Bayh. Or maybe someone not quite so centrist. I think the Dems need to avoid becoming more Republican than the Repugs next time around, tempting though it might be to go that way.
So much to consider and plan and imagine. Guess it’s a good thing that we’ll have four years (or at least two) to contemplate it.