THE INEFFABLE JOY OF HOPE.

I'm a Democrat. A liberal Democrat, to be sure, but I have never found any other political organization that gives me a plausible possibility of accomplishing a minimal amount of the issues for which I advocate. Democracy aint a sure thing. As you might expect, I'm often in a sour mood following our elections, every two and four years. Sometimes we have a brief sugar high, after which we return to bitter disappointment. Where we remain until a new face gives us hope that this time we might have reason for hope. Not unqualified hope, to be sure, but a too-brief reason for hope for our future. It is the fate of the Democratic mind-set. We are not in the habit of obtaining adherence by trickery or force.

After confronting a candidate that has the chutzpah to say out loud that he wants to be a unitary executive. After watching the Heritage Foundation coalesce behind the man that threatened a post-Constitutional America, then skitter away when their Project 2025, or Agenda 47, or whatever they will be calling it next, is rejected by nearly everybody not still a Republican, and knowing our hope was a kind man in the late ears of an active life, we have hope again. Hope, in the form of a mixed-race woman in her active middle years who chose a white man as Vice-President, in his active middle years, both of which are so likeable that the insults from the most unlikeable group of people in charge of a party that has been unlikable since at least Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, are losing traction. This was more than we were hoping for. It is not just that we could retain hope, it is a hope that is likely to happen. Likely to drive those dreadful despots cloaked in the Brooks Brothers suit of neo-conservative democracy-lite, into the caves where they belong. 

Before I get too ebullient, let me assure you that I have at no time abandoned caution. Because we have been to this dance before. The consequences were not as stark (in the Game of Thrones way), but they were serious. Some of us warned way back in the 90s, that we were possibly on the road to fascism, but that road was not yet clear to much of the nation. It was possible, up to 2016, to say to those of us who were concerned, that we were making too much of our seemingly existential fear. But we retain the memory of those times when hope gave our lives a short reprieve from the despair of watching money, racism homophobia, christian nationalism, and autocracy, moving ever closer, once more, to that unexplainable time when MAGA claims America was better.

We experienced the intoxication of hope when we watched our first black president win the presidency in 2008. We approved his overall policies, and were disappointed when he saved Wall Street and not homeowners. The Affordable care act was not what we wanted for healthcare, but it was better than we had been used to. We wanted him to live up to his promise to pull our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and were bitter when he buckled to his military advisers and left troops there. And being liberals, we knew that the issue had complexities we could not possibly know. Still we got a racial first, we got better Healthcare that would be useful when Covid 19 broke out, and we got to see right wing nutjobs go absolutely Nutella denying those political realities. Unfortunately, we watched the absolute worst people emerge on the right thanks to previously hidden racism, and an avalanche of money from right wing pressure groups. They were too successful, we were marginally successful. Yet we kept the recession that President Obama inherited, from becoming a depression. By the time DJT was sworn in our economy was once more on a healthy footing, but less inclusive than we wanted.

The Presidential election of 2004 gave some of us a double-dose of hope. Yet when the general election had finished, we still had the Dope. We came close, though. Our first surge of hope was Howard Dean, a physician and former governor of Vermont. His followers were commonly called Deanie Babies, for the collectable Beanie Babies of that time. Deaniacs was another nickname. He was an advocate of Medicare for all, against the Iraq-Afghanistan war, and much more that was important to us. And he was on the path to become the Democrat's candidate for President, when he did that famous yee-haw at an enthusiastic rally. A scream that was digitally enhanced by the Republican deep-state to sound louder than it was. It was over. The meet-ups were no more. The hope disappeared. All that remained was the knowledge of how to fund a political campaign by small-dollar, on-line funding appeals, and the belief that Democrats should actively compete in states where we do not expect to win. 

Out of the miasma of  Democratic dispair emerged John Kerry. A decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, a swiftboat captain in that war, and a young man who, after he was separated from service, helped found Vietnam Veterans against the War. The young man, who would later become a Senator, spoke to Congress in the waning days of the Vietnam War and asked, "what do you say to the last soldier to die in a war that shouldn't have been"? 

We came close, very close. Bush won re-election by 50.7% and by a mere 30 votes in the Electoral College. But along the way to that disappointing loss, the right wing deep state formed the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. As if Republicans know something about truth. This group of libelous Republicans (libelous; a quality well known to Republicans to this point) has re-emerged in the form of Chris Lacivita to swiftboat Tim Walz' 24 years of service in the National Guard. The first incarnation of Swiftboaters told lies such as, John Kerry shot himself in the butt to get a Silver Star. In spite of the campaign assistance of his former Swiftboat crew, these lies stuck. And the guy who used his family connections to join the Texas National Guard and fly aging fighter jets that no longer fought, was re-elected, and the allegations that he was warned by superior officers to stop doing coke, disappeared.

Jimmy Carter was not one of those candidates that inspired hope. But he has become an ex-president that is still admired, and a Christian example that shows the Republican example of Christianity as being empty of substance.

In 1968 we had a couple candidates, each of whom inspired great hope in young people opposed to sending young people to war. Senator Eugene McCarthy inspired whole communities of young Hippies to, "get clean for Gene". They went door-to-door hair cut, beards shaved, extolling the virtues that McCarthy embodied. He was opposed in the 1968 Democratic primary by another candidate who inspired hope, Robert F Kennedy. Senior, not junior. Bobby, as he was affectionately called, was the brother of an assassinated former President from a wealthy family that used their wealth to support liberal causes. After a late surge in primary states, he became the presumptive presidential nominee only days before the Democratic convention. And then he was assassinated. Like his brother, the circumstances around his assassination are clouded with doubt. Hubert Humphrey became our candidate. And we went into the Democratic Convention held in Chicago, which was destined to go down in history as a low-point in hope.

We are Democrats because we have hope for a better life for everybody. Not just the wealthy plutocrats. We have that hope because we must. To be without it is to remain bitter and cynical. Eventually some people lose hope and stay home at election time. The result is to give power to the power-hungry. And so we Democrats have learned to ride that sugar high, while dealing with the resulting crash. What other option is there? It's about us. All of us.