You Know What You Need to Do

If you're here, of all places, then you don't need me to stress to you the importance of voting. Michael Moore said it pretty eloquently at HuffPo and elsewhere and between Moore and Rachel Maddow, they make a pretty good case as to why Democrats and liberals especially have to both vote and to get out the vote.

But no matter how eloquent, persuasive and right these arguments are, this time around they come off as sounding pretty desperate, don't they? Too many of us are listening to pundits like Karl Rove and the always-wrong Dick "The Ultimate Political Blowback" Morris, people whose prognostications have been telling us for a year or more that the Democrats are doomed, that they'll certainly lose the House and perhaps even the Senate.

Well, the only way that's going to happen is if you sit on your keisters during this election and not vote your conscience. And if you have a conscience, then you'll know what you have to do. As I said, if you're here, then you don't need ole JP to tell you about how wonderful and important it is to have the right to vote for the person and ballot measure of your choice. But if you know any left-leaning people who plan on staying home until the polls close, it's your moral responsibility to get them up and at the polls if they're registered to vote. And if they're not registered, it's also your moral responsibility to get them to register for 2012.

Because you know what'll happen if we treat this like any other midterm, where a good turnout is something approaching 40%. This particular midterm is, if anything, more important than most. We've seen open rebellion against a tepid, mainstream, middle of the road, centrist president who's helped give us a faint whiff of actual reform and a Congress that's hardly any more committed.

But that's a damn sight more than what you'll get with a Republican-dominated Congress. With a Republican Congress, you'll see the endless extension of the Bush tax cuts that have helped bankrupt us so the wealthy can get even more bloated. We'll see the last of any regulation of the corporate sector that's also bankrupted us as well as polluted our southern shoreline for decades.

Don't believe me? Remember what things were like when the GOP dominated Congress during those four crucial years between 2003-2007? We saw our nation go to war with a much smaller sovereign country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We saw the disappearance of a major American city due to shocking federal neglect. We lost the right to file for bankruptcy, the economy was ready to burst, and innocent Iraqis and disabled American servicemen were suddenly the villains when news surfaced that we were abusing and neglecting them.

"Liberal" became a four letter word more than ever and a grieving war mother named Cindy Sheehan had to remind us of our humanity and how wrong the Iraq war was by taking a lonely stand in a ditch in Crawford, Texas.

Yeah, you remember. Remember how the 2006 midterms couldn't come fast enough and we all said out loud or to ourselves, "When, O when are the midterms coming so we can vote these bums out?" And you did the right thing.

Well, we're about to do the same thing but to the wrong party. I don't believe for a minute that the GOP will take either chamber of Congress and I think by late tonight I'll be proven right again. But the Tea Baggers, thanks to the MSM, think they have the upper hand. They're hopped up like crystal meth freaks on Viagra and Spanish Fly.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: If the GOP takes either chamber of Congress, it won't be because of a tide of Red Republican votes but through the dam of backed-up votes denied the Democrats by lazy faux liberals and other moderates. Remember the words of that inestimable friend of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, when he wrote, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

You all know what you gotta do.

Maybe we can all take a lesson from Gen. George S. Patton in his famous speech to the 3rd Army. Here's Patton's speech, slightly revised in bold for Election Day:

"People, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this election, not wanting to vote, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real Americans and all real Americans like to fight.

Well, despite what Jon Stewart told us at the rally, this election is a fight because the other side has made it a fight. Unlike us, Mr. Stewart, the GOP and its Tea Bagger overseers are resorting to threats, intimidation and outright disinformation, such as in Kansas.

And if the GOP somehow gains either chamber of the legislative branch, the new majority party, drunk on its Koolaid-fueled power, will suddenly remember all about the impeachment process and we'll see one set of articles of impeachment after another against President Obama, only without Monica Lewinsky. God help us if those sick cocksuckers take over the Senate, also. That will make even whatever tepid and middling reforms we'd ever get out of this White House over the next two years harder to bring about if the President has to needlessly fend off one silly article of impeachment after another.

Because to the Other Side that Jon Stewart insists on calling passionate Americans with real convictions, it's about preventing gay people from marrying, it's about deporting hardworking, taxpaying brown people, it's about putting a white guy back in the White House, it's about extending tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, it's about abortion, it's about allowing corporations like BP to continue fucking up our ecosystem. It's about everything but what really counts because the last thing the Republican Party needs or wants is a government that actually fucking works.

To quote Patton one more time: "Alright now, you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel."

Now get out and do the right thing.