THIS ELECTION IS ABOUT MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
Are you as nervous about today’s midterm elections as I am?
Are you wondering whether you could have done more to stop this train wreck of a presidency from gaining more steam?
It’s that same queasy feeling you used to get the day before a final exam, isn’t it? The grade would determine whether you’d get to pass to the next level or have to figure out an excuse to give your parents for failing. In this case, though, it’s the adults who will have to do the explaining.
Most Americans understand what’s riding on the elections. We might not all be cheering for the same team, but you can bet that both sides are fired up and ready to go.
We have seen the negative energy spewing from the Trump rallies. They are most comfortable when we’re going backward because they are terrified of the change that lies ahead.
For two years, we’ve been telling ourselves that the people who follow blindly behind Trump don’t represent who we are as a nation. One of the few things that has kept us hopeful during this bleak period is the fact that sensible, caring, honest and decent people still make up the majority of Americans.
Maybe we dropped the ball in 2016 and allowed a candidate who is nothing like us to slip into office. But the bright light in that dark tunnel was that we’d have the midterms as a chance to start righting this huge mistake.
Today’s elections are about a lot more than making amends, though. They are contests for the soul of our nation and, thus, the survival of our democracy.
The people we choose to represent us in Congress can have no doubts about what we want. We have made it clear that we want our health insurance protected. We want our children to be able to attend public schools that could rival any charter schools.
We want all of our elected officials to be held accountable for what they say and do, especially when they live in the White House. We are tired of the steady stream of lies. We want truth to be mandatory.
We are not demanding that guns be rounded up from every person who legally owns one. But we do want sensible, effective gun laws that will keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them legally or otherwise.
We will remember that though the president of the United States may have declared himself a nationalist, we are people who welcome diversity. We believe, in fact, that our country thrives on it.
The people we cast our vote for must have zero tolerance for every type of bigotry. We will only vote for those who believe that America is home to all people, regardless of their religion.
We will vote to make sure that our Statue of Liberty is never covered with cobwebs, that it always stands as a welcoming beacon to those who seek refuge within our midst.
Today, we will begin the process of redefining our nation so that we can hold our heads up high when we say that we are Americans. We will vote to bring back the country that, in spite of its faults, was the best place in the world to live.
What we want most from this election are simple things — the restoration of hope, the resurgence of humanity and a return to civility.
So we must remind ourselves all day long today that good can triumph over evil, if we come together and build our own wall to keep it at bay.
We must not forget the most important things our Constitution guarantees — that we, the people, have the power to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of our country.
In other words, if Congress isn’t working for us, we have the power to fix it.