Purple State Blues

Virginia is WEIRD. We have incredible wealth and the most grinding of poverty. Areas of rich diversity and other areas where folks still don't seem to have heard that the South lost the "War of Northern Aggression".

I've lived here 21 years. The first election I voted in was the one in which George Bush #1 took Virginia easily. The first election where the Presidential candidate I voted for won Virginia was 2008.

So I'm not surprised that we're going to get another nasty conservative Republican jackass for the next four years in this state.

But it didn't have to be so.

The fact is, that the same voters who were galvanized by the Obama campaign, who were dazzled by being part of such a charismatic movement, were bored by Creigh Deeds. 

They didn't see themselves as part of history. They didn't see any entertainment in it. There was no "Deeds Girl", no fabulous "Yes, We Can" slogan. No massive movement on Facebook or MySpace.

So instead of spending a few minutes to vote yesterday, they went home to watch something incredibly deep that they'd TIVOed--perhaps the latest episode of "Dancing With the Stars", or to Twitter about their latest bowel movement, or to wail on their blogs about how all the instant change they expected after Obama got into office hasn;t happened.

The Republicans are NOT Obama's worst enemy. 
The indifferent, apathetic, short attention spanned Democrats and Independants who have not stood up over the past year and shouted to the heavens  as one voice their indignation over what has been going on up on Capitol Hill and on the airwaves are what are doing us in.

We've seen teabaggers interrupting town hall meetings and marching on D.C. Where are the counter-demonstrations?

Where are the masses marching to say "We WANT health care. We WANT support for the unemployed and we want the fat cats of the banks and Wall Street to BECOME the unemployed--and without any golden parachutes either"?

They're home, in the words of the #1 song I hated: "Waiting for the world to change"

Nice going, folks.

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