Paul Krugman's recent quip - that the Republican leadership has adopted the slogan "Kill the Future" to counter Obama's "Win the Future" slogan in his State of the Union address - gets truer every day.
CHICAGO-If African Americans, Latinos, first time voters and students defy predictions
and vote in large numbers November 2, Democrats can prevent a Republican takeover of
Congress. So said former President Bill Clinton at a jammed get-out-the-vote rally here
Oct. 26.
Edwin Stanton, the tireless Secretary of War in President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet said at the time of Lincoln’s death, “He belongs to the ages.” Much the same can be said about this election.
The election challenged long-held assumptions, broke voter turnout records, and shattered seemingly unbreakable barriers – none more historic than the election of an African-American president for the first time. And all this happened in the face of negative appeals to the worst angels of the American people. But to our credit, we repudiated the old politics of fear, division, racial code words, red-baiting, immigrant bashing, and nostalgic appeals to a country and time that never were.
If the election of Barack Obama was a monumental victory, election night itself was a magical moment
Generation Vote, a national coalition of different youth and student organizations, has created a Youth Agenda for the 2008 elections. Read it, endorse it, download it and distributed it today!
Labor and people from every walks of life see hope in the Obama presidency, and they see someone who will be responsive to the demands of the broader people’s movement more so than Wall Street. This was exemplified when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got a letter from big Democratic donors demanding she take back her support of Super Delegates switching their votes based on their Districts.
The YCL can be proud that all over the country our comrades gave their all, dedicating time and energy to organizing, educating and mobilizing young voters in our communities and on our campuses. Our midwest project sent dozens of young people to work in the battleground states and get a real hands on education about electoral politics and geting out the vote. We helped elect several local candidates, registered hundreds of young voters and built important relationships with other young people and youth organizations fighting to defeat Bush. This was no small accomplishment!
We will be working with our allies in the youth and student movement in a unified effort to show how this election is key to all the struggles young people are facing from peace to education to police accountability to gay rights. Key to this is convincing people that the defeat of Bush would put the entire youth movement on a decisively better footing to start winning.
If you turned on the TV on November 3rd CNN mentioned to you that young people showed up at the polls but it was nothing too impressive. They told you that while the numbers went up, so did all voter-turnout numbers and there was no significant shift or big change in how many young folks showed up as compared to the rest of the population. Some of them even went so far as to blame the youth for not turning out enough to impact the elections favorably for Kerry. But the numbers tell another story.
If you turned on the TV on November 3rd CNN mentioned to you that young people showed up at the polls but it was nothing too impressive. They told you that while the numbers went up, so did all voter-turnout numbers and there was no significant shift or big change in how many young folks showed up as compared to the rest of the population. Some of them even went so far as to blame the youth for not turning out enough to impact the elections favorably for Kerry. But the numbers tell another story.
The world\'s people agree: Bush and his cronies are the greatest single danger to peace, human rights, and democracy. No question about it - Bush has got to go in November.
Our country is being devastated by the Bush administration. Like the miners in Pennsylvania who survived because they stuck together, we the people can pull ourselves out of danger with our vote in the 2002 elections.
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