Stepping Up to the Plate

Since last Tuesday's momentous Senate election here in Massachusetts, I've been railing at my political allies to stop focusing so much on Obama and how he's "betrayed" them. I tried to inject a dose of realpolitik and encourage them to look at the situation from the perspective of someone who simply wants to get re-elected. To direct their ire anywhere but at Obama, because there's no way he's going to do what an outraged lefty base wants him to.

Obama's announcement that he wants to freeze domestic spending for three years is not just bad economics and bad politics, as desmoinesdem ably summarizes at Bleeding Heartland. It is a punch in the gut. My gut, specifically.

But I can't let it discourage me. I have to take responsibility for my own actions. I have to turn off Jon Stewart and Colbert and drop the detached cynicism that I've lovingly nurtured since Sept. 12, 2001.

The tea-partiers have been acting for a year as I sat on my hands and laughed at them. I'm going to get off my rear end now. I hope it isn't too late. Regardless, all I can do now is take responsibility and act. For me, that will mean calling my friends and relatives and encouraging them to act. I don't relish the task. I'd rather read my new copy of The Bauhaus Group. But, as desmoinesdem noted recently in recalling the words that Miep Gies used when asked why she risked her own life to shelter Anne Frank from the Nazis: "I have no choice."