I should be used to this by now. Over the years I have worked hard for many candidates
who have lost, sometimes narrowly,
sometimes badly. I think it’s hardest when they lose narrowly—all those
ruminations about if we had just worked a little harder.
I'm trying to talk myself out of the post-election blues. I thought Patrick Murphy would have been an excellent
Attorney General, but the winner Kathleen Kane is certainly a qualified candidate. There were
some exciting young challengers-- Numa St. Louis and Charisma Presley-- who did
not win this time but have a good chanced of wining next time around. I feel very sad for Babette Josephs
but I am sure she will find some way to continue the to fight the good fight as a private citizen
I have had some victories—or more accurately been part
of a victorious army; the big one was Barack Obama’s 2008 primary and general
election victories. I sure hope I don’t
wake up depressed the morning of November 7.
Doing politics is kind of like teaching—maybe one
semester was a failure but there will soon be another one coming up, a fresh
start and an opportunity to learn from past mistakes. So we pick ourselves up and get ready for the
next election. November 2012 is the battle of my political life. The disappointments
of the primary are small indeed compared with the unimaginable disappointment
of an Obama defeat to Mitt Romney.
And there is so much to work to do to preserve
democratic rights—fighting to overturn the voter ID law, cynically designed to depress turn-out among the young, the poor and the elderly, while at same time struggling
to adapt to and educate voters about the new law. Will people become so angry
about this that they will become determined to vote to deny victory to those determined
to disenfranchise them? Is that too much to hope for???