An Election Elegy

Now that Mittens Romney has chosen his VP candidate in Paul Ryan, people keep asking me what I think of Ryan. Hmm. He wants to privatize social security which in my opinion is one of the most destructive ideas a politician has ever come up with. He wants to get rid of Medicare which would injure my mother and every other poor to middle class senior citizen in the country. His budget, which other republicans eat up like chocolate pudding, has been called by most economic experts “unworkable” and “a fantasy”.

So, what do I think of Ryan? As I construct my answer I realize even I can’t say that many swear words in a row and feel good about myself. He is, in a nutshell, someone I will never understand in a million years. Maybe it’s because I’m not rich, but I can’t not care about the vast majority of the American population the way Ryan and Romney don’t. They’re liars and deceivers. I don’t know how anyone cannot see that.

Mitt Romney made $20 million last year and technically didn’t have a job. His wife goes on campaign stops filled with run-of-the-mill working class people and wears a $900 shirt. How do these people who are cheering for him not vomit all over his designer shoes?

There is a hue and cry for Romney to release his taxes. We don’t need to see them. We already know he has off shore accounts in the Cayman Islands. He’s a tax cheat. There is no reason to have accounts in the Caymans other than to cheat the taxman. Again, explain to me how republican voters aren’t incensed by this. Why would you vote for this man?

In the 2008 Democratic primary I voted for Hillary Clinton. I did not believe Obama had enough experience and should have waited to run for president. When he won the primary I voted for him. I didn’t drink the Kool Aid of hope and ‘yes we can’, I just knew I couldn’t vote for the politician John McCain had become. In 2000 I would have crossed my party and voted for McCain had he won his party’s nomination. But in 2008 he was a different candidate, a desperate one with no original ideas left. So I voted for Obama. Once again I had essentially voted for the lesser of two evils instead of someone I really believed in.

If I had to grade Obama I’d give him a C for his first term. I don’t think the Affordable Care Act is perfect but at least he did something. He seems to have surrounded himself with a cabinet of functionaries, but not visionaries. He didn’t listen to the leading economists about the short comings of his stimulus package and here we are four years later in very much the same swamp of unemployment, high gas and food prices and zero confidence that we are elevating, not descending. I am supportive of his general ideas but his methods of implementing them are not working.

In November I will once again vote for Obama because I don’t have a choice. Mitt Romney has only one idea and that’s to make sure he stays rich. The man can’t think on his feet and his over seas trip recently proved he was even more inept at foreign policy than Sarah Palin. I wonder if he can see Europe from Massachusetts?