Republican connection.
This will be a short one.
A two party system is essential. (actually we need *more* but two as a baseline.)
I think that the Republican Party can come back….
If it relies most heavily two things,one a present aspect of the Republican party and one a future hope.
I think candidates need to emphasize the fiscal conservative portion of their creed. Prudence in spending. Encouragement of using resources for job creation…adding to the pool of working folks. I know the social conservatism is part of the mix, but I think pushing it to the front row and monopolizing the microphones with it has not been helpful to the party as a whole.
And they need to do much much more work….reaching out to constituencies that have been historically Democratic. Not from a distance. Not just with a campaign ‘machine,’ Each Republican person from outside communites connecting with more of their neighbors who come from the Latino or African American communities …talking with union households not about ‘union busting,’ but about commonalities outside of the workplace, for example.
I’d love to be able to just disagree with them instead of being actively afraid of them…and these steps would work toward that.
Because I didn’t fear George Voinovich. (I miss his voice a lot) I didn’t feel extremism coming from the words of a Richard Lugar, for example. Olympia Snowe seemed to me to be a pragmatist to work with.
I’d like to see a party who isn’t to be feared and doesn’t use fear…here’s hoping.
Something I’m puzzling over…or an aspect of disability and voting.
There is a subset of voters within the disability community that vote for Democrats or progressives. There is a subset of voters within the disability community that vote for Republicans.
I’m one of the Democrats. But…I have a strong feeling that had I been born able bodied…my community, my faith experience, my dear family…all of those would have pulled me toward the probability of voting Republican.
This next line could sound racist to some readers so I want to preface this by stating strongly this is not my intent.
But in the subset of Dems with disabilities…for those of us that are white…is a sliver of the reason we vote Democratic that we feel some resentment? Not just for dealing with disabilities….Do we feel “kicked out?” of the space of white privilege? (or, if born with our impairments, never in it in the first place)… Do we think, “Hey, but for this chair, I would have been sitting in the catbird seat?”
Anecdotal among my friends with disabilities who are white…we *are* denied that space, but many do not express themselves politically in ways that indicate that, or for those who vote Republican, they believe the reason they are not occupying a white privilege space is the fault of Democratic politicians and policies.
I also wonder, particularly for white men with acquired disabilities…if they led a life of perceived success before their impairments, are they able to hold onto that place, or do they lose it….and depending on that turn, does that impact their vote?
I hope not. I hope that whichever side we vote on, it’s because of issues, of who we believe is going to lead to fuller integration in the community, education and the holy grail of employment for persons with disabilities.
I don’t see myself as having this particular stripe of resentment…and my illustration is my family. Some of them have been insanely successful, as the world determines success….I’m proud of them, I don’t resent it. In one case I’m a bit stunned by it, but not resentful of it. I have some competitive flashes, but it never stays…it doesn’t sit in my head.
You can wish more worldly integration and success for yourself (that I do often) without resenting those things in others.
In a broader sense it means I don’t resent wealth and success in making wealth in general.
Resenting it as is is silly because it *can* be the engine behind employment, depending on how it is used.
So, for the small amount of people interested in how the “disability vote” breaks down, some things to puzzle over.
Blanket statement
It was the dress rehearsal for this, really.
In 1983 I was doing a short internship writing for my college paper. I was doing this during a non-standard time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when most other students were gone.
Well, some bright person whose job it was to manage the heat source in my rambling century old dorm (steam heat) simply turned off the heat after fall quarter finals, not remembering that there were a group of us studying. Although we still had power, there was suddenly no heat. In Ohio. In early December.
When I went in to the shower room each morning, I could see my breath. I would have been frozen out, except for the blankets.
I can’t take credit for the giant stack of quilts and blankets in the lowest drawer of a dorm room dresser. My usual roommate was home that term, but, blessedly, she had left this stack of quilts behind. It felt like I used all of them when I slept. I think I did.
It’s a really weird feeling to realize that you have continued to shiver all night while sleeping.
Well, its fall, not winter. I’m in Ohio again. Much less mobile, physically able to handle these things. The edge of Sandy mixed with local lake effect brewing meant that parts of the suburb where I live now lost power and heat on Monday and did not get it back until last night.
But I didn’t want to leave. The accessible shower…and bathroom, and low bed meant more than light and heat.
It’s troubling that such a vulnerable population as the tenants here had no generator, no auxiliary source of power…unlike an assisted living place five minutes away (their generator eventually malfunctioned, leaving them in the same pickle. ) Two main streets in town had power poles, as well as trees strewn across the streets. Our wind was only fifteen miles per hour less than the speed on the East Coast on Monday night.
To be fair…the staff did much more checking and follow up this year than during a similar outage in 2011. They checked on us often, volunteers came with food…
I am planning on writing a missive to town leadership that if the power grid doesn’t allow for “prioritizing” our sort of building, it bloody well should. In addition, perhaps some cost sharing between tenants, and management and government resources could be worked out so that individuals could have generators, or the building could.
stayed here on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday…I reasoned, I couldn’t see my breath yet and had enough blankets, so…I should suck it up. But I did experience the nightlong shivers again…
And I managed to get through the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, reading by the window during daylight…in two days.
By Wednesday Night my home health aide was making noises that I *had* to leave, so I spent time at my parents’ home until power was restored.
And all of that is nothing compared to what this guy is going through in NYC. It’s not referenced in the blog, but he’s been hit by bureaucratic and power issues trying to make sure his vent is powered up.
My thoughts have been, and continue to be with all persons with disabilities placed at risk by Sandy….
Midlife And Treachery 
