Want to win in politics? Focus on what works.
Every day, I wake up and thank God for Joe Biden’s decisive election win – by over 7 million votes – and subsequent confirmation as President. It still feels like a miracle, or perhaps a mystery, certainly a thriller. So, how did we win? It should be obvious, right? We won the vote.
Despite relentless GOP sabotage and attempts to overturn our free, fair, and legitimate election. Even with swing state numbers too close for comfort, more than 60 GOP-packed court challenges including the GOP-rigged Supreme Court, dozens of audits and recounts, 120 GOP senators voting to reject the election results, SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013, mail-in voting sabotaged by DeJoy, insurrectionists attacking our Capitol intent on murdering our representatives, Biden is POTUS. Even Republicans can’t believe it because they know how hard they tried to rig it. And yet, we won.
There are mostly good, honest people in the government and the courts, insistence to the contrary by anti-government Federalists and MAGAs notwithstanding. The GOP did everything in their power to recreate 2016. But we were ready, we put in the work, we educated voters, and we turned out to vote. So, let’s focus on what worked. Voting and education. Because that’s where the GOP will attack next.
They have already begun sabotaging the vote, drafting hundreds of voter disenfranchisement bills. Now, Florida suddenly banned teaching Critical Race Theory, even though it wasn’t even taught in their schools. If they could, they would ban teaching Critical Thinking in schools. These evil jerks learned that indoctrination starts early from the cigarette industry and the NRA. Starting with their puppet, Ronald Reagan guided by Ailes and Murdock, they want American children to be “educated” by Fox “News” and not by teachers.
I am the poster child for GOP indoctrination, having grown up working class, in the extremely red DuPage County, IL, land of Henry Hyde. My first time voting at 18 was for Reagan. The only one of six kids and two parents to graduate public high school, I put myself through college, then moved to Paris where I finally learned what Right and Left meant. I was outraged to learn the Right’s trope, Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, was a Big Lie designed to keep the poor and uneducated just that. I learned it was the Left that fought for safety nets. The epiphany of that doctrine betrayal is why I’m still so angry at Republicans.
Back then, during a family barbeque, I got into an argument with a childhood friend who was in the Army. I explained my reason for changing parties was that I had gotten an education and learned what the parties meant. He looked me in eyes and said, “That’s the problem.” The GOP lie and cheat to retain power. Let’s start with what works. Let’s educate and vote.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.