The Next Four Years

By Wendi Strickland

Well, the election has officially been called. Many people are already cracking jokes about emigrating. I used to make similar jokes in years past, but I have to be honest – lately, that attitude is starting to really piss me off. As do the first-time voters whose candidate of choice doesn’t win, and they then decide that their vote doesn’t matter, and they never vote again.

I could justify that line of thinking if the election were a landslide. When the demographics are 99 to one, and you are in that one, you are facing a very long and difficult fight, and cutting your losses may be the best option.

But this was not a landslide. It was not a landslide four years ago either. This year, no matter who ultimately does win, nearly half the country will have opposed them. And, that half the country will still be opposed to them.

With those odds, you need to stay in the game. And it is all the more important for you TO stay in the game.

Those of you considering emigration, even jokingly – and those of you who are considering never voting again – this is just the beginning. Electing the people to office is only part of a voter’s responsibility. It’s what the people start doing when they get into office do that matter – and, in many cases, we get to vote on that too.

If you leave, if you abandon the ballot station now, you leave us with less people down the road to vote “no” on things like a Marriage amendment to the Constitution. Or “no” on tax cuts for corporations. Or “no” on drilling in Alaskan wildlife reserves. You leave us with less people to vote “yes” for stem cell research. Or “yes” for increased education funding. Or “yes” on bringing home the troops safe, wherever they may be.

If you think your vote really didn’t count, ask yourself why people in Ohio took so much time to count votes, and why voting stayed open for hours late, rather than Ohio just up and calling the state. As yourself why some people waited NINE HOURS to vote in some cases. If you think the only reason to leave the country is because you backed the wrong guy for President, and you’re in a “minority” of 49.5%, you are declaring that it’s easier to quit than to stand up for your own principles. Electing the man you want into office just means someone else can help you achieve them, but if the man you don’t want is in office, you can still achieve them. Especially when half the country is with you.

And that’s half the country that needs you. And half the country that could also vote along with you four years from now. Leaving it all in the hands of the people we elect is the lazy way out, and leaving the ballot box or leaving the country is leaving it all in their hands.

I don’t know about you, but I believe in my principles too strongly to abandon responsibility for them to someone else. Especially if I did not elect that person – since the man I did not vote for got into office, I am all the more determined to watch him like a hawk and be sure he’s not screwing me over. That goes for congressmen as well as candidates.

Unless they’re irretrievably arrogant, the people who win their elections this year will realize that the half of the country that voted against them represents a sword of Damocles that could fall on them in 2008. They will be paying very close attention to what this half of the country thinks of them over the next four years. It will be in their best interests to satisfy that half the country – so long as we are still here, and still voting, to tell them what we want.

Be here to tell them. Be here to put pressure on them. Take every last advantage you have to remind them “you aren’t the one I voted for, you’re going to have to work harder to satisfy me.” And remind yourself that half the country is saying the same thing to them – and half a nation can make an awful lot of noise.