Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

We're at one of those junctures in our history where people need to figuratively sit down. We can not flee. We can't leave the work of building and strengthening a progressive majority to hold of Bush and the rightwing to someone else. Before we start to tell people that Bush does not have a mandate, we ourselves must internalize that fact. We must remember that this election was, once again, excruciatingly close. For the first time in nearly 200 years, the United States was attacked on the North American continent, and the presiding President squandered 80% approval ratings for his initial response to that attack and had to wait until the morning after the election to find out that the most votes ever cast against an incumbent President were, barely, not enough to drive him from the White House. We must not forget that the momentous meaning of Bush's victory could be great but that the margin was modest. We must remember that even though a narrow majority of voters chose Bush over Kerry, it does not follow that a majority want the kind of nation and government that Bush and his minions surely hope to create. Then, we must stand firm and hold our ground.

Please, no more talk about leaving for Canada. No more searching around for European-born grandparents so you can get an EU passport; leave the dual-citizenship shenanigans to washed-up athletes who can't make the US Olympic team and tax-dodgers hiding out from the IRS. No more talk about giving up on your country, your state, your local community, your party, or on politics. No more thoughts that might lead you to allow an electoral defeat to defeat you.

How you chose to respond to this defeat will not just affect you, what you chose to do will affects us all. Regardless of what Rove and the big-media spinmeisters may say, we're not the party of me, we're the party of us. When we are at our best, we are the party that exemplifies unity and solidarity. And if you leave the country or your community or politics, that's a loss for us--and not just those of us who voted for Kerry instead of Bush, but for all Americans.

Feel glum if you need to; I sure do. But don't wander away. Hold your ground. And don't stop fighting back. We all need you.

I admit, I devoted a couple of hours to idly dreaming Canadian dreams this afternoon.

But this poster at the Daily Kos makes sense. It's a longer, harder row to hoe to stay and fight, but to do otherwise is kinda chickenshit, isn't it?