Probable Democratic Majority Needs To Heal Country

IMPULSE TO PUNISH GOP MUST BE TEMPERED

If the Bush presidency has a legacy besides bumbling wars and reducing our stand in the worldwide community, it is the polarization of our politics—by extension, the division of our society.

Blue and red, white and black, North and South, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican. These splits are geographical, racial, economical and ideological and provide an impetus for those who have an interest in keeping the status quo these demographics provide—the equal grinding of beliefs that allow little improvement, bipartisanship or political harmony.

Republicans in Washington are as much to blame for this atmosphere of divide and conquer as much as Democrats who wallowed in the shadow of the administration's terrorism what-if's.

It's a good bet that Democrats will attain the executive branch and both houses of Congress this November. When that times comes, it is imperative that the Democratic majority not punish the GOP with legislative dominance, but take the higher ground.

Many extreme lefties might find this electoral triumph a prime opportunity to pay back conservatives who at one time in the early Rovian Bush White House actively sought to destroy the Democratic party, ruthlessly hung the specter of 9/11 over the left and rammed through legislation and operated congressional committees as if they had attained a huge mandate to run the country in this manner.

In practical terms, the healing must begin by curbing the habit of liberal elites to heap scorn and passive aggressive rhetoric towards working class conservatives.

They don't realize the incessant hammering of Sarah Palin is an assault on low-to-middle class Americans who live on processed American cheese rather than imported Gruyere.

Portraying Palin as a gun-totting Alaskan snow hick alienates large swaths of the American political landscape who might covet their rifles as much as you make sure your golf clubs are pristine.

Peace-loving, pony-tailed, 50-somethings on Telegraph fail to see they are as anathema to the real beliefs of Americans as much as conservatives on the religious right who might believe Jesus rode dinosaurs through the streets of Bethlehem.

[Liberals] don't realize the incessant hammering of Sarah Palin is an assault on low-to-middle class Americans who live on processed American cheese rather than imported Gruyere.

As author and Georgetown professor Dr. Michael Eric Dyson said last week during his lecture at Cal State East Bay, both candidates only talk about the middle class, “What about the poor people?”

Wealthy Democrats seem to forget about their own constituency often in their quest to quash low income people do not espouse the liberal view of America.

When Democrats talk about their economically dispossessed constitutency, it's code for black people.

But, most of impoverished America is not part of the minority, but white. Poor people in Appalachia, the Deep South and farmers struggling in the Plains are not heard and constantly picked on for being different than coastal Democrats.

An opportunity is missed if this harmful condescension continues into the next four years. In a time, when the financial durability of the world economy is in doubt, this is the moment when bipartisanship can be achieved with the added bonus of being attained under a Democratic majority.

Democrats have the opportunity to take the higher ground, they must act upon it for the nation's future.