by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
The National Democratic Party and the Biden-Harris Campaign are laser-focused on just a handful of 'battleground" states and routinely ignore ones like the "show-me" state of Missouri where I live and vote. I religiously drive into town every two years to vote in elections where I have darned few actual choices on the ballot. In Howell County, Missouri, when someone wants to oppose an established Republican office holder, and ALL of our office holders are Republican, as are ALL of our state office holders, they will often choose to do so as an "Independent" rather than as a Democrat. One of the reasons the Democratic Party takes it on the shins in Missouri, and particularly in rural Missouri, is that the national party has written Missouri off and routinely ignores the state during every election cycle - choosing instead to focus its money and fire on the "battleground" states.
And when money (the "lifeblood" of politics) and support is withheld, enthusiasm wanes or disappears altogether and the sad reality of Missouri being a "red" state is even more real.
An old friend and I exchanged a few emails on this subject earlier in the week, and I surmised, as I probably have done previously in this blog, that the only way Missouri would get a visit from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris during the general election cycle would be if they experienced plane trouble while flying over the state and were forced to land for repairs. In fairness, the same undoubtedly will hold true for Donald Trump and his running mate.
The game is afoot and nobody cares about the voters in the states that lean too heavily toward the red or the blue. Yes, both candidates would probably like to have our votes just so their popular vote totals would be higher, a prestige thing, but popular votes don't choose presidents - electoral votes do. The states have more say than their residents in choosing who leads our nation. American democracy is buried in the fine print.
But it's wrong of me to say that the national parties have no interest in rural Missouri voters. The national parties do inundate us gullible hillbillies with relentless requests for money - money which they will then turn around and spend in "battleground" states.
I have a long history of donating money to political causes and candidates, but I no longer blindly throw money into some national bucket. Now, with my fixed income, I very carefully select the recipients of my limited largesse - my own battlegrounds, if you will.
Donald Trump, the fake billionaire-on-the-beg, will never get a dime from me, and if Joe and Kamala truly need my money, they need to make plans to stop by and pick it up.
And if Americans really want their votes to matter, they need to dismantle the Electoral College and consign it to the scrapheap of history. Then the entire nation would be the battleground and every person's vote would be equally important. I would donate to that cause.
1 comment:
Well said. Your post needs a wider audience. It needs to be on every news source in the US.
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