I Suck at Politics
I went to a meeting of Progressive Florida Bloggers in Lakeland last week. Organizer Kenneth Quinnell, a political science and history professor, is criss-crossing the state, getting small groups of people together outside of mainstream political organizations with the hope that grassroots-types can be more effective at bringing real, positive change than (duh!) the Republicans currently in power or the state’s sadly top-down Democratic Party, which is working hard to out-corrupt the Republicans while offering little or no reason for ordinary working people to support it. So there I was, in a room with several very smart, politically-involved people, and I was more interested in our hosts’ home remodeling and landscaping efforts; their house is the same vintage as ours (both built in 1950), and while they have not gotten as colorful as my wife and I have, they have done some truly neat stuff with it. But this is only one example of why I suck at politics.
Another is my wild and crazy work (and sleep) schedule. Last night I hoped to attend (Democratic) gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis’s Online Town Hall, but I took a nap — and accidentally slept until the town meeting was over. The Flash video intro required a version of Flash that isn’t available for Linux, so I couldn’t watch that, and there was no chat log available after the fact. Oh, well.
My previous opportunity to meet Jim Davis was derailed because it required a $250 minimum donation. That was a fund-raiser on Longboat Key, a beach community near our home in Bradenton that is full of overmonied condomites — and is home to enough overt racism that my (black) wife doesn’t like to go near the place.
Maybe at some point Mr. Davis will come back to this area and not demand a Republican-level admission price for the pleasure of his company — and hold his local meeting in a town where residents don’t turn their dogs loose if they spot a black person in a public park. (True story: I was there.)
I believe there’s some other Democrat who wants to be governor, too, but he hasn’t even made Davis’s feeble outreach efforts around here. I know nothing about this other candidate, so I have no opinion about him. It looks like this is another election where it’ll be a nose-holding “vote against the worst” choice. So it goes.
Maybe I could make a difference if I was willing to devote enough time or effort, but at the moment I’m afraid I don’t expect the 2006 election in Florida to give me a clear chance to vote against corruption and in favor of honesty and/or competence. On one side we have Democrats with tin ears, supported heavily by greedhead plaintiffs’ lawyers, and on the other we have “pave the state and screw the workers” Republicans.
I can’t get enthusiastic about either crowd.
So I suck at politics, at least for now.