six weeks out
Like many of us here in the progressive blogosphere, I find the news coming out of Congress today tremendously disconcerting. At the same time, I firmly believe that democracy is about both process (debate, discussion, public stands) and results (elections, Congressional votes, legal decisions). These two aspects of our democracy are deeply linked. As someone who has written numerous pieces raising energy and awareness about electoral activism I know just how significant elections are...and how important what we do and how we conceptualize what we do in the next six weeks will be for all of us. Here's a reality: in just a matter of days most absentee ballots will have been mailed out around the nation and the national mid-term elections of 2006 will have officially begun. I see what's going on in Washington with the "torture votes" as directly related to this reality. In my mind, our job is keep our eyes on the ball. Our job is to keep relentlessly building our