WE’RE TIRED. Some of you have been invested in this election for over a year. You watched the Iowa caucuses with bated breath, your spirits soared during the conventions, and you were filled with hope at the record numbers of new voter registrations in October. Now, as the bags deepen under your eyes after long days and nights spent talking to friends, family, and community members about the importance of this moment, it still seems like too long until it is all over on Nov. 4.
More casual observers are tired, too. Every other ad is an endorsement or attack sponsored by God-knows-which interest group or campaign. The news cycle, the comedy scene, every conversation is dominated by the election. You spend hours researching into their issues to see through the political rhetoric so you can finally cast that ballot and be done with it.
Some have been tired for much longer than this. We have long been tired of the politics of fear that drove us into an unnecessary war which has cost over 4,000 American lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and our respect in the international community. The fear that has led our country’s great name to be besmirched by human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
We have long been tired of tax policies that consider solely the needs of Wall Street and the 2 percent of Americans that make more than a quarter of a million dollars per year. We are tired of the widening gap between rich and poor and the fact that in the wealthiest country on earth, 35 million of our fellow citizens cannot even be sure they’ll have enough to eat each night. We’re tired of watching unemployment grow 50 percent since 2000 and home foreclosures triple in just two years, while certain politicians maintain that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
We have long been tired of the ignorance and inaction in the face of the greatest challenge facing our and the next generation: global climate change. We’re tired of doing nothing as study after study shows the onset of mass species extinctions, as drought-induced famine across the world brings conflict like that in Darfur, and as warming oceans generate devastating natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed one of America’s greatest cities.
We cannot allow this legacy to continue.
Barack Obama has long demanded that we replace the politics of fear with the politics of hope. We must revive a responsible foreign policy that relies on diplomacy first, that recognizes and prioritizes the real threats to our national security, and that upholds our highest ethical standards. We must bring relief to our middle class, crippled by unemployment, bad mortgages, and this economic crisis. We must recognize that in the richest country on earth, quality healthcare is a basic human right. We must ensure that every American can afford insurance. And as the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world, we must face our responsibility to our planet and children to take the lead on alternative energy and climate change.
These are Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s priorities. Our full Democratic ticket — including Mark Warner for Senate and Tom Perriello for Congress — realizes we need to change this broken system and build a better future for our country. But it is our votes that will give them the opportunity to do so.
So I will chug a Red Bull and continue on for these last few hours, and I hope you will join me. This election, this moment, is too important. Tomorrow, wake up this country by going to the polls and voting for change.
Barack Obama for President. Mark Warner for Senate. Tom Perriello for Congress. Vote tomorrow.
Sarah Buckley is president of the University Democrats.
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