One-Issue Decision? Not This Year

by muon

I made a list last night of all the issues, off the top of my head, that seem to hinge on this election. I'm sure I forgot something. Here's my list, in no particular order:

Unemployment
Education
Energy independence
Climate change
Renewable energy
Equal pay for women
Middle East, terrorism, war, national security
Healthcare
Women's healthcare, including contraceptives, abortion, and Planned Parenthood
Medicare and Social Security
Immigration
FEMA and crisis management
Infrastructure
Welfare, food stamps, other poverty issues
Science, Arts, PBS
Deficit
Gun control
Citizens United
Supreme Court appointees
Banking/mortgage industry problems
Foreign and Domestic Trade
Wealth imbalance

For all of you still undecided folks out there (if any), really, all you have to do is go down this list and decide who you trust to make policy for you on these issues, at the Presidential, Congressional, State and Local levels. For instance, if you're hit by a natural disaster in the next 4 years, do you want someone who acted the way President Obama, Governor Christie and Mayor Bloomberg acted this week, or say, the way President Bush acted during Hurricane Katrina? Do you want a president who'd shut down FEMA and tell the states to handle disasters themselves, even when their infrastructure is completely compromised?  You might say, oh, but I don't live in a natural disaster prone area. I thought so, too, until Hurricane Sandy.

These issues are the main reasons I'm voting, not only for Obama, but for all the Democrats on my ballot.  I say main reasons because there are others.

I refuse to vote for a party that condones and spreads the blatant lies of its presidential candidate. This week Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders pressured the independent Congressional Research group to suppress a report showing that tax cuts for the wealthy do nothing to help the economy. I won't vote for anyone who has such a contempt for truth.

GOP leaders have gone out of their way to make voting more difficult this year. Voter ID laws, voter roll purging, laws restricting registration drives, reduced early voting in many states, and intimidation measures aimed at African-American and Latino voters are all forms of voter suppression. For the first time, the UN has sent monitors to the US to observe our elections. I'm not voting for the party that made all this happen.

Legislation in this country shouldn't be influenced by anyone but the voters. Many Democrats are in the pockets of lobbyists as much as Republicans, but the worst offenders right now--the Koch Brothers, Grover Norquist, the NRA, far-right religious fanatics, and Big Oil--are GOP cronies.

So that's the election in a nutshell for me. You're on your own.