Republicans now feel secure enough in their gerrymandering to dispense with any pretense of working in a positive fashion. From the unprecedented obstruction carried out by the GOP in the Senate to the thirty-eight votes in the House to repeal Obamacare, Republicans have shown that the only interest they have is in stymieing any Democratic proposal. Since they have no power to implement any of their own ideas or priorities—and since polling shows that a majority of Americans are against the things which fire up the Republican base—the only type of government in which the House leadership and the Senate minority can engage in is a negative one: to make the process of government so viscous and confused that enough voters will decide that it’s better to have all branches of government in the same hands, so that at least something can get done.

snip

One of the most frustrating things about 2010 was that OFA wasn’t very involved in the midterms. But now with President Obama no longer running for re-election, and with governance for the remainder of his term in the balance, OFA is becoming what the DNC wishes it could be: a super-powered organization which can bring to bear the efforts of its millions of volunteers on all sorts of local races. Because although regaining the House and keeping the Senate are of paramount importance, what OFA volunteers do in local elections is just as important. That fact was made abundantly clear in the past month, with the farce that occurred in Texas around reproductive rights, and the Stand Your Ground laws passed across the country, which led to the tragedy of Trayvon Martin. When Democrats vote, we win. When we don’t, people like George Zimmerman are empowered by laws passed by legislatures elected by a minority of the electorate.

snip

The question that fact brings up is this: what are we going to do for those 1200 days? Are we going to make each one count? Are we going to knock on doors, make calls, send emails? Are we going to leave everything on the floor, and carry out the struggle to make this country more just, more human? We know what our opponents want to do; they’ve been doing it since 2009: obstructing, obfuscating, being derelict in any duty to make the commonwealth function. That is a situation which cannot be allowed to stand. If we want to live in a country worthy of the sacrifices we and our ancestors have made, we have to be as involved in the politics of the day as we are in the latest sporting scores. Anything less and we have more Trayvon Martins, we have more Rand Pauls, we have more Stop & Frisk.