First of all, nothing sums up the surprised and giddy mood of last night quite like this photo of Ben Unger, Executive Director of the Senate Democratic Leadership Fund, holding up the copy of the Oregonian headlined, “Democrats Bet Against History on Tax Hikes.” Bam!
But the day after I’m feeling, well, blue. It started to sink in during Speaker of the Oregon House Dave Hunt’s speech at the victory party last night. “This is about the kids out there who are going to keep the school year they’ve got,” Hunt told the crowd. “The seniors who are going to keep the services they’ve got.” He’s right.
It’s depressing that we had to go through this tooth-and-nail $10 million fight to keep the status quo. We passed the tax hikes on the rich, but the state still had to cut its budget severely last spring. This victory means we get to keep our shitty education system and our shitty healthcare system. It’s sad to push so hard just to stay stuck in low gear.
I called Ian Greenfield, managing director of the Oregon Bus Project, for a pep talk. He spends campaign days shouting through megaphones, cajoling people to vote. He should be able to talk me through this. But Greenfield shared my melancholy.
“It’s interesting being in a place like Oregon where it takes so much effort to get good things done, like public beaches, bottle bill, right? And they’re extraordinarily easy to tear down. We spend so much time just trying to keep what makes this place great,” Ian told me.
“So what’s the plan? Are we ever going to move forward?” I asked.
“You could run for office,” he replied.
Meh. I would never run for office. Not only are there incriminating photos of me on the internet, I also hate canvassing and am afraid of babies (especially kissing them).
Greenfield took a different tack: “The win last night is definitely about maintaining services. But the flip side is the Bus registered 8,000 new people, we had 200 volunteers come in. Those are people who are might be more engaged in politics in the future.”
Okay, so there’s a small ray of sunshine breaking through my sodden hangover. But still. Millions of dollars and six months later, I can’t help feel like we’re right back where we started last June when the legislative session wrapped up.
If you want to avoid the whole running thing, you could always get a job as an adviser to someone who did run. Of course, people will immediately say that you sold out and the only reason you got the job was because you have dirt on your boss, but as long as you can deal with people saying mean (and untrue) things about you, you’d be great.
Not that I want high turnover in the Mercury News Department, it generally takes a while for people to get up to speed, to make the right connections, to get ideas to deal with some loser who doesn’t show up to an interview by replacing him with Matt Davis’s dinner… But still, look at the big picture: Are you better off reporting the news, or controlling it?
One takes a “tack,” as in sailing parlance. Tact is something else entirely.
http://www.thompsonwriting.com/Free%20Grammar%20Checklist%20from%20Thompson%20Writing%20and%20Editing.htm
Now the schools (teacher’s unions) and state services (union pension funds) have all the money they need and we won’t hear a peep about lack of funding, so that’s a relief.
Oh no, D. You see, according to the supporters last night this was just the beginning of the “progress”, and we have much more “progress” to look forward to.
Of course, we may not actually see any noticable improvement in services from this “progress”, but the public employees will get their raises and fat pensions.
I think it’s called a “hangover,” no?
I support Sara Mirk for elected office
err, typo: I meant to say I support *Sarah* Mirk for elected office. (It’s hard to spell when I’m only 8 months old.)