THE STALE POLITICAL ARGUMENTS NO LONGER APPLY

Saturday, January 24, 2009

(Arlington County Democratic Committee)

Report from the Chairman

Peter Rousselot

"On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. *** Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions--that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. *** What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them--that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”---From Barack Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Address.

Our new Democratic President--the President we all worked so hard to elect--enters the Presidency with a reservoir of good will that can transform the nation. But to transform it, Barack Obama needs all of us to help him.

Make no mistake: there are some among us who still cling to their stale political arguments because they look backward not forward, mired in a past that seems comfortable to the skin. We must resist the temptation to engage them on the terrain on which they would prefer to engage us--a terrain of backbiting, vindictiveness, and recriminations over old slights no longer relevant to the challenges that confront us.

Our great Democratic Governor, Tim Kaine, told us last fall, in a memorable phrase (since captured on a campaign button), that the "Old Virginny is dead." In many ways it is. The Old Virginny of Republican dominance of our Congressional delegation, both U.S. Senate seats, and a 44-year failure to provide Virginia’s electoral votes to a Democratic President--that Old Virginny is dead. And yet, there are vestiges of the Old Virginny that are very much alive: Republican control of the Virginia House of Delegates, Republican control of the offices of Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, and Republican support for an outmoded division of Virginia political power between state and local governments (the Dillon Rule) that stifles progress and grassroots innovation.

In the wake of the enormous setbacks they suffered in 2008, Republicans nationally and in Virginia are going to focus all of their resources on scoring a comeback in 2009. Virginia offers them the most tempting national target for doing so. With reliably Democratic New Jersey as the only other state in America to be holding statewide elections, we are an irresistible target on which the Republican attack machine will concentrate.

We can't let the Republicans succeed in this certain attempt at a comeback. We must harness the new ideas and the new politics that characterized the Obama campaign in Virginia, and focus that energy, those ideas, and that politics to continue to transform our state. The forces of the Old Virginny will want to engage us on the old comfortable battlefields. Let's not get trapped into such an engagement. Let's bring to bear the volunteer energy, enthusiasm, and new technologies of the 21st Century to fight these battles on our own turf.

    As Reverend Joseph Lowery urged in his Inaugural benediction, let us "come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, ***, to turn to each other and not on each other."

                                                         PETER ROUSSELOT