Run for Office 4

Less than three months after launching what was absolutely guaranteed to be a spectacular political career, I was smacked upside the head by Goliath and sent back into the lowly ranks of ‘citizen’. The final score in my race for the U.S. House was humiliatingly lopsided: 53,745 votes for Representative Schrader and 8,161 for me.

In order to preserve my dignity, I spun the stats. My total expenditures - registration, cards, meals and gasoline – came to less than $200, or 2.5 cents per vote. The incumbent’s expenditures during this period included $2500 for the Voter’s Pamphlet, $2810 for printing and postage, $19,658 for consulting, $2877 for wages, $1674 for lodging, $1580 for catering, $5300 for taxes, plus dozens of incidentals. His expenditures specific to the Primary probably exceeded $40,000. That’s 74 cents per vote!

Still, all said and done, I lost. But so what? Nine of the ten candidates in the Oregon’s Primary for Republican Governor also lost. Losing is part of the game. There are always other races, other ways to win. We losers pick ourselves up and move on.

But what if there weren’t other ways to win? What if the winners rigged the system so that we always lost?

For many people, that’s how America works.

Examples:

1.         A bright kid learns in Business School how to export jobs. He and the corporation that hires him make immense profits sending jobs to low-wage nations. None of the profits go to the laid-off workers or their towns.

2.         Kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods train hard at basketball, but only a few have the chops to make pro. They get not only the glory but also the money. Lots of money. Shouldn’t some of it go back to other hard-training kids, their schools and their neighborhoods?

3.         A schoolboy wants to succeed, to be somebody, to win - just once. He tries, but he’s academically and athletically average. Artistic talent and social charm? Mediocre. He’s just a run-of-the-mill kid in high school. Except, in America, if you are not a winner, then you are a loser. And in America, he can do something about that. He can buy a gun. Bang, bang. "I win. You lose."

The American I-win-you-lose culture starts at the top. 1% owns 40% of America’s wealth, and that 1% tells Congressional Republicans to protect their fortunes forever with massive tax break. Republicans then go a step further and order Congress to cut food and health benefits for the bottom 20%, presumably so the poor will be too hungry and sick to vote for change.

The culture of win/lose goes all the way down to the Second Amendment devotees who scream, “I’m right; you’re wrong,” and brandish their AR-15s like the top 1% brandish money. “We want our guns, and to hell with anybody else.”

An I-win-you-lose Administration runs an I-win-you-lose economic system. Citizens are held hostage by an I-win-you-lose Congress and an I-win-you-lose gun lobby. Can a ‘loser’ citizen make any difference?

I tried. I ran for the U.S House to protest Schrader’s support for lax gun laws. 15% of voters seemed to agree with me. But had Schrader even noticed? Did my campaign have any effect? Or am I still insignificant, a mere citizen?

The day after the election, as the numbers settled, but before I could call him, Schrader called me. Yes, a one-percenter called his defeated opponent. Maybe there was change afoot. Maybe I’d won after all.