A long, front-page article from the Associated Press, about the failures of Republican fundraising in the mid-term elections, appeared in the Athol Daily News on Nov. 2. Given the length of the article, it was remarkable for what it didn’t say. Although it gave a passing mention to “candidate quality” — clueless carpetbagger Mehmet Oz, incoherent Herschel Walker — it blamed the poor showing of the party primarily on bad decisions by national Republican organizations about the allocation of advertising money.
Left unmentioned were what would seem to be far more important factors: The ceaseless outpouring of hatred, racism, and bizarre conspiracy theories, all designed to persuade Americans to fear and hate other Americans; the delusional fog of election denial, after 50-plus lawsuits claiming various types of fraud failed to make it through the courtroom door because the plaintiffs couldn’t even allege any specific action that would actually constitute fraud.
The overruling of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, which sent hundreds of thousands of previously unregistered young people and women to the polls, to vote as if their lives, their futures, and their children’s lives depended on it; and, the energy expended in tens of thousands of hours of postcard and letter writing, door knocking, phone-banking, and voter registration education and assistance, by Democratic activists terrified by the implications of those three factors.
Let’s hope that the poor showing by Republican candidates — the worst in decades for a mid-term election — is a sign that sane middle-of-the-road voters have finally decided to say enough, and are ready to try to re-create an America in which people can actually talk to one another in spite of hateful fantasy. And let’s hope that the Recorder and Athol Daily News can re-think the wisdom of republishing long articles that completely miss the point of what’s really happening.
Carla BarringerRabinowitz
Royalston