IOWA CAUCUSES

I ran for office in Iowa in 1968 when I was a graduate student in the Writers Workshop at the university there. It was on The Peace and Freedom ticket and the office was sheriff. I came in second. Not bad in a county that was considered Wallace country (George Wallace that is).

So in presidential election years, as silly as it is that such a small state, in terms of population, should be the first to winnow out some winners and losers in a presidential primary, I still get totally fascinated with the results there. Which at ten after midnight are still unclear in terms of first and second place as Santorum and Romney remain neck and neck.

But what was and is most distasteful in this particular race is the way these Republican candidates talk about our president and about "taking our country back from Obama." They just don't seem to understand our Constitution and democratic system at all.

This country elected Obama to be our president for four years. That's the way our democracy works. And this country is all of ours, not just white Midwesterners. No one took our country away from Republicans and rightwingers, because our country never belonged to them exclusively anyway. It's all of ours, and that includes liberals and socialists and anarchists and fundamentalist Christians and atheists and people who support a woman's right to have an abortion and those who only support it when necessary and early in the pregnancy and those who, like most of the candidates in the Republican race for the presidential nomination, believe abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape and incest.

I am so unbelievably sick of hearing their smug assertions that they are the "real Americans" and it's their country and somehow Obama stole it from them and they have to get it back and all that crap as if we lived in a country where a tiny minority of rightwingers (they've always been a tiny minority and win by dividing their opposition or disheartening them about the process so they don't take part) are the boss of the rest of us.

Well, they can say anything they want, it's a free country still in that arena, but it doesn't make it true. "This land belongs to me and you."