(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Candidates Need Us, We Should Leverage That Fact [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-22 The Kansas City Chiefs celebrate their victory in this year's Super Bowl I’m a winner. Okay, technically if you looked at the trajectory my life has taken you’d see that I’m not a winner. By many of the standards set by man I’m really a loser. But, I’m a winner. I can call myself a winner because my favorite team – the Kansas City Chiefs – won the Super Bowl earlier this month. It was our second title in four years. It marked us as a budding dynasty. We have the best team, the best quarterback, the best coach, the best fans, the best uniforms. We have it all. Us. We. Me. We’re all winners Now, it’s true that the players and coaches themselves, who’ve reached the pinnacle of their profession through talent, hard work, and dedication, were perhaps a slightly more significant factor in victory than me, whose contribution on game day was wearing a Chiefs shirt, eating a bunch of pizza, chicken wings, and potato chips, and being able to hold onto my lucky seat on the couch by fending off my pack of dogs, any of whom could have stolen my space had I dropped my guard for even a second. Still, I’m a winner. I guess this is what you call living vicariously through others. Watching from a safe distance while they take all the chances, make all the sacrifices, do all the work, absorb all the attacks, and somehow come out on top. Then we celebrate as if we actually did something. If you’ve never bonded with a team or friends over sports, you might think this is all pretty stupid. Living and dying with your favor squad. Naming your kids or dogs after your childhood heroes. (Yes, my late dog Otis and one of my current dogs Lenny were named after former Chiefs greats Otis Taylor and Lenny Dawson.) Maybe in the big picture of life it is stupid, but in the smaller picture – which is where most of us live – it makes us part of something. It gives some folks a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and in a strange way a sense of purpose. Laugh all you want, but after a week of dealing with reality, sometimes the best thing you can do is sit down with friends – or even just yourself – and watch your team play. Most of us will always be outsiders looking in when it comes to our sports teams. The same when we go watch a movie or attend a concert given by our favorite band. No matter how much we’d like to be part of it, we never will be. That’s something you can’t say about an infinitely more important game than football, baseball, or basketball. I’m talking about the game of politics. When it comes to politics in our country, we have too many bystanders and not enough participants. I understand not everyone can run for office – nor should they. And a lot of people are too busy dealing with what life throws at them to worry about wading into something as swampy and rightfully maligned as our political world. And a lot of others just don’t care. But while Chiefs Coach Andy Reid won’t be asking for our help in drawing up his next game plan, there are people running for office all over the country who’ll be begging for us to step up and do something, from donating to volunteering. They want us to get off the sidelines and into the game. This gives us a lot of leverage when it comes to who our respective parties put on the general election ballot. It allows us to size up our primary candidates and reject the ones that don’t adhere to our beliefs and priorities. No candidate is insured of our support. As voters, we need to do a better job of holding our primary candidates’ feet to the fire. I live in Pennsylvania’s 16th District, where in the past three election cycles we’ve produced pathetically weak Democratic candidates for U.S. Congress. I have to wonder if we do a good enough job of making these people understand that their listless campaigns needed to get their act together if they wanted us to do things like contributing money, making phone calls, or canvassing door to door? I have to believe the answer is no. If you think just because someone is running for office that they know what they’re doing, you’re badly mistaken. You see, candidates need us. And it’s a great tradeoff. We get to be a real part of the effort to get good people elected to office, and we also use our position as the ultimate deciders to pressure them to be better candidates. Even those running unopposed in the primary. It’s a win-win situation for us and our country. And, speaking of winners, that would be me. At least until baseball season, when my team – the Detroit Tigers – is poised for its seventh consecutive losing season. Hey, you can’t win them all. *** Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154355/-Candidates-Need-Us-We-Should-Leverage-That-Fact Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/