Why I’ll Be Nervous on Election Day

VOTE. Photo from web.

I just sent in my absentee ballot for the midterm elections on Tuesday and for the first time I have to admit I’m nervous. Massachusetts has a gubernatorial election that makes our normally confident Democrats a little shaky in the knees; while my 10th District, made up of the fairly Republican old-timers of Cape Cod, is electing a new representative to Congress. While the Tea Party rhetoric has not taken a strong hold even on Massachusetts’ most conservative citizens (which isn’t much), our traditionally liberal haven does not have the confidence it had two years ago.

This past January, Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat. Despite Democrats’ fervent efforts to retrace their steps to see where their voters fell through the gaps with Martha Coakley, Brown has proved himself to be a crucial swing vote in the Senate. Coakley’s election would have affirmed the Democrats’ super majority. This crucial vote that Massachusetts now holds in the Senate has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as we have a senator (Brown) who is not willing to vote blindly by party lines, Democrat or Republican.

This precarious situation will soon be blown open by the midterm elections. Both the Senate and House races that seemed all but locked by one candidate have been shaken to their core by the emergence of a Sarah Palin-esque candidate with the Tea Party’s blessing, or the blunder of an incumbent to associate themselves too closely with the follies of the Obama administration. No one could have imagined a few years ago that there could be a candidate for the Senate in Delaware who garners such media attention as “I Had a One Night Stand with Christine O’Donnell,” the state that Joe Biden previously represented.

What has happened in America for such a polar opposite climate to emerge only two years after a landmark election for Democrats? There are thousands of answers to this question. The party in the White House always loses Congressional seats during the midterm elections, the war in Afghanistan is still raging on, the economy is looking as bleak as ever and there have not been as many jobs created as Obama promised there would be. Despite the many legitimate claims of the 180-degree change in the political mood of the country, there is one change that worries me the most.

In January of this year, just two days after Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, the Supreme Court decided the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that the First Amendment could not limit corporate funding in independent political advertisements. This decision vindicated the role of the First Amendment in saying that it had no role limiting corporate free speech.

While this decision was praised in many conservative circles, some politicians and citizens alike felt that this decision gave a voice to those whose voices were already too loud. President Obama called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

This decision allows voters to see some of the most biased and misleading political advertisements whenever we turn on our TVs, and makes me feel like the voices of our country’s largest corporations are making more decisions than our elected officials ever could. With this court decision comes a virtually unlimited amount of money with the goal of influencing politicians, nonprofits, research organizations and undecided voters.

I want to hear what a candidate running for office has to say for himself, not what his corporate backers have to say for the candidate or his opponent. I feel as if original thought and inquiry is being constantly drowned by dollars, misleading statistics, and quotes taken out of context, then put through a video editor to make a candidate sound like they support something they don’t. Democrats are nervous this election cycle – and this is why: the Supreme Court gave a loudspeaker to corporations that can be heard from sea to shining sea, but America is already sick of what they have to say. I have a feeling that this constant stream of misinterpretation and bias will not stop after November 2. It might just get worse.