Over the years I have been accused of supporting a partisan agenda in my arguing for a massive wave of support for Democratic candidates. Folks are saying the same thing about me with respect to the November, mid-term elections of 2018.

I plead guilty to that charge. I am a partisan.

I think that we need partisan politics and not the mindless idea of voting for the man (or woman) not the party. A candidate without a platform is a candidate who will say anything to voters who know nothing, because they will fall for anything.

A partisan stands for something. They take a stand on the issues.

Voting for a person running on a party platform means that you have some idea of what type of policies the person will support, once they are in office. Political parties do articulate policy platforms with planks that speak to specific issues. That is what they are supposed to do.

For example:  The Democratic Party has a long tradition of supporting an active role for government in regulating banks, stock markets, and insurance companies. Ever since the days of the New Deal, the Democratic Party has supported regulation of business and has not spent a great deal of time praising the "Robber Barons" that run some of our major corporate entities.

For example:  The Republican Party has a long tradition of bemoaning government regulation. Under Trump it has called for the repeal of environmental legislation that actually protects the environment. Trump and his Republican cohorts have been leading the charge to dig more coal, drill for more oil and gas, while at the same time whining about how government regulation interferes with their idea of a free enterprise system of environmental exploitation. These malefactors of great wealth would have us believe that the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink would be purer, healthier and cheaper if we would just get rid of the rules and regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, etc.

Right now the United States of America, our country, has a President who hates government and is doing his best to destroy people's trust in it. He does this with lies about politics, climate change, the news media, the Washington press corps and his own sources of wealth and tax evasion. His Republican Party supports him and his crazed ideology.

The only counter we can mount in 2018 to the continuity of Trumpian Republican misrule is to vote all of his supporters out of office and not let any new ones climb in. A vote in November for the Democratic Party will protect the needed role of responsible government in our lives.


John J. Fitzgerald
 Longmeadow