It’s always good to remember to count your blessings, and this seems like an especially appropriate time to be thankful if you are a Democrat. In the spirit of David Letterman’s “Late Show Top Ten List,” here are the top 10 reasons you can be glad you’re a Democrat this week:
10: You don’t have to worry about where you put the rare coins. 
9: You don’t have to pretend that a man who lies about national security and intelligence information would be a good choice to represent the United States to the rest of the world as Ambassador to the United Nations (Democratic recognition here must go to Republican Senator George Voinovich for having the courage to call Bush’s nominee, John Bolton, “the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be”).
8: You don’t have to spend your time explaining why, in times of huge federal deficits, people who make $300,000 should pay less into the government thanks to the Bush tax cuts, while people who make $30,000 will get less out of the government under Bush’s proposed Social Security cuts.
7: None of your friends or relatives are rich enough to have to be concerned about federal investigations of money laundering of big donations to the Bush/Cheney campaign. 
6: Even if you’ve never run for any political office before, you could beat Bob Taft if he were a candidate for Governor of Ohio again, or even if he were a candidate for dog-catcher. Taft’s latest approval rating is 19 percent. Taft’s non-performance in office reminds me of Will Rogers’ line about Calvin Coolidge. “It ain’t that Coolidge done nothin’ that matters,” Rogers said, “It’s that he done it better than anybody else.”
5: You understand that well-funded public libraries and public schools do more to protect national security than all of the yellow, orange and red alerts put together. As our nation’s leaders ran for hiding places last week when one small plane accidentally invaded restricted air space in Washington, we saw just what folly it is to believe that we can be safe by throwing all of our money at security systems.        
4: You can finally acknowledge that John Kerry was wrong when he claimed the Iraq war would soon cost us $200 billion. It’s actually $300 billion.
3: Your solution for the problem of inadequate funding of public education is not to provide public schools with less money and charter schools with more.
2: Tom DeLay is not the leader of your Congressional delegation. Now that Democrats have shamed Republicans into permitting an ethics investigation into DeLay’s involvement with lobbyists, DeLay may not be the leader of any Congressional delegation much longer.
And the number one reason to be glad you’re a Democrat this week: We’re one week closer to the end of the Republican Bush and Taft administrations and the opportunity to choose leaders who will promote policies that help rather than hurt working families. 
Yes, all in all, it’s been a good week to be a Democrat.

Keith Wilkowski, former chair of the Lucas County Democratic Party, may be contacted at letters@toledofreepress.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under TFP Version 1.
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