Amy Branham: Where We Are So Far with President Obama

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Amy Branham

Dear Mr. President:

My husband and I voted for you in the 2008 general election. We also campaigned hard for you locally and on the state level here in Texas, as my husband was a delegate to the Texas Democrat Convention in June 2008. Before that, we voted in the primaries and even campaigned hard for you on a local level in our precinct, standing up against all those who wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton. It was a long, uphill battle, but we heard your message and believed in you.

At first, we were interested in you because you were against the war in Iraq and were among those who voted against it. We are a Gold Star Family and that was at the top of our list of priorities. We are still a military family and have a son-in-law who served a tour of duty in Iraq, having come home this past fall.

Among the other things we hoped you would do was to undo the wrongs of the Bush Administration and help restore the balance of power, giving the freedoms back that the American people lost under the former administration due to the PATRIOT Act and other bills enacted.

We had much hope in you. You made us Believe again when we had lost all faith and hope.

And so, with my husband's last unemployment check and down to our last $200, my husband trekked from Houston to Austin to the Texas Democratic Convention to hold his ground and vote for you. There were no hotel rooms to be had and every available house that had been opened for guests was taken. He loaded up our pull-behind trailer and rented a space at a local RV spot for the duration of the convention. I stayed behind to work. We felt it was our duty and our obligation to do everything we could possibly do within our means to make sure you got not only our vote, but also that Texas would get behind you.

On Election Day, we sat with tears streaming down our faces as we watched the results coming in throughout the night, and we wept openly as we watched your acceptance speech. Finally, we thought, change will come. That is what you promised. That is what we pinned our hopes on.

We understand, Mr. President, that the job you took, the problems you inherited seem insurmountable. But we believed you would be strong enough to take these challenges on and create the change we all believed in. And, so, we decided to give you one year.

We are not happy, Mr. President. We had hoped your healthcare bill would be beneficial to the American people. We had hoped you would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, we find that the wars will continue on indefinitely, bankrupting this country and its people. But that is not the only cost that is being paid. Thousands upon thousands of lives have been changed and/or ended because of the casualties of these wars and will continue to be for decades to come.

The healthcare bill, as it stands now, benefits only the insurance companies and will hurt the average American -- especially if we are poor and have pre-existing conditions. The mandate that all Americans must buy health insurance from the health insurance industry will further bankrupt us at a time when this country can ill afford it. We might be homeless and unable to buy food or pay our heating bills, but by God, we'll have health insurance (even if we can't pay the deductibles and actually GET to the doctor)!

Frankly, Mr. President, we feel you have sold us, the American people and, most especially those who voted for you, out to the Washington culture and the insurance industry, not to mention the military industrial complex. You have not given us the Change We Could Believe In, as you promised. We had hoped that, since you hadn't been in Washington long, you would be different and relatively untouched. We were naive and we were wrong. But you were/are last best hope.

My husband and I are not liberals, we are pretty middle of the road in most aspects and pretty moderate. There are millions of people just like us in this country who have lost their jobs and have had to take jobs making 50% less than we were 5 or 10 years ago with no hope of real recovery as we age. We see how much the wars are costing our country and see that it would be more to our advantage to end those wars and cut our losses. We see the need for changes to our healthcare system, but do not see you or your fellow Democrats being strong enough to create the change. Instead, you constantly back down to the likes of Joe Lieberman (who has not been a friend to the Democrats since 2000 when he first turned away from the party) and a few Republicans who hold their vote in front of you like a carrot on a stick.

We wish you would grow a spine and do the job we elected you and the rest of your party to do -- create the change. We knew it would take strength to do this. It is obvious, now, that neither you or anyone else in Washington has the courage, the strength or, more importantly, the will to do what is best for the American people.

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

Amy M. Branham
Houston, TX
Mother of Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith (US Army Reserves), 1981-2004

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