As we enter the election season, it is worth remembering that every vote counts - those that are cast, and those that are cast away. You can vote your hopes or your despair.
Every vote counts.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by barely 100,000 votes, less than one vote per precinct. Buoyed by our hopes, we stayed together and won. In 1968, Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey by little more than 500,000 votes. Divided by the Vietnam War, desolate from the murders of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, we divided and lost by the measure of our despair. And the country went from a decade of prosperity and growth, with poverty going down and wages going up, to a conservative era of stagnant wages, growing inequality, and increasing poverty.