Tales From The Bottom Of The Ticket: Change Doesn't Come From Concord, It Comes To Concord

by: Andrew Sylvia

Sun Aug 31, 2008 at 20:28:42 PM EDT

My journey in politics began in the Spring of 2003 volunteering for Howard Dean at Keene State College. That year and that campaign made me believe that anything was politically possible, and eventually led me to come back to my hometown to help assail what seemed to be the impossible task of getting Democrats elected here in Merrimack.

While the core of what being a Deaniac meant never left, as the weather grew colder that year, so did I. The fatigue and tedium changed my focus that year changed from helping elect Dean to helping elect a Democrat that would defeat Bush, no matter who it was. By December of 2004, I became jaded towards Presidential Politics.

During this presidential primary cycle, the ambivalence hadn't worn off, but the scale and scope had changed. I must've went everywhere and saw everything that all of the campaigns on both sides had to offer across this great state and beyond.

But even that couldn't bring me back to the summer of 2003. Whenever I heard the candidates speak, what I heard wasn't what they said or what their words meant, but the substance between the words: how those words were said and perceived by potential voters.

I've begun blogging about my travels along the campaign trail here at the bottom of the ticket because so much attention is given to the Presidential campaign that you would think it's the only race being contested this year.

However, the campaign for President is so large that even us small fries get caught up in it, and that happened the other night at a small convention watch party the Merrimack Democrats had at our town chair's house.

Obama's speech was pleasing because of how he said it, he was finally attacking the attacks of McCain, but other than the tone of what Obama said, I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing other than a single part that resonated with me...

"...You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington.  Change comes to Washington.  Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time..."

I have lost track of how many times I had heard Barack Obama speak, either to an audience I was in, or even to my own face. (in Hampton he told me he didn't like stickers on his suit, in Nashua he told me I had asked him too many questions and that somebody else deserved a turn, etc.) Each time I heard him speak, it was in that hardened mold that was born in the Fall of 2003, not caring what he said, but how everybody perceived what he said.

But for that paragraph at Invesco Field, I was transported back to Jack Spratt's farm in Walpole listening to Howard Dean tell us we could change the world, because it captured why the hell I was here better than I could say it myself.

It may seem cliche, but we are at a critical moment in our history where a new way of thinking must replace the old ways, where new leaders challenge the beliefs of the established elite in order to make sure our entire way of life does not collapse from a tired complacency of failed tactics.

The voters of Merrimack are sick of those failed tactics in Concord, whether they be constitutional amendments on education, the 150,000 residents across the state without healthcare, taxes rising without seeming to return any immediate value, or here in Merrimack the endless failures from proposing doomed legislation to bring us a just toll system.

That change isn't going to come from Concord, it is going to come to Concord.

Several days now after he spoke those words, their essence is still rattling around my mind.

These words may sound unusual since I am a Democrat, and both houses of the legislature and the Governor's office are Democratic, and what may sound more unusual is that there are many talented people on both sides of the aisle currently serving in Concord.

Those public servants are like the words in the candidates' speeches, what is the issue is the substance between the words: the actions that trickle down to the average person who is not as politically involved as we are to help them believe that things can get better, that solutions can be obtained.

That is not going to change from the inside, it will take new people.

And that's why four years later, i'm still here in Merrimack, trying to come to Concord.