I was going to entitle this one using German, because "morgen" (morning) is very pretty, but then I looked up 'thought' and it's 'denken', which isn't all that lovely. So use English, I figured, not only where you ought to, but also when it's prettier. You've got to love our totally sui generis "th-" sound, no one else in the world really has it. At least not Europe and its recreations.
At any rate, I was just thinking, that if we in this country enfranchised people today the way they did in Jackson's America, we'd really see All the People of the country voting; that is, undocumented migrants and reformed felons, and all the other little folks that the great and comfortable consider uncouth and ignorant. And we'd be making every effort in the world to get Everybody out to vote. We'd have a national holiday (though liquor sales'd be banned until after the polls were closed) for Election Day. We'd place a damning fine on any boss who dared try make his workers labor through the very hours their quadrennial chance at the ultimate act of self-government came up. We certainly wouldn't make a bunch of overtly racist laws to combat phony abuses and keep millions of voters from the polls.
And if we did that, a man like Andrew Jackson could get elected in today's America.
As it is, the pundits, the Courtier Press, the so-called "Independents" among the populace (read: lace-curtain and can't make up their minds, or possibly just a f---ing fool), let alone the Money Power, would tear out their hair denouncing his partisanship, his 'radicalism', how he wasn't "centrist" or "moderate" enough. When they say these things, of course, in 1832 and 2012, what they really mean is that he dared to believe the Common person in this country had the same right to the Declaration of Independence as the wealthiest Bankers and 'best' people (at what we dare not ask) of the Yacht Clubs and Prep Schools. And he dared defeat them as the Champion of the many millions.
Which is why, of course, they hate him.
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