Is Anybody in Washington Listening?

Barack Obama, candidate for President of the United States, and Walter Lee Younger, the protagonist in A Raisin in the Sun, both moved beyond the South Side of Chicago to prove the true value of family, the power of dreams, and the importance of overcoming racial discrimination. This President’s unprecedented quest for the Oval Office launched a new era in America’s history.

Beyond the historical significance, voters in 2008 expressed a grassroots desire for changes in the political landscape. Two years later in 2010, ballot boxes reemphasized the public’s dissatisfaction with a broken political system that fails to meet the expectations of the electorate. Although President Obama has not delivered all of the improvements he promised, no one can say he did not try. In the wake of the Patriot Act of 2001 and the menacing language in the Annual Defense Appropriations Act for 2012, many Americans fear they may be running out of time.

In this year’s Presidential election, with voices muffled by the supreme court’s Citizens United ruling, voters are expected to make another attempt to induce changes in a government blatantly mismanaged by two parties that ignore their own constituencies. Americans know millions of people can not afford health care and they want that to change. They yearn for a leader who will harness big business and will keep corporate moguls from just taking from society without giving a little back. They need the jobs sent overseas to come home again. They can see the wisdom in balanced federal budgets that do not add more indebtedness. This country would like to restore the credit rating that Congress sacrificed on the altar of political partisanship. They want a government that will lower the national debt without placing the entire burden on the middle class. They believe those few who created the economic collapse, benefited from all the recovery programs, and suffered the least from the meltdown should contribute a little more toward restoring the nation's former economic health.

Will anyone listen to the voice of the people this time? Not if the existing establishment has its way.