Editorials

Editorial: Our choices

This is what The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus said about political rhetoric, both locally and nationally:

A week from today, on Town Meeting Day, town clerks from most municipalities will report the results of town warnings and local and school elections. It is the one day of the year where Vermonters get to decide who will be in charge, and how their tax dollars should be spent.

It’s about setting priorities democratically.

This important moment in local democracy sets the stage for the year to come. While it does not seem that most local town and school budgets are at risk of failing, many communities appear poised to see a “course correction” in the changing of who’s in charge of local boards.

For the most part historically, partisan politics has not played a part at the local level. That no longer appears to be true. Now, across Vermont, we are hearing the same agendas being repeated by party propagandists at the national level (cable news and websites) in Vermont’s cities and towns.

Some of it has played out on these pages.

It is playing out in slates of candidates.

On social media, the political rhetoric is chum for everyone, from the most frenzied radical to those eager to bring reason to the dialogue.

It has become less about the ability to lead and more about the eagerness to blame. That is a sad state of affairs.

But it’s also playing out at the highest levels of the land.

Alan Fram, a reporter for the Associated Press, took a look at a week in rhetoric in Washington, D.C. The results were quite fascinating.

Democrats and Republicans each want to flash election-year signals that they are riding to the rescue of families struggling with rising costs and the two-year-old coronavirus pandemic, he wrote. “Not surprisingly, the parties differ over how to do that.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talked about inflation, bashing President Joe Biden and Democrats for policies like curbing drilling on federal lands that he said were stifling domestic energy production and driving up gasoline prices. But he also raised culture war issues that have flared in the nation’s schools, including mask mandates and social justice instruction that conservatives find objectionable.

According to the article, Republicans “are standing up for science, for common sense and for the children’s best interests,” McConnell said. “The party of parents has your back,” he added, a remark that conjured angry mothers and fathers at school board meetings that the GOP hopes to harness. “Two years of needless school closures and unscientific forced child masking are two years too many.”

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats will focus on pushing “solutions that will lower costs and leave more money in people’s pockets.” Chiding Republicans, he said, “Complaining about the problem doesn’t make inflation better, proposing solutions does.”

Schumer said Democrats are considering legislation to reduce costs for child care, food, prescription drugs and semiconductors, the vital computer part now facing supply-chain shortages. “We’re still going to move forward” even if GOP opposition would doom a proposal, Schumer said, suggesting that unsuccessful Senate votes would produce political value for Democrats.

Democrats’ 50-50 Senate control, thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, is in danger. Each party has at least four seats in play in November, but Biden’s negative approval ratings further burdens Democrats, who are facing the long history of midterm election losses by the party holding the White House, Fram writes.

“When the Senate gave final approval Thursday to a bill averting an imminent government shutdown, Republicans forced votes on proposals ending federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates and vaccine requirements for students imposed by school districts,” he wrote. “Both were narrowly defeated, with every Democrat opposing each amendment. Democrats noted that vaccines, masks and testing have been documented to save lives, (with one Democratic Senator) comparing GOP opposition to those steps to “blaming the rescue crew for a shipwreck.”

Ultimately, it is the priorities of citizens and taxpayers that get lost in these messy, political debates. That is why it is sad to us that local politics now comes equipped with a new set of tools — and weapons.

The fight for our quality of life does not rest in any political party. It rests in the choices we make for ourselves along the way.

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