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COSTA’S CORNER
COSTA’S CORNER-2019

Here you come again
Just when I've begun to get myself together

A little shout out to Dolly Parton, from her 1977 classic “Here You Come Again”.

Yes, here we go again, another government shutdown looms towards the end of the week. The country survived the last one and should it happen again, the country will survive this one too. The people that are affected most by these shutdowns vote and should this shutdown last longer than the last one, these people will remember and that could impact the 2020 elections. The jury is out on who it will impact most because both sides are equally to blame for letting this happen in the first place so maybe, at the end of the day, it’s a wash.
However, if you didn’t know it before, you know it now, Washington D.C. does not work. It is broken and there needs to be someone or something that everyone can rally around and actually believe is good for the country.
I don’t have the answer and while every commentator on every network believes he has the answer, they don’t either.
However, I do know this, from one point of view, and I will admit, its simplistic, all that needs to be done is both sides must move more towards the center. More compromise, more “for the good of the country”, less blame the other side, less backstabbing.
The way I see it, this country needs someone to step out of his party’s comfort zone and make things happen that will actually benefit both sides of the equation.

In the next few months the Democrats will start weeding out the contenders from the pretenders. They have an opportunity to actually create constructive dialogue that may last until mid 2024 with the candidates they bring to the table. The people will ultimately decide, but to give the American people someone who will govern from an American point of view, that’s the challenge the Democratic Party has to deal with over the next 15 months.

What tends to happen during selection cycles is the noise gets all the press. The media loves big mouths and rabble rousers. They sell papers, they lift ratings but in the end the people that get elected to National Office get elected by their base.
Regan did it, Clinton did it, Obama did and most surprisingly Trump did it.
Donald Trump was an anomaly. He was loud, brash and had made headlines daily, and yet he still won. He won because a silent majority in this country saw someone that was going to change things. They voted where it counted and even though he lost the popular vote, he won the electoral vote.
I do believe a Democracy survives and thrives when it’s leaders actually do things that stir things up, but in this day and age that only has fractured the country even more.

No change here, waiting to see how things play out over the next few weeks.

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