MIAMI, Florida – Year after year, there are several urgent, frustrating and challenging issues and problems, some old, some new, that American anxiously seek to be solved by the officials elected to represent them. These issues and problems include:
Some Critical Issues
Workers paid way below an adequate living wage; locked into a federal minimum wage of $7.25, while a tiny minority make millions of dollars annually;
Millions of people living without access to affordable and adequate healthcare;
Millions also living in pain and suffering because they cannot afford the high prices for medication/drugs charged by drug companies.
Millions are living in this, the alleged richest country on earth, in deep poverty, without adequate meals, in deplorable housing, or homeless, and with improper hygiene;
Immigrants are no longer welcome, and those who are living in the US live in fear, facing new draconian laws that can have them deported to countries they are no longer familiar with;
Immigrant children are held in detention camps, separated from their parents without access to adequate soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, baths, and hot meals;
Young people under 16 are tried as adults and sentenced to a penal system that offers little opportunity for behavioral correction;
Overcrowded prisons occupied disproportionally by black and other minorities, many who committed minor crimes for which they received unfair, lengthy mandatory sentences;
Seniors forced to work years after retirement because of the relative inadequate benefits received from a Social Security system with an uncertain future;
The climate and weather in several regions of the country worsens; the ocean on coastlines in states like Florida rises; the environment deteriorates while officials deny the impact of climate change;
The nations roads, bridges, airports, railways, water supply, and electrical grids, and other infrastructure are deteriorating and proving inadequate with age;
Public schools are overcrowded, while privileged students are being diverted to better schools through a biased system of voucher allocation;
Teachers in public schools work often under adverse conditions at low and unrealistic salaries;
Americans, many of them young children and teenagers, are killed by the fun daily. And while an abundance of thoughts and prayers are offered to the victims and their loved ones, officials refrain from imposing meaningful gun control laws;
Farmers experience losses in revenue and related economic hardships as their exports decline because of inadvisable trade wars with countries that normally buy their producer;
Americans paying more for products purchased in retail stores, supermarkets and dollar stores because of these same trade wars.
This is far from a complete list, yet those elected to public office, and those currently actively campaigning to be elected, instead of focusing on addressing and solving these issues, often get lost and sidetracked on issues that have little or no relevance to most American voters.
Officials elected last November to hopefully address burning issues like affordable healthcare, immigration reform, climate change and low minimum wage seem lost and bewildered in the divisions of Congress. Moderates challenge progressives; Impeachers challenge non impeachers, and the significant inability of elected Republicans and Democrats to work with each persists.
And, with all these burning issues so critical to the lives of voters, the overwhelming outcome of the first, highly anticipated debate among the Democratic candidates seeking to be the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, was a confrontation offer the issue of busing to assist with the desegregation of public schools decades ago.
Valuable Time and Opportunity Being Wasted
Today, despite public schools being integrated, racism persists with black and other minority races experiencing most of the crucial issues and problems that affect Americans. Desegregation of public schools, pale in comparison to some of the problems bred by racism. This makes it more implausible that presidential candidates, and subsequently the mainstream media, instead of focusing on addressing issues that could serve to empower minorities wastes valuable time and opportunity highlighting an outdated issue like busing.
But It is a negative reflection that after the two-term presidency of a black man, a large percentage of black voters believe only a white man can defeat the incumbent president. Ironically, there is also a large percentage of black voters who remain convinced the black president did little, if anything, to alleviate their peculiar problems.
The Sad Fact
The sad fact is black American voters, and voters generally, despite their affection for a minority presidential candidate, are weary if that candidate is elected he/she can successfully mobilize the bi-partisan support needed in Washington to solve their problems.
However, the negative perception of voters, black or otherwise, should not deter candidates who genuinely want to alleviate the concerns that afflict most Americans, from focusing on those key issues voters badly need addressed and solved. Failure to do so, and persistently dabble in irrelevant issues could turn away the voters they so eagerly seek.
