The billboard on one side of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign bus contemporizes the wisdom of Teddy Roosevelt: “Courage over Cynicism;” the other side blasts “Hope over Fear.” Both messages are clarion calls to the nearly 60% of all registered voters who’ve reported that the Trump administration has exhausted them. Warren reminds us that if we’re serious about addressing the urgent issues we face, we each have to dig down deep and find the courage to commit to the substantive changes we’ll need to make together. Ceding to our fears with a sense of hopelessness ensures that we’ll never make the changes that this country needs to make.

If we’re to find our courage, we need to be mindful of the mine fields of cynicism dotting the campaign and social media trails, today. They masquerade as critical thinking instead of symptoms of resignation, with little predictive value of actual outcomes. They lace conversations about electability (“We need to hedge our bets against Trump”) gender (“Nobody will elect a woman president”) and voter profiles (“Moderates and progressives will never find common ground”),

The case for Warren as our next president rests on a vision that government should serve all of us, not just the interests of monied donors and lobbyists. She’s been an empathetic champion of middle-class, working families throughout her career; she formed a government agency from scratch to protect them. She has a tireless spirit to meet the demands of a presidency, an intellectual capacity that has distinguished her as a respected influence in the Senate and proven administrative skills to implement the well-considered plans central to her candidacy.

Under her leadership, we can realize our collective courage, invest in our citizenry, and regain our trust in government.

Marie McNeely

Owls Head

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