By the time our newspaper hits your front door the Georgia Senate elections will most likely be decided and we will know if the Democrats or Republicans have retained or gained control of our country’s future.

As I watched our local television Monday night the airwaves were inundated with Democratic or Republican candidates messages and to be honest it was the same for both parties. If the other side wins America is doomed.

Doomed? Seriously? If the other side wins we are doomed?

Shouldn’t there be a bad guy somewhere for us to be doomed? 

I don’t think Democrats feel they are the bad guy, because they see themselves as saving American. Republicans don’t think they are the bad guys because they think they have been doing a great job all along for the last several years and don’t want the Democrats to “rock the boat.”

Truth is our boat does need some rocking, but I personally don’t feel it should come from either of the political parties. I think the rocking has to come from within us, the common citizen.

We are often handed these candidates on a silver platter from either party and are told they are the best we have to offer. No, they were handpicked by either party to carry on an agenda that serves them best.

Be it Republican or Democrat, each candidate in our state elections are serving to a higher chair somewhere. If they tell you they can change America, then it means they have been told what those changes are going to be. If any of us think whoever won the election has a single original thought in their head, well, just add that to the list of all the half-truths and innuendo they have both been pedaling for months, if not years.

As I have mentioned in the past I can see good and bad from both sides of our political mess we seem to have found ourselves in. I think the Democrats bring some ideas to the table that have been pushed to the side by Republicans and I also know some of the progressive ideas Republicans have had have been stonewalled by the Democrats.

It’s pretty obvious, especially to me, that there has to be a middle ground somewhere where both of the parties can get some things accomplished within an atmosphere of compromise.

Compromise. That’s a word we haven’t heard much of over the last few decades coming out of Washington. Each side feels they have to get completely what they want in order to claim victory and that is where the American people end up right in the middle.

I believe in talking with various people in the area that everyone has a feeling if we can compromise and reach some common sense decisions then we as Americans would be better off.

That starts locally and eventually works its way up to Washington. Right now, everyone wants to be right, and, I guess that pertains to me as well.

I certainly don’t think I’m right all the time, far from it, but I also know I’m willing to listen to both sides of any issue and unlike many politicians who are beholding to some group or some corporation, I feel I can make a decision which benefits the most people.

So as I mentioned before at the top of this column, by now the elections have been resolved. One party will be happy and the other will be sad. Somewhere in the middle, between those two emotions lies calm, a peace, a compromise.

Somewhere in the middle is where this American thinks we should be.

If you see me say, “Hey!”

Dee McLelland is Publisher of the Coastal Courier and the Bryan County News.