I feel despondent this morning. I know that a lot of people are celebrating because democrats took the house, but they shouldn’t be. Democrats barely took back the house in an election where they should have picked up between 30 – 60 seats. If you’re a democrat, you should be panicking right now because last night does not bode well for 2020 or for the future of the democratic party. Democrats only “flipped” two republican districts last night. Every other “flip” wasn’t a flip. They were all republican districts where Hillary won in 2016. They were already ‘Never Trump’ districts. In two horrid years of cruelty, hatred, lies, and corruption, Trump lost virtually no support. Contrast yesterday’s election to 2010 when democrats lost sixty-three house seats. Right because obviously, giving more Americans access to health care is more abhorrent than ripping babies out of the arms of their mothers. This is not winning.
I know you think I’m nuts right now but hear me out because the last time I felt panic, I was right (you need to read that piece). I despair because last night was a disaster that perfectly followed the disastrous arc of the past twenty-five years. This is it in a nutshell: for democrats to win, they must run the most charismatic, accomplished and likeable people on earth (literally). Republicans win with complete garbage candidates. They don’t need to be smart, likeable, or accomplished. Democrats only win when they put forth people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who, in addition to being preternaturally charismatic, rose out of single mom households (among other disadvantages) to ascent to the most powerful position in the world. Republicans run trust fund babies who have failed at everything they’ve ever done in their lives, and who have literally spent no time preparing themselves for a job as important as President Of The United States and they win.
Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz. There couldn’t possibly be a bigger chasm in the quality of these candidates. Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis. Same thing. There’s no comparing these people on intellect, accomplishment, and quality of character. And yet in both cases, the shit rose to the top. I know it’s easy to say, “Well, it’s Texas” or “it’s Florida” but that’s bullshit and that kind of thinking isn’t going to help solve the problem. The demographics in both states should equal democratic victories and yet, Florida is going the other way.
Instead of flippantly writing off states like Texas and Florida as hopeless, you should be asking yourself why so many people aren’t showing up to vote. Yes, the Latino populations in both states showed up in much bigger numbers than in the past but they didn’t show up in enough numbers. Why? Why, in the era of Trump did that happen? He literally has a gun pointed at the head of every brown or brown adjacent person in the country. Poor white people continue to get poorer, and they continue to be the largest demographic entering the poverty class. So why aren’t these people showing up?
If you’re answering that question with flippant derision for the non-voters, you’re not correctly assessing the problem and will therefore never fix it. Some people don’t vote because they simply can’t do it. They work, and they just can’t make it happen without losing money they desperately need. A bigger (I believe much bigger) block of people don’t vote because they genuinely believe that their bottom line is unaffected by who wins. Those people are largely not wrong.
If you’re reading this, you’re much more engaged in politics than the vast majority of Americans. I want you to try and unknow what you know for a minute. Put yourself in the position of someone who lives paycheck to paycheck and whose time is consumed by the challenge of feeding their kids. That person is making significantly less money than they were thirty years ago since the cost of milk has risen and their wages have been steadily going down. There is simply no time to study political platforms and ballot initiatives, and none of that stuff has made a positive difference in thirty years anyway.
My father was a blue collar immigrant who supported my family solely on his income until about the mid 80s. We came to this country in the early 70s with no money, and my father bought our four bedroom house in an upper middle class neighborhood in the bay area for around $25,000. He was a chef so he worked twelve hour days, six days a week. Does anyone think it would be possible for a non-college grad to work enough hours to support a middle class family on one income today? Do you think that that a college grad can support a middle class family on one income today?
That’s just not a world that we live in anymore. The opportunities are shrinking and people are working harder than they have since the (first) robber baron era of our history. And it doesn’t much matter which party is in charge. 85% of Obama’s recovery went to the top 1%. Does that sound like a situation that would inspire struggling Americans to take time out of their days and lose money to show up and vote for more of that? Yes, democrats gave us the ACA but that was only ever going to impact a maximum of 10% of Americans. Compared to Social Security or Medicare, the ACA was breadcrumbs for the working class. And frankly, it came after Bill Clinton completely fucked welfare so I’m not sure this was much of a net gain for the working poor.
You can put on your partisan blinders and disagree with that all day long, but that isn’t going to change the fact that nearly half of eligible voters didn’t show up yesterday. In an election where the stakes are higher than they ever have been in my lifetime, nearly half of voters were no-shows. In a time of unprecedented cheating, lying, stealing, and hatred, half of Americans couldn’t be fucked to show up.
You can blame them, or you can think about why this happened and how to fix it. You can celebrate a hollow, non-victory and pretend that everything will be fine in 2020, or you can see the reality of the situation: last night was not a good night for democrats and it lined up with twenty-five bad years for democrats. The quarter-century downward trend was not broken yesterday.
This trend will not change as long as democrats talk about being for the working class while taking money from charter schools, AIPAC, and big pharma. Throwing pebbles at a tidal wave of policies that are crushing the working class to slow it down is not good enough anymore, and it never will be again.
I am not an emotional person when it comes to politics. I’m actually not emotional in general. I possess that classic combination of high IQ and low EQ so I’m generally not as emotional as most people. I’m particularly unemotional politically. So when I supported Bernie in the 2016 primaries, I didn’t feel like he was my daddy and I didn’t let how the DNC treated him effect my objective of protecting my own self interest in the general election. I vociferously advocated for Hillary when I needed to. So when I say that a virulent strain of Berniecratism is what the democratic party needs to survive, I say so objectively.
Here’s where many of you get angry and unfollow me because you don’t want to hear it. I would hope that you would instead engage in a respectful discussion with me, but if your opinions are so fragile that they can’t be exposed to differing opinions then by all means, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you enjoy having your opinions challenged because that’s how you form solid opinions, then read on and discuss!
Bernie took 43% of the votes in the democratic primary, when he wasn’t even really running in earnest until after the Iowa caucus had happened. He did it by putting together a broad coalition of support from independents, conservatives and liberals. I’m sorry, “Never Bernie” people, but his supporters were never Hillary’s to begin with. Your ire should be directed at all of the Obama voters who either didn’t show up to vote, or voted for Trump because they were on your “team” at some point in time and now they’re not. Hillary wasn’t the first democrat to lose PA since 1989 because of Bernie or because of Putin. She lost PA because she wasn’t speaking to the issues of the working class and because despite Obama’s rhetoric, he didn’t deliver for them.
Trump was obviously completely fucking full of shit, but he was speaking to working class. That’s just a fact. And full-of-shit republicans are always going to beat corporatist democrats. Wanna know why? Because of Orwell’s ‘two minutes of hate’. Republicans aren’t afraid to literally tear this country apart with bullshit wedge issues to win elections. This is a tactic that has worked since the beginning of time, and will work as long as the last two humans on earth exist. So unless democrats are willing to sell out Americans and point to a group of people to hate, they’re not going to build the kind of coalition they need to win elections.
100% of all of the democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020 have expressed support for Medicare for all. Hillary wouldn’t go there in 2016. She was for “universal healthcare” which is a nebulous term that can mean any number of different (some bad) ideas. Every democratic presidential hopeful is talking about a $15 minimum wage. All of them. Hillary had to be pushed into going up to $12. Democrats know that Bernie’s way is a winning strategy. I’m just not sure that they know that they need to be authentic about it. You cannot be an authentic populist if you’re beholden to any corporate interest. It’s just not going to work, unless you’re willing to prop yourself up on a ‘2 minutes of hate’ base.
Democrats are in deep trouble, and Nancy Pelosi’s pay go agenda is not going to hold the majority of the seats that democrats won last night. Democrats largely won in republican “never Trump” districts. In other words, these were traditionally republican districts where Hillary won because Trump was a bridge too far. When Trump is gone, we should all expect those districts to come home to the GOP unless democrats start doing something meaningful for the working class.
I’m sorry to be the downer today, but I really feel a high level of despair for where we’re headed. Nothing about what happened last night makes me optimistic about the future of this country. You would be wise to join me in my concern.
Like you I am disappointed in last night, despite some hopeful signs concerning women and especially women of color. However, I disagree on how the left should proceed. Despite its effectiveness, I cannot condone sinking to the level of bigotry that has defined the Trump campaign. It would be easy to set up a scapegoat, such as white supremacy, and attack that, and while I think it is important to fight such things, narrowing the problem to “it’s all these guys’ fault” circumvents the real issues of poverty, education (more specifically lack of it), and privilege. For years the myth of the American Dream has allowed the wealthy to dangle the bait of “you can have this too” and manipulated voters into thinking that trickle down economics is a thing and that the wealthy share middle class values. Civil Rights are presented as “those people are coming for your stuff,” creating fear and anxiety over inevitable change.
Another problem is that the Democrats are seen as the saviors from the takeover from the right. They aren’t. As the issues with Hillary show (I voted for Hillary and I still support that decision, despite some of her flaws) Democrats are not that far removed from the GOP. Knowing the ebb and flow of political parties, my sense is that within 30 years or so the GOP will make itself something akin to the John Birtch Society, the Dems will become the new conservatives, and whatever Democratic Socialists are going to call themselves will become the new liberal party. Maybe I’m wrong, but the Republicans were once the party of democracy and change – look where they are now.
I don’t think the signs of change can be dismissed out of hand. Even 20 years ago, the likelihood of an openly gay candidate, much less a lesbian, would have been unheard of. In the current anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Trumpers, two Muslim women were elected. Change is frustratingly slow, and the GOP has spent decades creating the monster we have now. Certain things have to change, which right now seem unlikely. First of all, big money needs to be taken out of government. I would love to see something like what the British have, which (I think this is right) six weeks of campaigning and all advertising is regulated something like PSAs. There needs to be more fairness in the tax code, which now is going to take even longer. I don’t believe in 80-90% taxes for the wealthy, but actually paying 30% like the rest of us would go a long way to creating a system of public works and services that could help those in poverty improve their lives. Perhaps the biggest thing that needs to change, and here’s a real pipe dream, is that the media needs to take more responsibility for their content. In the ratings wars they need to create drama, which leads to narratives and agendas rather than actual reporting and impartial coverage. I believe a free press is central to a functioning democracy, and the nature of journalism has not really changed all that much from selling broadsheets to 24 hour news cycles. The cacophony of news, even just the busy screens, doesn’t give anyone time to digest or process the content or implications of news stories. Important stories, such as the elections in Brazil or the attack on LGBTQ in Tanzania don’t make the news because they don’t draw ratings. I don’t know if there is a solution to this, but I do think the media bears a large part of the current reality show atmosphere of politics today.
Are any of these things possible? With the current Supreme Court makeup, getting rid of Citizens United seems unlikely in the next 30 years, though some states, including mine which is quite red, voted for issues to limit campaign money. Like many great changes, sometimes they have to start at the state level and move up the food chain. As a teacher, I always think decent education is key. US public schools used to be some of the best schools in the world, and now a majority of high school students can’t even name the three branches of government. Overtesting (standardized tests are a huge money maker) crushes the natural curiosity of children and creates an environment of stress with anything having to do with assessment. Teachers are blamed for student failure when other factors, such as food insecurity, unstable homelife, and special educational needs are impediments to success. We need to stop looking for quick fixes and play a long game that works at basic needs in order to build a society that is not based on fear and ignorance, or at least one that is not ruled by those darker aspects of human nature.
I guess I wrote my own blog here! Thanks for the space.