RUNNING SCARED
DEMOCRATS ROUTED BY A TORRENT OF HATE
The 2024 US presidential election should have provided the easiest path to electoral choice in decades. Even though it should have been really easy to identify who should have won,* a majority of the nation’s voters dove into the cesspool of self-absorbed and hate-filled racists, misogynists, grifters, corporate lowlife and the like to ensure an outcome reflecting their perspective. Every time that I think that America cannot disappoint more, the citizenry seems to reaffirm just how low we can go as a nation.
Former President Obama has a tag line that he uses routinely and that others, particularly Democrats, use as well: “This is not who we are.”** Obama trots it out at every perceived tragedy, generally in order to avoid the uncomfortable and, dare I say it, more confrontational opposite message. For example, when gun carnage abounds, it seems that Obama and others so inclined prefer to absolve the masses from any responsibility because “this is not who we are.” Unfortunately, it is precisely who we are.
The current presidential election gave Obama a new platform from which he reminded us all of the coming horrors should the unwashed vote for Trump. And then, he immediately absolved the unwashed of any responsibility for the impending doom because "this is not who we are.” Unfortunately, it is precisely who we are.
Candidate Kamala Harris was quick to jump on the “this is not who we are” bandwagon. In her “unity” message with the White House as a backdrop, she treated us all to a “this is not who we are” chorus, fanning the flames of absolution in the vain hope that she could reach those who would be offended by a more direct message. In fact, in the waning days of the election, President Biden pretty much nailed it – calling Trump’s racist supporters “garbage” seemed about right to me.***
I could go on with this, but it would not bring us any closer to understanding Trump’s grip on more than half of the people who actually voted in the presidential election. On one level, it seems that many voters have become so jaded by their personal “plight” that everything from the increased cost of a tomato to a martini to a Bentley offends their personal sensibilities unfettered by concern for others and their plight. By this line of reasoning, any Trump lie about the economy received a friendly reception unencumbered by facts to the contrary.
On another level, it sure looks like Trump taped into a deep vein of fear that changing demographics are eroding the privilege that drives White Americans to a sense of comfortable superiority. This sense of superiority seems to run across economic divides in the White community, providing White voters with the impetus they needed to ignore the actual likely economic impact of specific candidate or political party proposals. Some of the same reasoning may have lead “privileged” Blacks and Latinos to similar conclusions.
So now that this interminable election cycle has produced a hard fall, it might be time for progressive Democrats to finally get indignant enough to confront, confuse, and undermine every Trump initiative they can find. This is long overdue. Talk of “unity” is the prescription for continued political demise.
Using Latinos as an example, apparently many chose not to hear or understand the racist, anti-immigrant Trump message aimed at them because they voted for Trump anyway. It is time now to stand up to those Latino voters with that Trump message in hand as Trump deports them and spits in their faces on the way out. Then, while the roundup continues, Democrats must not do anything to support any Trump plan to “fix” America’s immigration system. Oppose any such plan every step of the way.
Democrats need to remember how nicely that political dance worked for Trump and his acolytes in this election. That same dance will work for Democrats in the next election cycle, but only if they have the political cajones required to pull it off while consistently advocating for the required components of humane and comprehensive immigration reform.
Likewise, this is a time to forcefully confront the undemocratic aspects of our political system and the inequities that they spawn. This would be a significantly more concrete message about the fight for democracy than all the blather about the cataclysmic clash between “democracy” and “autocracy,” as if winning the labeling war ends the discussion. Actually fighting for meaningful institutional reform in the US is the real fight for democracy that can reap electoral rewards and promote messaging clarity.
The list is long – champion the simple democratic reform of eliminating the electoral college to provide that a popular vote majority elects the next president, aggressively confront voter suppression measures and seek to enact national voter access standards, force as many open congressional votes as possible on legislative proposals to enact a national living wage and provide for the child care equity that opens pathways to a higher collective standard of living, and demand that government protect the freedom to life and liberty that is threatened directly by ever-present gun violence. Then, work on easy-to-understand legislation that makes access to meaningful healthcare and quality public education a right of every man, woman and child living in America.
Further, as a painful reminder that weaponized hypocrisy has been a powerful tool of Senate Republicans, watch how smoothly they eliminate the filibuster in the upcoming legislative year to use their congressional majority to ensure that their right-wing agenda items reach Trump’s desk. Senate Democrats must use every trick they can find to stop this onslaught and the inevitable Republican effort to manipulate the confirmation process to ensure the Senate confirmation of the parade of troglodytes proposed for high government and military office and the judiciary. Democrats must, for once, outmaneuver the Republicans, even as it reveals their own hypocrisy.
Finally, as Democrats reflect on what is to come and as surely as the sun rises, we will be treated to another pathetic round of mainstream media self-flagellation, at the conclusion of which celebratory kudos will be passed around for a job well done in difficult times. For this ever to change, the role of corporate money and its corrupting influence at the core of the nation’s media will have to be exposed and resisted, along with the role of news “personalities” aspiring to be part of the story and little more, content “balance” free of context and verification, and the ubiquitous presence of unfettered and unregulated social media devoid of any standards or sanctions.
As with the open and ugly face of racism that Trump’s first adventure in “governing” exposed to the easily deluded populace, this time around we will be treated to the death knell of so many more of the delusions that underpin the most venal aspects of what America has always been and sadly continues to be. So the next time you pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, think of immigrants rounded up like cattle, of hungry children in our midst, of the homeless, of book bans and the like, along with a flag-friendly nod to the cruelty directed at some of the most vulnerable among us.
Meanwhile, I will be sitting on my perch watching and waiting, and hoping that the younger generations finally find something to move them enough to think beyond themselves and put something at risk. It is a shame that an old man has to be the one to continue to say this.
* I do not often cite previous Hard Left Turn postings, but the topic of who should win the election was the subject of my last posting - https://www.hard-left-turn.com/single-post/heroes-and-villains .
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