Am I embarrassed for my country, or am I just embarrassed? Like so many of you I thought we had it in the bag. Possible wave election! We might win back the House too! Writers and pollsters who had gained my trust over a number of years couldn’t be so wrong (so many were in 2014—but we all make mistakes). We’re a reality based community. But I was so wrong, and I was arrogant about it, and I mocked and belittled Trump supporters, while trying to empathize with those I saw as simply misled (a combination of arrogance and condescension on my part). Hillary will win more than 320 Electoral College votes! Our corporate media sucks so bad, which is true, and right wing media is much worse, we can’t be wrong. We’ve crashed the gates and know the truth. The non-ideological centrists and independents will see that. Our base is so motivated! Women and minorities will turn out in record numbers for Hillary and against Trump, including white women. Deluded I was.
During this over-long campaign cycle I’ve seen many open letters—enough that I was getting sick of this genre and started to question why so many? Why are we pretending to write letters to people who won’t read them when we’re really just preaching to the choir and acting arrogant and superior? Open letters to Trump supporters, open letters to Mitch McConnell, open letters to racists, to Bernie supporters, to Hillary supporters. All of them really lectures about how stupid the subject of the letter was and how the letter writer was going to set them straight with a self-righteous rant.
We need to step back and shine the spotlight on ourselves. I love coming to this site, I learn so much here, but due to the obviously heinous Trump we became too self-congratulatory, too self-righteous. We alienated possible voters by lumping all the disaffected who didn’t fully embrace progressive ideals, in with racists, sexists, Islamophobes, and homophobes rather than listening and finding the common ground we had in opposing TPP, privatization of Medicare and Social Security, outsourcing, fixing the economy, among others. Yes, I was a big Bernie supporter and when Hillary got the nomination I became a big Hillary supporter, but I think Bernie had the right message and could’ve reached the reachable people who ended up supporting Trump. But that’s counter-factual and we need to think about what to do next. This is not a Rox/Sux post. Even if he won the nomination I think the Dem establishment would have just left him in the lurch.
When Hillary made her basket of deplorables comment I agreed 100%. I saw the nuance in what she said, and knew she didn’t mean all of the people considering voting for Trump, just the Klan types, the Neo-Nazis. But the supporters that weren’t in the basket didn’t like the association with those she put in the basket. Those who weren’t Trump supporters but weren’t Hillary supporters either felt lumped in with the rest. She provoked an emotional response—and emotional is non-rational. Americans aren’t good with nuance, and our media almost makes it impossible. We know that—it’s not a secret. But I was glad she didn’t apologize—there was no way she could undo what she said and she was right! Now I see what a big error that was—it led to even more resentment, it turned possible allies into enemies. People who had no desire to be lumped in with the Klan now thought, screw you for lumping me in with Klan, there’s no way I’m going to vote for you, and they started to look for ways to rationalize voting against her. I’ve heard so many of these rationalizations that I’ve blocked family members on Facebook. How could they internally justify voting for this obvious con-man? How stupid are they? They must be racists—and maybe many of them were but were aware enough to know you keep that shit inside because it’s socially unacceptable.
We have to stop only talking to each other. We have to find ways to emotionally reach people who share our goals without being arrogant, and by crafting policies that clearly address their suffering in the same way we focus on policies to help those already in the Obama coalition. We can do this together on this site, but not if we are constantly reinforcing how smart and righteous we all are. If we don’t broaden the appeal of the Democratic party to people beyond the coasts and cities we will never heal this country and we’ll continue this cycle of Republican disasters, incomplete Democratic repairs of said disasters, followed by greater Republican disasters, etc. ad nauseam. Two steps backward, one step forward, to infinity and beyond. If the Democratic party is to survive and remain viable on the national stage we need to change who runs it and pressure it to become truly populist. Chuck Schumer? We can’t rely on constantly running ads of insane Republicans acting like idiots, and not crafting an emotional appeal to a national renewal. We need to fight for something that is dear to the American people. Everyone is sick of the evil of two lessers. It’s not an argument. No more “give money or the bogey man will get you” appeals from the Democratic party.
Hillary clearly ran to continue Obama’s legacy. Obama ran to revive hope and to change a country in desperate need of it, and he was given the Presidency and huge majorities in the House and Senate. They are two very different strategies and one sucked and the other succeeded. But in power Obama acted like an establishment centrist with Rahm Emmanuel, Arne Duncan, Bill Daley, the Simpson-Bowles commission, the “grand bargain”, chained CPI, pushing charter schools, escalation of drone attacks, using the 1917 Sedition Act to prosecute whistle-blowers while claiming to be the most transparent administration eveh, being worse on mass surveillance than even Bush was, and an ACA that was byzantine in its complexity and contained huge giveaways to big Pharma and Health Insurance industries. I’m not naive, I know how Washington works and how hard it is to get good legislation through, but you have to try. You can’t run on change and then govern by compromising before negotiations even start. The midterm slam of 2010 should’ve been the wake up call. Since it wasn’t, then the midterm slam of 2014 should’ve been the wake up call, and if the Presidential election slam of 2016 doesn’t wake up this party than I’m afraid we’ll be on life support after the midterms of 2018.
Let’s stop the arrogant self-congratulation. Let’s completely reject the dull ache of centrist incrementalism. People want a revolution—it might not be the best word to use, but it’s what people want. We are becoming less and less democratic and by blowing this election we’ve created a gigantic pile of shit that’s going to take a lot of time to clean up before we can start to progress again. Eight years of Bush/Cheney was almost unbearable. I’m not sure how I’ll handle 4 years of Trump/Pence, and if he’s reelected we will become the insignificant regional party that we’ve been claiming was the Republican party’s destiny. We can’t wait till all the white people over 50 die and the mystical demographic destiny of democracy dawns. The time is already past. It’s not even now. We have to stop writing open letters to people who won’t read them.
