Well, the world continues to rotate as we orbit the sun and Trump is still our popular vote loser president. (Or do we really orbit the sun? How do we know? Scientists have been wrong before you know). So when the sun came up today, I went straight to DK to see if our diaries are having any impact and I think perhaps they are.
My fundamental belief is that Trump will be president for at least four more years and if we want to make sure that we end it then, we had better get our act together soon and start rebuilding our party. To do this, we need to get through the first stage of grief — shock and denial. To help us get over the 2016 elections, I recommend that we stop blaming the Russians or the media or the stupidity of Trump’s supporters for the 2016 election loss. We also need to stop this delusional quest for impeachment or overturning the elections and start looking at long term, credible ways that will get us out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves. Bashing Trump’s hair or his family or his lack of acumen and knowledge keeps us in the very counter productive grief stage of shock and denial and could completely wreck our party. Hillary relentlessly attacked Trump during the campaign and it didn’t work.
There will come a time when we can attack Trump’s crazy ideas and I hope and pray it will be with understanding and the offering of a better path forward. But we have to attack from a position of strength and confidence in what we believe and not shout personal attacks at him and his family or espouse crazy fantasies of impeachment or overturning elections because we are sore losers.
We need to quickly get into the pain and guilt stage. Trust me, the sooner we transition into this stage, the better. In fact, I think we can get through the next three stages in the next month! These are:
- pain and guilt
- anger and bargaining
- depression, reflection and loneliness
Seems like a piece of cake to me but then I am the perpetual optimist. Our beliefs that a Republican congress will impeach Trump or that he will resign are ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is Michael Moore’s suggestion that we can have the courts invalidate the election. Ok, they did it before in Gore v Bush but don’t hold your breath waiting for them to do it when the tables are turned. But for the sake of argument, let us accept that one of these events does happen. Where are we then? If it’s impeachment or resignation, Mike Pence is president and he still has majorities in both houses of congress and a solid majority of lunatic jurists in the supreme court. If it is court invalidation and Hillary is declared the winner (you got to be kidding me, this will never happen) things will get really crazy and guns will be involved. So if we get what we say is essential for the survival of our democracy, have we really improved anything? I don’t see it.
If we keep our eyes and ears open and look at what we have done to ourselves, we will be encouraged by the knowledge that we have the power to learn from these mistakes and we can effectively beat Trump and the awful Republicans at the ballot box where it really matters.
First off, we have to change our leadership — they have been losing elections for us for 36 years and their incessant creep to the right after each loss has eroded the middle class and made low income people’s lives miserable. Progressives are winning elections with populist campaigns, we don’t need to be Republican Light to win. I think that Trump picking up on the populist issue of job loss due to our crazy trade deals helped him win in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Shumer, Durbin, Pelosi and Hoyer have not articulated a plan to take back Congress and are embarrassing to watch when on TV. They didn’t even respond to Trump’s press conference. They must either step aside or be credibly challenged in the primary process. The fact that they haven’t already voluntarily stepped aside for the good of the party speaks volumes about their character.
Next, we need to let incumbents know that if they vote Republican, we will primary them.
When Eric Kantor lost the primary for his seat, Republicans took heed of what the tea party had to say. Progressives can do the same thing to the Democratic power elite and should be focusing on making their voice heard by removing these leaders who ran our party into the ground and have no plan for its resurrection.
So yes, the only way out of this is with Blood, Sweat and Tears. The results are not guaranteed. It won’t be easy or quick. And the time to start is now!