Typically, I write a post-presidental diary.
Forgive me that it’s taken a moment, but, here goes.
1. We did it.
While much else mattered, the essential task we had was to stop Donald Trump by electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When all the votes are counted, and they are still pouring in, it will have been a record turnout and a massive popular vote margin for our ticket. It’s only been eight months since I wrote a diary titled Warren to Biden, and today in a very different USA...we can all know that we’ve made the crucial difference.
We can all celebrate and virtually pat each other on the back. We did it!
I personally feel that we have put the brakes on a form of American fascism, your mileage may vary; but no matter how you measure it, what we did is huge.
2. Biden and Harris will bring an essential quality to the table: pragmatism
There are (and will be) raging ideological battles within the Democratic Party. From our election post-mortems, to our takes on the transition and the possible personnel of the Biden Administration, to the very real jockeying to define and choose the leadership and direction of our party into this new decade, this debate is real and meaningful.
In the midst of all of this, however, I have a very boring, but important prediction for all of us to get our heads around.
With the possible exceptions of climate/stimulus and Covid policy, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be focused on getting modest things done within a pragmatic progressive framework. (My hope, and I think it should also be yours, is that it will be a lot of modest things!)
And instead of fretting about this, we progressives should embrace it and adjust our strategies accordingly.
These are two leaders who like to make to-do lists and cross off items.
These are two negotiators who know how to get to an end result that ‘works’ for our side...a result that is recognized, despite valid criticisms, at the end of the day, as our realistic best possible outcome.
It’s no coincidence that Biden launched his first working day as President-Elect with a three-word message: “Wear a mask.”
3. Case study: healthcare
Let me be clear and set expectations accordingly on an issue we are all familiar with, healthcare.
- We want to preserve, improve, and lock in the ACA.
- We want to create a public option.
- We want to lower Medicare eligibility age.
Look at the above list.
If we can do the first two items (with a huge debate over the details how we actually define and legislate a meaningful public option) and then lower the national Medicare eligibility age to 62, it will likely be a huge victory and probably the best outcome we can expect given the other results in the 2020 elections.
Do I think Biden and Harris and our current Congress can pull this off?
I am not sure. It could be that lowering Medicare eligibility is more doable than the full public option.
The reason I went straight to healthcare is that I, personally, on a back of the envelope level, am pretty sure that everything related to M4A is a pipe dream at this point. First, because Biden explicitly disavowed it and while open to progressive ideas, Biden is still essentially more of a centrist leader. Second, because the exact people who would have cast the votes to pass it...and for a bunch of them it would have been in the context of pundits calling it a ”career ending vote” (whether that turned out to be true or not)...didn’t even get elected/re-elected in the first place.
So what I’m saying here is simple.
Calibrate to account for an administration that is NOT going to be like any of the previous attempts to move our agenda (Carter/Clinton/Obama). However, take hope from the fact that Biden/Harris is coming in as steel-eyed negotiators focused on getting what’s possible, done, inside a solidly progressive framework.
I trust them in that. And I may take heat for that. But I also know that they will accomplish more with a progressive wing that is focused on small victories now that set up big victories later.
4. What to make of the election results
I have to admit that I look at the down ballot election results and I weep.
Trump’s Republican Party has a capacity to damage America and to bring out and realize the worst of our natures...and what we see on the election map is that effect writ large.
The Republican party (absent a few Sasse/Romney/W types) are actively doing that today...literally sabotaging our democracy.
It’s like the story of King Solomon and the two mothers.
The GOP simply cuts the baby of our democracy in two before any of us can do anything about it.
At its core, this election, as every election since 1968, is about race and racism and what white Americans (I’m one of them) think about the American project.
The answer is, for the most part, even including the great presidential result, chilling.
But I have one hard-earned thought to bring forward.
Everyone has a political opinion.
99% of everyone thinks that their perceived self-interest, even when to the outside observer it seems illogical, is a valid motivation for that political opinion and vote.
The way forward for the Democratic Party and for the American Experiment is to work relentlessly and concretely on that key observation: perceived self-interest.
And we do that in order to achieve our best pragmatically achievable results for our majority.
I sympathize with everyone who mourns the notion that 70 million (plus!) Americans could vote for Donald Trump given everything we’ve seen: the chaos, the human rights violations, the racism, the damage to our democracy.
I look at the results from South Carolina and Kentucky that have emboldened McConnell and Graham and the situation makes me want to vomit.
That’s a normal, human, rational response.
But the thoughtful, strategic response is to look at it this way.
If idealism and appeals to truth, science and justice haven’t worked, then we need add some additional tactics to the mix.
5. Money lobs are not enough (and we need to focus on low income voters)
This is an obvious one.
Stop sending millions of dollars to hopeless races so they can run TV and Facebook ads.
Instead, invest year round in building our party and the grassroots organizations that register voters and help us win.
I’ve been preaching this for years, but, basically, most people don’t listen to me.
Give monthly money to organizations like Movement Voter Project, NDRC and Sister District, and your state Democratic party, your County Democratic party, and also the big orgs like the DLCC, DSCC, DGA and DCCC...even when we lose...and even if you disagree with them!
When it gets close to the election, yes, expand the map and donate directly to candidates in crucial races and states. (Like my project for Dem State Legislative candidates in battleground states!)
But this election is teaching us that we’re doing it wrong.
If we took the tens of millions of dollars that podcasters inspired people to give in the waning days of this election and took 25% of that total and put it into the grassroots organization pipeline 12 months out from election day, I am quite sure we would have different election results downballot.
Further, could Democrats learn that low income voters, no matter their racial background, vote for Democrats overwhelmingly!
It’s true. Look it up. In fact, the Republicans are MOST afraid of that reality, which is why they seek to do everything in their power to disenfranchise low income voters and make it difficult for them to vote.
6. Democrats need a Rural / Suburban / Urban strategy
I’ll write about this more in future diaries, but what you read above is what I mean.
We need to show up and invest in communicating to Democratic voters in each of these areas according to those voters perceived self interest and local communities.
The map and the current political structure mean that we can only “win” (which we already do!) if we vastly over perform gerrymandered maps and the Senate and Electoral College. Republicans have the opposite situation. They can win only if they do everything power to reinforce the structural advantages that allow them to enact minority rule.
This is a huge opportunity. For us.
I don’t think it’s as simple as how Bernie’s rhetoric often gets oversimplified….we just wave our M4A magic wand and rural and red voters come to our side. Look, the voters who sent Abby Finkenauer and Xochitl Torres Small packing and those who put Biden through, but not Kara Eastman, in Omaha knew full well that they were taking a consequential vote on their own healthcare, but they did so anyway.
We need to be smart. Pragmatic. And we need to be laser focused on investing in a political strategies that deliver votes in every local community...so that we can deliver to our voters overall.
7. But how do I really feel? (Lol.)
I want to be absolutely clear.
I love every last one of you who voted for and did GOTV for Biden Harris.
Deeply and with respect.
We did something amazing. All of us. Together.
We are not perfect.
And we are living in an absolute crisis. Racism. Climate. Pandemic. Sexism. Ableism. Heteronormity.
As a white American, I also think that we are living at a global crisis surrounding the legacy of European colonialism.
Look, it’s exactly those topics that conservatives dismiss and poo-poo...like the legacy of racism...that are...well, the whole point.
If democracy is to work, it has to work for the majority.
And, yeah, the global majority looks like the picture at the top of this diary, except MUCH more diverse!!
That’s who we are and what we are building!
And there’s one more thing.
There’s a thought that I’ve been trying to articulate and I don’t quite have the language for yet.
Our foundational American story, the one we all learn in school, is “No Taxation without Representation.”
Here’s the reality of GOP minority rule…they want to tax all of the rest of us, but still have the seats in Congress as if they really were the most of us.
They are not.
And millions upon millions of us in states that send GAZILLIONS of tax dollars to federal treasury, can do the math.
It’s only a matter of time before we make that case.
I don’t like sending my money for Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and John Thune to hijack.
I bet I'm not alone.
American history is replete with movements that have reshaped our governance.
No big change has ever happened in the USA without a lasting and powerful case being made to the body politic.
The Republicans think that they can ram their agenda through our courts and our Congress with a minority of the votes.
I think they have another thing coming.
