Kamala Harris ran a beautiful, inspiring, energizing campaign which fell short. I’m not just sad, I’m crushed. The thing I dreaded most, the belief that the worst white man is still considered better than the best black woman, has prevailed. That’s just reality.
I could dwell on it. I could right yet another of the hundreds of essays castigating Democrats for supposed failures of the campaign. I’m not doing that. Instead I take stock in the amazing coalition which fell just short, and the message which could carry us to victory in 2022.
We’re in a populist moment. There’s simply now way around it. In a populist moment there are usually two flavors of populism. One is a demagogic populism which actually favors the wealthy elites by pitting everyone else against each other. It whips up our worst impulses, picks out others to demonize, and thereby hides the fact that it’s a distraction, not a solution.
The other populism is pragmatic, principled, and focused on the actual needs of the people. It’s reasonable to say Democrats tried to deliver on that this year, but did they? Sure, there were a lot of good policies out there. Tuition assistance, housing assistance, a child tax credit...the policies were there, and we shouldn’t abandon them. Polling of policies, scrubbed of party identification, clearly shows Democrats have what the voters want.
What we can add is pragmatic populist language. Language that doesn’t just say “I’m on your side,” it SCREAMS it. Again, NOT a criticism of Harris nor Walz, just a focus on what works going forward. At a time where the entire MSM is focused on the supposedly uncrushable Republican Party, there are good examples of real Liberal, authentic candidates who won in competitive races.
So, it’s time to go back to basics. It’s time to go back to what works. What worked in another time of populists rising? A great place to start is with the Four Freedoms of FDR’s January 6, 1941 speech.
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
