After dwelling on the results of the election and remembering daily that this man has a majority in congress and will appoint Supreme Court Justices, I needed inspiration badly. This is why I was so inspired to hear former President Obama (it hurts to say former, doesn't it? ) express the wisdom he shared with his girls about the state of the world under the new administration: "The world isn't over until it's over." And he's right.
We progressives like to sadistically indulge in the catastrophic, even fatalistic, nature of bad news. I believe this is due to the fact that we allow ourselves to feel a wider range of emotions, including the emotions of others who are suffering, and try not to numb ourselves to the potential dangers of the information we hear everyday. Because of this, we tend to be a bit more wily, weird, and passionate about what is going on in the world. It's hard for progressives to fight politically because we have so much information and no overarching ideology for filtering what matters to us as a party. In fact, many progressives fear attaching themselves to the Democratic party for fear of having their views dragged to the middle. Compare this with conservatives who, rather than fearing their party will drag them to the middle, have dragged their party to the far right in a way we haven't see in two generations. Republicans often win elections because they have an ideological filter as a party that dictates whether or not they care about the information they are hearing. They hear the Earth is warming due to human behavior, and the more reasonable of them--the ever dying breed able to accept the consensus of experts in a field over partisan hacks on television--say, "Ok, well, how can we solve this in a way that doesn't tank the economy? How can we turn this into an opportunity for innovation? Is there even a realistic way to solve this problem without implementing strangling regulations that will lose our country a ton of money?" This filter allows conservatives to remain calm in the face of potentially detrimental information.
We progressives like to sadistically indulge in the catastrophic, even fatalistic, nature of bad news. I believe this is due to the fact that we allow ourselves to feel a wider range of emotions, including the emotions of others who are suffering, and try not to numb ourselves to the potential dangers of the information we hear everyday. Because of this, we tend to be a bit more wily, weird, and passionate about what is going on in the world. It's hard for progressives to fight politically because we have so much information and no overarching ideology for filtering what matters to us as a party. In fact, many progressives fear attaching themselves to the Democratic party for fear of having their views dragged to the middle. Compare this with conservatives who, rather than fearing their party will drag them to the middle, have dragged their party to the far right in a way we haven't see in two generations. Republicans often win elections because they have an ideological filter as a party that dictates whether or not they care about the information they are hearing. They hear the Earth is warming due to human behavior, and the more reasonable of them--the ever dying breed able to accept the consensus of experts in a field over partisan hacks on television--say, "Ok, well, how can we solve this in a way that doesn't tank the economy? How can we turn this into an opportunity for innovation? Is there even a realistic way to solve this problem without implementing strangling regulations that will lose our country a ton of money?" This filter allows conservatives to remain calm in the face of potentially detrimental information.
Progressives see this as heartless and cold and simple-minded, probably because we don't have a heady ideology. We have an emotional worldview that leads many of us to hear of global warming, blame ourselves, and withdraw from the 21st century altogether. We make, sometimes ridiculous, concessions like refusing to drive or fly or even reproduce. We take up urban farming with zero experience and find ourselves stressed-out by the new responsibility of maintaining multiple gardens and feeding livestock while trying to hold down jobs and raise our families. Not that these are bad things to do; I would even argue that progressives are far more creative and innovative and the more disciplined among us will be the ones to solve problems like global warming in a realistic and economically sustainable way, but we need to be more realistic in our approaches and strategy. Becoming a homesteader in the middle of a city and judging everyone else who isn't making the same effort is not a realistic approach to global warming or environmental sustainability.
This is my point. If there is one take-away from last year's election it is that Democrats--not as an institution, but as a constituency of voters--need to stop dabbling in the obscure and outlandish and focus on where we are now as a country (and a world). We need to get more disciplined at playing the game and start taking an interest in heady long-term strategy over feel-good, whimsical rhetoric. Republicans are in it to win it; and they are winning it. They are making very simple moves that transform their ideology into legislation and appointments at every level of government that will last a generation. Democrats elected the first black President with a message more liberal and optimistic than anyone since Kennedy and what did Republicans do? They said (out loud): "Our number one priority is to see that Obama fails." And they did it. They made his first two years appear so radical and out of touch that Americans voted in a conservative congress at the midterm elections and this new congress blocked every move Obama made and then demonized him as a tyrant and a dictator for taking executive action to go around them. And, had Mitt Romney had an ounce of personality or passion as a politician, Republicans would have had congress and the Presidency for the last four years. Furthermore, they gerrymandered their congressional districts nationwide to make sure they keep the House of Representatives in their camp for the foreseeable future. They are ruthless by progressive standards and that's because we take our opponents' rights and feelings into consideration even while fighting for our own agenda.
This has to stop. They will appreciate us when we win. And we will win when we start focusing on winning and not on gaining lip service to every pet-policy we feel so strongly about. We need legislative action. We need politicians who boil their message down to broad overarching themes while acting on everything we have always believed in as progressives. Those of us who understand the breadth of issues happening in the world today need to be smart enough to understand that these issues are better served when we empower our party to play chess instead of checkers. We need to stop expecting our politicians to speak publicly about our specific concern when those who don't understand the breadth of issues going on in the country have very different concerns than ours. Our Democratic Presidential candidates are forced to talk about such nuanced issues to get the nomination that they end up alienating half the country in the general election. We need to be expanding our base by speaking to the issues of people who don't already agree with us. Instead we are forever educating the public and chastising our opponents and by proxy the general public for not understanding every nuance of the political web of issues.
Republicans keep it simple: Small government, low taxes, military strength, and (though incredibly hypocritical and out of sync with the rest of their politics) family values. That's it, four things. Now the breath of issues they squeeze into these categories is enormous. What they expand these four themes to include once in office is equal to the array of issues Democrats fight for, but they don't try to cover in depth every policy they care about during their campaigns. They talk about these four issues in as vague and concise language as possible while attacking their opponents for not being strong on these four issues. In doing so, they frame the political discourse. While Democrats spend a year and a half going into great wonky detail on two dozen issues (some of which only a small percentage of the population are concerned with or even know exist) and mostly ignoring their Republican competitors until the general election, Republicans are pandering to their four issues (issues most Americans can get on board with even if they don't totally agree) and then squeezing the two dozen other issues they'll be responsible for into their four issue framework. They talk as much about Democrats during the primaries as they do about the issues and, as evidenced by last year's election, they fall in line like good little soldiers no matter how much they disagree with their candidates.
I truly believe that the future belongs to progressives. The demographics of the country are trending our way and the divisive and hateful message of Donald Trump has motivated Democrats like I haven't seen in my lifetime. However, if Democrats don't put their hearts in check and start using their heads, I fear we will continue to fail in the political realm. Fiery rhetoric and protests and petitions are all important, but they change nothing if we cannot put in place politicians--and as a result, legislation--who further our values as a party.
