WELL IT COULD HAVE BEEN A WHOLE LOT WORSE

Reflections on a pretty good night

I wouldn’t go so far as to sing “Happy Days are Here Again,” but things look a hell of a lot better than they did last week. I’m someone who was seriously concerned about the possibility of a Bloody Tuesday on Election Day, literally as well as figuratively. In the end, our midterms displayed something we hadn’t seen in American politics for far too long: normalcy, intelligence, and some level of dignity. It was neither the Democrats nor the Republicans who spoke loudest in this election; it was the voice of the American people that came through loud and clear, with a message that said, “Okay, enough with the crazy; let’s get back to who we are.”

Photo: Unsplash

Our situation continues to be precarious, however. Undemocratic, authoritarian forces remain like a shadowy threat hanging over our democracy, sparked perhaps by Donald Trump but no longer needing him to persevere. If anything, they are becoming more sophisticated without him, less crude and more acceptable to the wine as well as the beer crowd. The ultra right will simply look for ways to regroup. No one should presume that their failure to produce a red wave will send such forces back to sea.

Authoritarianism is like a a germ that reflects the culture in which it grows. It’s an opportunistic phenomenon that occurs when democracy fails to deliver. The United States was headed in a wrong direction even before Trump appeared, and his ascension to the presidency was a symptom, not a cause, of our government’s reckless behavior. While Trump’s recklessness is wild and overt, the system that produced him was just as reckless, just quieter and covert. Trump simply took advantage of a vacuum, a hole where government dedicated to serving its people used to be. His presidential win reflected the volcanic rage of millions of voters who knew the system was rigged against them in a way they felt few in Washington understood or cared about. Trump validated their rage, as did Bernie Sanders by the way, who according to all the polls at the time was more popular than Trump.

Trickle down economic policies created a massive transfer of wealth into the hands of one percent of us, tens of millions left to suffer the chronic anxiety of economic uncertainty and social displacement. Yet too many of our elite couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. Neoliberal economic policies of presidents going back forty years created the illusion that America was doing well - because for those who were creating that narrative, it was. It wasn’t until election day 2016 that the narrative was challenged.

Trump’s ascension to the presidency was an expression of rage, not only his but that of many people who voted for him. People looked to him to change things, which he certainly did but in the most destructive way. Dedicated to property rights, both his and those of his ilk, he was and is willing to crush democracy in order to insure increased wealth for himself and his aristocratic friends. He was, and is, a con man. Some who voted for him have seen this, and some of them have not.

Those who have resisted his dangerous nonsense have been in a collective survival mode for years now, traumatized by a movement of American authoritarianism and its efforts to literally dismantle our freedoms. From decisions that erode our rights to efforts to suppress our votes, there are forces actively seeking to nullify our democracy. Trump’s authoritarianism was not an operable tumor, but a cancer that has metastasized.

In this week’s election, the voice of the people struck back. Attacks on our democracy was an attack too far. Tuesday’s election results are not as meaningful in terms of who won but in terms of who was defeated. Yes, more than 210 election deniers won their races - and that is not nothing - but that crowd did not win the country. Not anywhere close. This midterm election was in no way a Trump-inspired red wave.

Even among Democrats who didn’t win, enough of them lost their races by a close enough margin to have magnified the message that no, America is not going to dismantle democracy, or at the very least we’re going to put up a hell of a fight before giving it up. Democrats showed some grit this week, and God knows we needed to. We’ve earned a reprieve, a moment of opportunity, a chance to clear our heads. But there’s no way of knowing how or when the ill forces of authoritarianism will strike again. We’re still in territory that makes us way too vulnerable to their return.

That is why this moment is so important.

President Franklin Roosevelt said that America would never have to worry about a fascist takeover in this country as long as democracy delivered on its promises. But for over forty years the blessings of democracy have waned. Americans have seen policy after policy diminish those promises, policies guaranteed to do little more than to make the rich richer. The fact that people figured out that the Republicans were the original architects of trickle down madness doesn’t mean we’re so stupid we don’t realize how often Democrats have played along.

We should vigorously articulate and effectuate, right now, the vision of an America that would never have strayed into such dangerous territory to begin with: one in which the promises of democracy – in the form of such things as universal health care, free or near-free higher education, guaranteed paid family leave, the cancellation of the college loan debt, fair taxation, an Economic Bill of Rights, a higher minimum wage, racial and criminal justice, and the guarantee of free and fair elections – form a sure and solid bulwark against a neofascist takeover. No one should forget - and we need to make sure they don’t pretend to forget - that it was Biden’s moving to the left over the last few months that began to tip the midterm odds in our favor. The American electorate is becoming more progressive on policy after policy; when Fox News reports that “65% think it’s the federal government’s responsibility to make sure that all Americans have health care coverage,” you know we’re in the middle of a tectonic shift. Val Demmings spent $70M on a “tough on crime” campaign against Marco Rubio. She lost by 16 points. Clearly, few were fooled that being tougher on crime is the answer to our problems – even the problem of crime.

As long as democracy fails to deliver, neofascism will threaten us like a dark specter of frightening possibility. Only the political sensibility of a new New Deal - including a return of the Democratic party to an unequivocal support for the working people of the United States - will begin to correct the imbalance by which massive social and income inequality has driven so many into chronic despair. Donald Trump is merely a symptom of the economic malevolence that produced that despair. In the words of Louis Brandeis, “we can have large amounts of money concentrated in the hands of a very few, or we can have democracy; we cannot have both.” It isn’t only Donald Trump, but the system that produced him, that should be held accountable for the hits our democracy has taken over the last few years.

We’re not tyrannized by something to our left or to our right, but by something which economically lords above us – a corporate aristocracy which in its parasitic hegemony eats away at the sinews of American civilization. Literally nothing it touches remains un-commodified, including human beings. Its gargantuan financial power has turned our government into a system of legalized bribery, a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” now having turned into a government “of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.” This matrix of corporate aristocrats wraps its tentacles around every facet of our lives, eating away at literally anything which inconveniences it – including our democracy.

The corporatocracy’s highly paid, brilliant mavens of PR have succeeded in branding as socialism any effort to fight back against it. One major party is completely in the thrall of the corporate matrix, while the other party tries to have it both ways; feeding the monster while simultaneously trying to ameliorate the suffering it produces. The corporate and billionaire “economic royalists,” to use FDR’s term, have turned both major parties into their court jesters. And the people know it. Voters showed up once again this week for the lesser of two evils, but ultimately even a lesser evil would be enough to do us in.

So yes, it’s wonderful that we didn’t fall over the cliff this week. But we cannot remain six inches away from it forever. The ground beneath us will begin to erode and the cliff itself begin to recede. The neofascist threat to our democracy didn’t end this week; it was merely forestalled. A window has opened, but there is no guarantee for how long. We need to use this opening to articulate and effectuate a new chapter in American history, claiming for the American people our rightful place at the top, not the bottom, of the pyramid of opportunity that makes democracy worth having and worth voting for. Voters this week were the real grown-ups in the room. They were sophisticated in their choices, and merciful to a system that some would argue didn’t even deserve another chance to get it right. People are smart enough to know that the path of chaos is the path to death. Our government needs to show up for the people now, the way the people this week showed up for it. The electorate can be unpredictable and wild and should never be taken for granted. Voters pulled our country back from the cliff this week, but no one should presume that its patience will last forever.

It’s time for a new progressive era, and the time to shout that from the rooftops is right now.