To be honest, I'm feeling pretty down after the convention. The country seems to be deciding whether it is better to cave a little or a lot to the philosophy of neo-fascism, and neither version of the country is really going to have a place for someone like me. "Leave then", you might say, but there's no safe place for the weirdos to go, anymore. The far Right is on the march everywhere, and normal people aren't going to get the memo until they've plunged the entire world into war and chaos again.
I honor that this is your opinion, and is not subject to anyone telling you that don’t don’t feel what you feel. And I understand it. That we can never seem to make a BIG step to the left; to compassion and acceptance and away from war and imperialism.
What makes me feel hopeful about the DNC and what it represents, is that in order to make any of those changes, we need to get the change agents into all levels of government, and this energy points to progress in that area. The president is just barely relevant, bhonestly. The far right learned that, and executed on it, that it needs to be the whole thing, town boards, school boards, county legislatures, state legislatures, judgeships, all the way on up. They have been executing on this plan for 50 years. It is written down, it is funded and there are feet on the ground executing every day.
The Leftists, by contrast are a big tent of diverse ideas. They have to work together without agreeing on the end goal. But they need each other to make any progress at all toward any goal. Many complain about being in a group of people who are not moving as fast as they want. Many are thinking (wrongly, IMO) that if they just get a more ideal president it will all fall into place.
We have a few outspoken progressives in Congress. But the state legislatures are still in the control of the rightists. The gerrymandering that the rightists have built can only be broken by a tsunami. Once it’s broken, the left will have a much more civilized palate to work with - a legislature that represents most of the people, unlike now. But to break it, it requires many disparate people to work together at the same time to take that one crucial step; overcoming the barrier of the gerrymander - in both state and federal offices.
THis energy, this “I will get on board even when the presidential choice may not be perfect, but what I need right now is change in the state houses and that requires a broad enthusiasm that requires me to be enthusiastic so that I will influence other voters to participate and overcome the gerrymander,” that’s what I saw at the convention.
People who are only looking at the president may not see what they hoped. There is still not enough compassion for the anti-war stance. There is still not enough embrace of the compassion for the immigrants and the poor. All true. But I want that ASAP, and the only way to get there is to convince people who are NOT nuanced, who are NOT paying attention to state races, to get excited enough about the one candidate that they see to get out and vote.
Let’s elect her and then see what she actually does.
I know more or less exactly what she'll do, or more importantly, won't do. The Overton Window is a bitch when there are neo-Nazis in the halls of Congress. We've been seeing this play out for the last four years. It will be meaningless after the fact to point out that "I told you so", but I suppose I probably will anyway...
Not if this enthusiasm translates to flips in state houses. If we flip state houses, then we are positioned to minimize the barrier of truly unfair gerrymandering - a tyrany of a minority. If we minimize that, we can elect federal legislatures that reflect the will of the people. If we do that, then they, who write and pass the laws, can affect the window, and the ability of the President to embrace those ideas without losing ground to the rabid right.
But your Overton Window is a fact of life in American politics.
And that's why I'm depressed. We have a minority party pushing strongly toward authoritarian rule, and a disunified majority opposition pushing back as weakly as possible. Any student of history knows what this situation looks like, what it should remind people of. But seeing it does not help you prevent it.
Yes. That minority is able to operate because the progressives, the moderates and the idealists have not sustained the power of the left. There are too many who are “not excited” about putting their shoulder to the wheel because they insist on the presidential candidate to lead, rather than follow, and insist that it be their own flavor before they’ll help. They want to parachute into the CEO position and expect to make change from there. There are too many who want to see it NOW and if they don’t, are willing to walk away to try to teach some lesson. There are too many who will waste enthusiasm by publicly putting down the candidate that for many is the only avatar, and risk driving away votes because they want to voice their discontent that the top candidate is not the perfect one.
I see this on my own social media where friends lament and complain about how bad Harris is, while saying they are going to vote for her “because they have to,” utterly oblivious to the replies they are receiving below that say, “yeah, you’re right, I probably won’t vote at all,” representing the loss of votes due to the perpetuation of this discontent. Sure they will vote for Harris, but they created 10 non-voters, damaging their own goal.
The progressive groups that have made incredible progress never did it by withholding their vote. They never did it by convincing others that the candidate was only 25% of what they wanted. They pushed for enthusiasm and votes for
the movement and knew that each step was not the whole picture.
So, yes, you are down following the DNC, seeing a party that is “caving a little”.
But I see a party that is doing the work to build a foundation that makes it less and less necessary to cave. I see them getting out the votes for people who will help us flip state houses. I see them making people feel good about voting. Not you. But 1000 others who can make a difference in whether we can pass laws that are progressive.
