2024: Chaos, or unity?
The chaos part is easy. “2024” means November 5th, and that means fear. Trump. That one word. And we’re all determined to stand against him. All the way. But is that enough? Is that even the right way to look at it? If we attack him relentlessly, then defeat him again the same way we did in 2020 .. by the same margins .. what changes? What will another 51% victory leave in its wake?
The forces that created Trump will still be there. MAGA and its adherents, and the vast money machine that created them, will still exist. So will the deep tribalism they have managed to create. Their ability to take fear and hate and a coordinated campaign of lies, and turn it into a political machine capable of challenging for control of government, that will still be there as well.
And once we’ve defeated Trump permanently .. and losing a second Presidential election will do just that .. what do we do? Once we are no longer united by fear of Trump, what becomes of us? Do we go back to fighting each other, Progressives versus Moderates, elites versus the heartland? Do we go back to pushing this policy and that while regular Democrats, the lifeblood of our party, go back to feeling alienated and demoralized? Fear of Trump has united us. What will unite us once he’s gone?
STIGMA
As Democrats, we have two identities. Our internal identity, the way we see ourselves, is the same one we’ve had for a very long time: a traditional political party, focused intently on winning the next election. We like to view ourselves as enlightened, the good guys, the defenders of democracy, but we spend every ounce of our energy on winning the next election. That makes us a traditional political party.
Our external identity with the American public .. the voting American public .. is the one the Republicans have stuck us with. Forget “baby killers” and the MAGA folks. What counts is that huge swath of Americans who don’t really follow politics .. but decide elections. These are the people the Republicans have gotten to. These are the voters that have come to accept that we’re somehow tainted, some vague amalgam of “Socialist” and “taxaholics” and anti-religion and anti-family .. take your pick. We go crazy over the specifics, the “facts”, but that misses the point. What counts for these people is that, subconsciously, Democrats carry the stigma of “bad”. That’s their gut reaction: Democrats = bad, and they may not even know why. It’s the power of endlessly repeated lies: if there’s smoke, there must be fire.
DEMS 101: the idea spreads!
Delta County (Michigan) Democratic Party will host an evening with Democrats 101 on Wednesday, November 1, 2023. Bryan Watson will be the featured speaker before Democrats from around Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If you'd like more information, please contact the Delta County Democratic Party at deltademsmi@gmail.com.
Memorial day a time to reflect
Memorial Day is a time to reflect, not just about those that have died, but about why.
The original Memorial Day was born out of a terrible inferno that was fought to resolve that other terrible inferno: slavery. Slavery died, but of course it was replaced with Jim Crow, which yielded yet another national struggle, the Civil Rights Movement.
All of this, every bit of every struggle back through our entire history has been part of America’s endless quest to match the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the realities of our lives.
We sit at a fork in the road here in America, a moment as historic as 1860. One path leads forward toward a just society, a time when all Americans share equally in Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity. The other path leads off to division, chaos, and pain.