Making Waves

2018 is here. This is supposed to be the year of what is being called the Democratic wave election. In November, the story goes, voters will show their displeasure with Donald Trump by electing Democrats in large numbers. The Democrats will take over the House, possibly the Senate as well. They will win in statehouses across the land, both governorships and control of state legislatures. Well, I have news for you. It may happen, and it needs to happen, but it won’t happen for all the wishing in the world. Instead, it will take hard work, money, and some intelligence about what we learned in 2016 and 2017.

I hope everyone learned in 2017 what too many did not know in 2016: the two parties are not even remotely the same, and it matters a great deal which one wins. The most flawed Democrat, and Hillary Clinton may own that distinction, would not have conducted an all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act. She would not have tried to ban immigration from Moslem countries. She would not have pushed for, or signed, a tax package drafted in darkness that is so clearly tilted towards the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. And she would not have done everything in her considerable power to load the judicial branch for a generation to come with judges who are openly hostile to the LGBT community in particular, and to individual rights more generally. She would not have implemented an environmental policy that is hostile to science and scientists. Finally, for now at least, she would have fully staffed the government with people who are genuinely qualified to do their jobs.

Having said all of that, it is still important for the Democrats to do a better job of choosing their candidates. In 2017, we saw in Alabama what can happen when it is done correctly. Doug Jones won in the end because he demonstrated a clear and easily understood difference between himself and his opponent. Black voters in Alabama didn’t show up in record numbers just to keep a pedophile out of the Senate; they voted for a man who persuaded them that he would be their champion in Washington. Jones did not try to win in one the reddest states in the nation by trying to be conservative enough to appeal to independents. He won as a progressive, and an answer to the deeply unpopular policies of the national Republican Party.

I am old enough to remember when the nation was split between conservatives and liberals. Nowadays, however, you hardly ever hear anyone proudly claiming to be a liberal when running for office. That’s because the right wing worked very hard over the course of many years to make “liberal” a poisonous brand. 2018 is the best chance we will ever have to start to do the same to the word “conservative”. To do so, we need candidates like Doug Jones in the reddest states and everywhere else. We need to make the differences between our side and theirs starkly obvious everywhere. We need to let Democrats in the House and Senate know that we support their decision to stand united against anything the Republicans try to do without them. And we need to link the word “conservative” to every policy Donald Trump pushes against the will of the American people.

In terms of policy, we must remember that many Trump voters did not care what his policy prescriptions were; they voted for him to get their revenge on a system that they felt had failed them. It doesn’t matter to a Trump supporter that “this is not normal”; it isn’t supposed to be normal, and the abnormality only proves that they got what they voted for. What does matter is that their healthcare is going to be needlessly more expensive. It matters that their sons and daughters will not have the same protections with Social Security and Medicare that they will have. It matters that corporate tax cuts will be used in part for corporate mergers that will threaten their jobs. Voters in states like Alabama will respond to appeals based on these issues, as long as the candidate pointing them out can make them believe he or she will do better. It will not be enough to point out these issues. The candidate must lay out a credible plan to address them. Bernie Sanders could not explain how he would pay for universal healthcare without hurting the people he wanted to help, and that more than anything else may have cost him the nomination. The negative branding of “liberal” is all about “tax and spend”, and Sanders fell into that trap. It follows that the negative branding of “conservative” will require a thorough debunking of the notion that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy create jobs.

We have our work cut out for us in 2018. We must do what we can to put forth the best candidates everywhere to oppose Trump and the Republicans. But, when the more establishment candidate wins a primary, we must still recognize that we need every Democratic win we can get. Majorities in the House and Senate mean the Democrats get the chairmanships of all committees, and control of investigations. Majorities can also keep noxious bills from going to the floor for votes, and they can keep horrible nominees from being voted on by the full Senate. So even if the Democrat in your state or district wasn’t your first choice, his or her election could empower someone from another part of the country who is more to your liking. For all of these reasons, we can not afford to sit back and watch, and hope for a blue wave. We must make it happen, and we will never have a better chance.

The famous quote that “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” seems apt to me, and here is a song that expresses it on a personal level: