Come Together, Right Now...

Over democracy...

Getting Democrats, Liberals, and Leftists to agree is like herding cats. Find a candidate that pleases one group, the others will complain. All of them have been known to take their ball and go home if they don’t fall in love with a candidate. As a coalition we vastly outnumber the right, but we aren’t good at keeping the coalition together, even when the alternative is actual Nazis.

The Problems

There are no perfect candidates. Candidates are all, to the best of my knowledge, human. Humans are by their very nature flawed. Even in the rare case where a candidate’s values perfectly alight with some subset of voters, conflicting priorities among voters will guarantee some misalignment of values with one or more groups within any candidate’s constituency. Add to that, every candidate will have made mistakes in their past. Even Mother Teresa turned out to have skeletons in her closet. This is true no matter what party or ideology you align with.

Political parties are run mostly by volunteers. There are no perfect groups of party volunteers. In any group there will be conflict. Inevitably there will be a candidate who gets in their feelings about a primary loss and throws a fit or there will be a clique who is territorial about how things have always been done to the exclusion of new volunteers with new ideas. These particular issues cause many to burn out or become disillusioned with party politics.

The two-party system is a broken one, but it’s the one we have. As many perfectly valid arguments as there are for moving to a multi-party system, the two-party approach is so completely baked into the process of US politics that voting third party, at least at the national level, is throwing your vote away. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is an objective fact.

In the parties there is also the problem of the old guard. People who have been in the party and “paid their dues” and feel the deserve to be elected even if newer party members may be more qualified. The other variant on that are candidates whose own narcissism causes them to throw a fit when the lose a primary. Every election you can find stories of candidates suing the party when they lose a primary, claiming bias or malfeasance. This is not to say there is never bias or malfeasance, but it is often the candidate’s own narcissism. Losing sucks, but those who are unwilling to accept a legitimate loss often sow distrust and chaos in the party.

Finally there is the problem of single issue voters. People who have a key issue that decides who they vote for no matter what else candidates are offering. We see it with issues like abortion access, firearms, and foreign policy. People will vote against their own interests if a candidate panders on whatever single issue they care most about.

The Breakdown

The issues in the last section apply regardless of alignment. Now let’s talk about those of us on the left specifically. The Democrats were running a seasoned statesman who was gaffe prone, had clear flaws, and was in failing health, but he clearly loves his country. Then they replaced him with a powerful woman who was intelligent, driven, and one of the most qualified candidates in recent history. Further, there were excellent Democratic candidates down ballot nationwide.

The GOP was running a functionally illiterate convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who multiple respected generals referred to as a fascist who was unfit for office. I know my last sentence sounds like hyperbole, but every word of it is an objective, provable fact. Then down ballot the GOP ran candidates who fell in line with Trump’s fascist tendencies, following with cult-like religiosity lest they get primaried.

How did the GOP clean up in the last election?

The GOP built up a cult following in the MAGA movement. They used cult tactics to ensure loyalty from their followers. Tactics which include gaslighting, getting people not to believe their own eyes. A solid example is the way MAGA has tried rewriting the history of January 6, 2021. The nation watched live as insurrectionists invaded the Capitol. Even now after many of them were tried and convicted we have MAGA followers who truly believe it was just a peaceful protest. Cult followers showed up en masse on election day as a result.

Try as we might, the Democrats never built momentum. We spent so much time on the back foot, trying to get the truth out over the din of lies thrown at us by the other side. We spent so much time fighting lies about the state of the economy, job numbers, and conspiracy nonsense. When we switched presidential candidates mid-election we lost a lot of ground. Trump had been campaigning effectively from the moment he left office in 2021. Harris had just a couple of months.

Then there was the Gaza problem. A complex issue that has been around for decades gave us a black eye because nuance is nearly impossible to convey in this sound bite driven world. A complex issue we will likely cover in a future article.

The bottom line here is we have a fascist in charge because Democrats who massively outnumber Republicans failed to show up. There are 45.1 million registered Democrats. There are 36 million registered Republicans.

What do we do?

That’s the big question. The answer will first depend on whether we can pull the country back from the grips of fascism and oligarchy. There is a chance that 2024 was the last free election of the great American experiment. It is distinctly possible the next election will be as free and fair as a Russian election. Assuming that is not the case, I have a few ideas.

We must start by turning inward as a party. Stop the infighting. Build coalitions. Find common ground. Our message must unify and promise hope. Fear, preaching, and cajoling have not worked for us. We need to give the people clear, concise answers to their problems. We need to show them how we plan to implement those answers.

Next we must stop letting the right distract us. We need to focus fire on the key issues. No one really believes the US is going to annex Greenland. Canada will not be the next state. No one actually believes there are space lasers starting fires. This nonsense is bait to draw us away from issues that really matter.

Most importantly, we have to stop infighting. We can do that if we stick to simple guidelines that we all can agree on.

1. We don’t sacrifice the human rights of any groups just to win. Intersectional allyship is key. Everyone benefits when society sticks together.

2. Bodily autonomy is a basic human right. That means everyone must have the right to determine what goes on or in their body. Reproductive rights, trans rights, and gender affirming care for any who seek it are central to this.

3. Trickle-down only benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. A strong nation requires a strong middle-class. We do that by ensuring every job, no matter how menial, must pay a living wage. The middle class was strongest when the minimum wage was sufficient to maintain a reasonable quality of life including housing, food, health care, and the ability to have a life outside of work. We must get there again.

4. We must hold politicians and judges to account. The SCOTUS is apparently for sale due to a lack of enforceable ethics rules. Justices Thomas and Alito have been openly accepting bribes for years. It’s a documented fact. Yet we can do nothing because our founding fathers never considered corruption at the level of the SCOTUS. Congress has the same problem, enriching themselves on the stock market using insider information to do it.

5. We must make individual votes count. We must end the Electoral College. We must make every single vote matter. The voices of the liberals in rural areas and the voices of conservatives in cities are both silenced by the Electoral College.

6. We must put aside our differences within the party. No candidate will be perfect. You are picking a politician, not a spouse. Find the one who comes closest to your values. You don’t fix a system by sitting out elections.

7. Finally, we must come together as a party understanding that we will have differences but without unity, the other side wins. Once a candidate is selected, we back the candidate. We don’t pitch a fit because our favorite didn’t win. Neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was my dream candidate, but I’d have voted for a slab of ham if that is who the Democrats ran because the alternative was the madness we ended up with.

I know, these are all lofty goals. They seem unattainable. They are, unless we pull together. Volunteer with your local Democratic Party. Sign up for platform and rules committees. Tell your friends. The party is run by the people. If it isn’t representing you, sign up and push to move it that way. Want a party that prioritizes your key issue? Get it into the party platform. Find common ground and build coalition.

Or we can just cede the country to the GOP and watch as our rights are abolished and our friends and families suffer. The choice is yours.