Skip to main content

Democrats: Don’t Sleep Through Another Wake-Up Call

I’ve been saying for four years that the next presidential election was decided on the day after the last one.

We’ll see if I’m right. I’m terrified of being wrong.

Trump’s election was a smack upside the head for Democrats of all shapes and sizes. Since then, his flamboyant vandalism of what was once a pretty good nation makes them crazy. Myself included.

Trump Derangement Syndrome may be a Fox News trope, but to me — and most of my fellow Democrats — it’s agonizingly real. A fetid stench that won’t go away.

The morning after that election might’ve been the biggest WTF moment in American history. A wake-up call as stunning as any in our lifetimes, including 9/11.

It was the day all those people who “don’t get into politics” suddenly realized they were into politics, whether they liked it or not.

It was the day all those people who habitually stay home on election day — because after all “What difference does it make?” — found out what difference it makes.

It was the day all those people who were sure Hillary was going to win anyway discovered that they should have voted anyway.

It was the day a lot of those “independents” — another word for not paying attention — realized that voting for a third party was as stupid as voting for Trump.

What most of these people had in common is that they were Democrats — by nature, if not by registered affiliation. They were decent people who assumed that other decent people would do the right thing, so they wouldn’t have to. They had presentations to prepare, kids to pick up, appointments to keep, and the lines at the polls were at least half an hour. Besides, Trump couldn’t possibly win, so what’s the big deal?

This is how Democrats shoot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly. They mean to show up at the polls, then they don’t. And every time they don’t, it gives Republicans another opening to undermine the country.

Because Republicans always show up. Every election, even in the off years. They know they’re in the minority, so their propaganda is first-rate — if breathtakingly dishonest — and their get-out-the-vote organizers are ruthlessly efficient. It’s one reason for their success — along with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and methodical corruption. Which makes it all that much easier for them when Democrats don’t turn out.

Yes, it’s infuriating to know there are so many deplorables out there happy to trash their own interests to vote for a sociopath. But it’s just as infuriating to know there was so much willful apathy among people who should have known better.

We failed to take our civic responsibility seriously. Then, when we looked around for a government to help us through a deadly pandemic, there was no government to be found.

We let our guard down. We let really bad people sneak in under the radar, spend billions of dollars over several decades, and win power in every branch, and at every level, of government. While many of us saw them coming, and plenty tried to sound the alarm, ultimately we were blasé about it. We underestimated them, and they took over.

Shame on us. We took our democracy for granted, and now we’re paying dearly, both in livelihoods and lives.

And we’ve come to an inflection point. Another wake-up call is looming, and we dare not sleep through it. Because it’s not just the presidency and the Senate that needs to be taken.

Almost lost in the craziness of this election is that this is also a census year. That means 2021 is the year state legislatures get to draw up new voting districts — a once-in-ten-years opportunity to gerrymander your state and rig the whole system in favor of your party. And if your state legislature is Republican, like it was last time this happened, your local Democrats may never win another election. As Democrats, do we ever think about this stuff? Republicans always do.

But the remedy is simple, if not inevitable. When Democrats come to the polls, Democrats win. The numbers are there. The sympathies are there. The only thing that’s ever missing is the turnout.

Still, the 2018 mid-terms were encouraging. Democrats turned out in overwhelming numbers, and I’m quite sure those included damn near everyone who ever gave a lame excuse for not voting.

So are we pissed off enough? Is our complacency behind us? I hope so, because we can’t afford to get this wrong.


Berkley MI

09/08/20

Comments

  1. Andrea BuchmanSeptember 8, 2020 at 1:07 PM

    And let's not forget about the Supreme Court . . .

    ReplyDelete
  2. juddlesSeptember 8, 2020 at 2:52 PM

    Convincing prospective voters to show up at the polls is most crucial in your adopted state of all places.

    Don't let those Wolverines make the same mistake this year as they made in 2016.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Left JabberSeptember 8, 2020 at 4:32 PM

      True, but they showed up in splendid numbers in 2018. And the primary turnout, right at the start of the pandemic, was impressive.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dobbs is Just the Bludgeon We’ve Been Looking For

I recently had occasion to engage in a brief political discussion with a bright and well-spoken woman in her mid-twenties. She was clearly perturbed at what she considered the failure of Democrats to push through the progressive agenda she and her generation have long been promised. I felt her pain, knowing how hard the next twenty or thirty years will be for her age group, not just in this country, but planetwide. She will surely be a witness to spontaneous atrocities, environmental calamities, and a competition for dwindling resources that will reduce many of her fellow humans to savagery. At the same time, I was embarrassed — as I often am — that I’m passing along to her a nation in far worse shape than it was when I found it. Even so, I felt she was being a bit hard on the Democrats in power, most of whom have, more or less, behaved admirably in pursuing basically the same agenda as hers, even as they remain shackled to a constitutional system on the very c
3 comments
Read more

Putin’s Information Bubble Springs a Leak

The cat is out of the bag. The Russian citizenry can now be quite sure there’s a real war on, with real people dying. Something about a 300,000-man military draft — more likely a million — serves to focus the mind. It was only a matter of time before even the most brainwashed of parents would figure out that their sons were highly likely to be blown to pieces sometime soon. Who would have thought Putin’s hermetically-sealed information bubble would be pierced, not by liberals or intellectuals or human rights activists, but by the militant right? I suppose it does make a certain weird sense. The left has either fled the country, gone to jail, or — in most cases — opted to shut up and lay low for a decade or so. So it’s the far right that, curiously, is giving Putin the most heartburn. Specifically, it’s the ultra-militarist bloggers on Telegram — boasting millions of followers — who are reporting from the front lines of the war. And they’re telling it like it
Post a Comment
Read more

They’re Using ‘Trump’ and ‘Espionage’ in the Same Sentence

It isn’t every day that a former president gets investigated for espionage. One more first for Donald Trump. Yes, we’ve all been titillated by every sordid new development in the ongoing saga of the Mar-a-Lago files. But the big question, at least for me, remains: What was he thinking? Why would he take state secrets out of the White House, knowing full well it’s a felony? Not that he’s a stranger to felonies, but still. The press has focused mainly on the make-believe theories thrown up by the wingnut right to explain away the obvious. But I’ve not seen much on the espionage angle itself. Which is strange. Because the very word ‘espionage’ puts an unmistakably sinister spin on Trump’s motives. It’s not a word that either CIA or DOJ throws around a lot. But it’s a word both are using. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Trump it’s that life is about transactions, about trading favors. He is, by nature, a quid in search of the perfect pro quo. So while we don’t know how s
Post a Comment
Read more