The New York’s Times published an article on Friday that provides extraordinarily important insight into our current politics. It’s a must-read and you can read it here:
The Decline of Ohio and the Rise of J. D. Vance
This article explains, better than most political pundits and analyses have, what effect Trump has had and why, as I said in my last post, we cannot simply reject Trumpism, but must learn from it. Trump and people like Vance are giving the economically eviscerated and socially denigrated working class a new hope, which has been more than 40 years in coming. And this is definitely winning hearts and minds.
Trump and progeny are speaking a kind of truth to powerlessness, deprivation, lack of dignity, and desperation. They are speaking truth to the broken dreams of a new American underclass that has been abused and neglected for a generation, and which understands that it has been sacrificed to the globalist aspirations and priorities of privileged elites in both parties and globally.
And while Democrats somehow think we have been about championing the working class and downtrodden all along, we most certainly have not. While the Republicans, with the election of Reagan, set the wheels in motion and led the wholesale evisceration of America’s working and middle classes, we Democrats hopped right on board this locomotive when it became clear that it was a gravy train.
The proof is not just the decline of Ohio, but of Iowa, and Arkansas, and Wisconsin, and South Carolina, and so many other states and localities, where we now find masses of people proudly and loudly wearing their passionate, elated, defiant, and militant dedication to Trump and Trumpism on their proverbial sleeves.
The lesson here, one that we need to learn yesterday, is that not just Democrats, but all people of conscience, must be champions for all of our people. And more than that, knowing that we have (at best) neglected them, we need to be their best and most dependable fellow citizens, allies, friends, and neighbors. We should have been all along; and because we haven’t been, demagogues are now their champions and they are now aligned and have assembled into a formidable new force in American life.
Further, we have not simply failed to step up and align with the downtrodden ourselves, but also mock and denigrate them. As a result we, are“The Establishment.” We in the privileged upper middle class are as much the enemy as our American oligarchs. There is an enormous mountain to climb to both open our hearts to — and to win back the hearts and minds of — so many millions of people in the heartland of America and elsewhere.
And while we continue to denigrate Trump as simply a self-centered, obnoxious, and corrupt buffoon, what does it say about the rest of us that it isthis pathetic man who has brought the first real possibility of renewal and hope in more than a generation to tens of millions of our fellow downtrodden citizens.
There has to be some reckoning here and it has to start with ourselves and with how we have brought this political and societal crisis upon ourselves. We have done so by for so long and so cavalierly disregarding the wellbeing of vast numbers of our fellow citizens. Perhaps, consumed as we may have been with harvesting the benefits of birth and station and the benefits of privilege, we simply did not notice. But we all have to be very clear that this is on all of us.
And this reckoning means that we can’t simply put the onus on Joe Biden and Democratic leaders to make this right. The onus is on every one of us. We have, first and foremost, to demand of ourselves and of our families and communities that we tend better to the promises of our opportunity society. We all have to be better: better citizens and better neighbors.
And then we have to provide better leadership, fellowship, mentorship, and better solutions than the bigotry and thuggery that the Trumps, DeSantis’s, Abbotts, and Vances of our nation, are offering. We all know and have good experience in civic engagement, building comity, creating supportive social networks, giving a hand-up, competing constructively, sharing in benefits and achievements. We need to start sharing and employing these far more widely. And we need to do it now.
And we do need to get Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to pivot, and to pivot hard, to this challenge. Joe Biden should have said in his state of the Union something to the effect of:
“Look, I want to address myself directly to my fellow citizens out there, especially those who have felt left behind, underserved, and undervalued in recent times. I’m here to say that I understand that we Democrats share the blame for neglecting you — in the heartland and elsewhere — our hard working people. Over the last few decades we have not prioritized your concerns and your wellbeing as we should have, as we took on out-competing the rest of the world, as commerce became globalized. I get that and I take personal responsibility and responsibility on behalf of our party.
“And I’m here to say that that changes right here and right now. I pledge here and now to devote the rest of my presidency to making you and your concerns THE priority. As we do this, together we will lift the entire nation to greater heights of accomplishment and prosperity . . . “
But Joe Biden didn’t say this. Whatever he said, it was not meaningful or memorable to the people who most needed to hear from him that things were going to change dramatically for their benefit.
As of this moment, we are in increasingly desperate political straights — far more desperate than most people realize. Trump and progeny are promoting particularly dangerous ways forward for the disaffected — in alignment with similar movements developing throughout the world. Masses of people disadvantaged by globalization are now being exploited by authoritarians everywhere and are drawing strength from one another, if not making common cause.
We are in danger of losing the Congress in November, and perhaps the presidency in 2024. And if this happens, we will likely then also face enormous losses worldwide in the fight for democracy and against autocracy. Given the many challenges we face to the health and wellbeing of people and our climate, this is terrible to contemplate and a horrible price to play for not doing the obvious thing needed in this moment: employing our extraordinary economic and technological prowess and our enormous national democratic heritage to the wellbeing or people and planet.
If some form of traditional, running-roughshod tribalism is the only real alternative that tens of millions of disaffected people are offered — to having them and their children left with the shit-end of the stick in life — then they will take it. In their place, I suspect almost all of us would.
Our job, because this is the job for which this country was founded, and the job to which pretty much anyone reading this newsletter and their social networks are pledged, is to be and to help provide the most hopeful and life-affirming alternatives. We need to be present in the work of being good, inclusive citizens, including by taking personal responsibility for social policies and community action on behalf of the downtrodden, and by upholding and promoting — for all — the values of liberty, equality, and justice.
These are huge, world-historical, commitments and huge jobs. But we are in a time of huge challenges and we have the skills and resources to take them on. Not just our country, but our world and our future, depends upon all of us stepping-up big with an unshakeable resolve to do whatever it takes to ensure dignity and opportunity are “mainstreamed” in our nation and to get the job of protecting and expanding democracy done.
Trumping Trumpism
Lots of interesting insights and ideas! I think my thoughts and questions are split into two main categories: policy and messaging. On the policy side, I think highlighting that there are significant problems that have arisen in the past forty years is critical. And I think that it's really insightful that there is a policy agenda in Trumpism and that it's worth genuinely understanding why that policy agenda is important and worth potentially taking on board. You've convinced me that figuring out meaningful policy options that help people who have been hurt by globalization and wage inequality should be a major priority. My sense is that the Biden administration has tried to include solutions to some of these issues in some of the big bills that they have passed or have tried to pass, but I would be interested in hearing your evaluation of whether it is being prioritized at all on the policy side. As a non-expert, globalization feels so massive and inevitable to me, so figuring out how to undo some of it is hard for me to get my mind around, but I think there are natural alignments between the democratic agenda - local manufacturing with ethical, domestic labor laws, new green infrastructure, etc. - so I'm excited to learn more about policy approaches we could take on. I would love to learn more about effective policy solutions that could make a difference to help with quality of life for the working class in general and for rural Americans specifically - could you maybe make another post on that? Are there policies or approaches that have worked on a local scale anywhere that we could learn from? On to messaging. First, I'm interested in the idea of starting with an apology. I like it in a lot of ways, but I also think that it could be tricky to pull off. It could be brushed off as not real, could be leveraged by Republicans to claim this is all our fault, and / or could come across as pitying, which the NYT article highlights as a problematic lens. So I'm open to it (you've written it very well) and generally interested in thinking about having our language center people who have been hurt by globalization, but interested in your thoughts specifically about the pros and cons of leading with an apology. Also, in terms of general strategy for winning elections, I'm interpreting you to be arguing for trying to bring in people who are currently Trump supporters to join the Democratic Party. I am curious about your thoughts on that strategy versus leveraging and rallying the Democratic base. There are a lot of Republicans, but there are also a lot of Democrats. And a lot of Democrats who don't vote. Particularly in light of some of the social policies that the Republicans are pushing, like abortion bans, it feels strategically fruitful in the short term to energize the left to win elections, rather than trying to win over the right. Thoughts? Would we ideally do both, or is it worth reorienting ourselves to prioritize trying to win over Trump supporters even if it takes a long time to fully take hold, in the hopes that it's a better long term strategy?