As with many of you, I am struggling to wrap my mind around the proverbial day after the elections. President Trump will drag this country to the mud, destroy all norms and minimize almost all of our key institutions. He will leave no room for civility and negotiation. Nonetheless, the work has to start shifting from election to reflection.
Part of me want my pound of flesh but the reality is that a Biden administration will have to contend with a divided country, a divided congress and a partisan court. The truth is out and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. That said, we will need to coexist with those folks and if history is any guide, our party will turn the other cheek, which will embolden -- some of them, many of them, a lot of them? The answer will be an important marker for how we go forward.
On one hand, there will be a need to moderate the demands of folks like me who want to see the pendulum swing to the left. I am already upset at the compromise that I know the Biden admin will have to make.
On the other hand, we need to bring moderates (I cannot believe I even typed those words 😟) into the fold if we want to win the senate, keep the house and change the courts.
In the meantime, we need to figure out why the % of black men who voted for Trump went from 13% to 18%. and black women doubled from 4% to 8%. I am angry and disappointed but I'd like to understand.
There are issues with other community as well. The percentage of Latinx, Asians and white LGBTQs who voted for Trump increased. Progressives from those communities will have to have their own internal conversations. I know that this kind of cerebral approach is, in part, a weakness for us progressives but the alternative, which is to swim in the pond of anger is not an option.
One thing is clear, those angry red faces carrying tiki torches screaming that they will not be replaced are the same ones who are now banging against the glass at a vote-counting site in Detroit screaming for officials to “Stop the count.”
History has taught us that all empires fall. This may be the case for the American one as well but I hope not, despite America's flaws. There are some fundamental problems with American society, at the center of which are the original sins of slavery and oppression that continue still to this day. We must confront those demons and that work has to start now.
