We Are So Close . . .

“The darkest hour is just before dawn.” — Old folk saying

For months our sensationalist media have fed us a steady diet of doom. The party in power inevitably loses control of Congress in midterm elections, they say. So the Dems are doomed to legislative irrelevancy. The Demagogue could make a resurgence and become our first emperor. American democracy is on the ropes. Breathe your last few breaths of freedom; then steel yourself for George Orwell’s world, or at best for more stagnation.

But the past is prelude, not destiny. Things become inevitable only if we let them. We Americans have proved that point repeatedly. We did so in 1776, in our Civil War, in the two world wars (whose outcome depended greatly on us), and in the Cold War, not to mention the Great Depression and the Crash of 2008. Doom depends on what we do—or, more directly, on what we don’t do. And poll after polls shows that a clear majority of Americans wants things to be different.

The future holds great promise for true Americans, especially progressive ones. The spiderweb of lies around the January 6 Insurrection and the Demagogue’s last lunge for power is breaking up under winds of scrutiny. Women are coming to understand their status as the first big group of Americans ever to have basic rights taken away. The summer has only just begun, with its inevitable deadly hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and tornadoes. So global warming and its many disasters will be top of mind. And monstrous acts of war and genocide have shown beyond doubt who is the Vladimir that our Demagogue so adored.

But the biggest reason for hope is simple arithmetic. No one should be surprised that a nation based in part on slavery, with a Constitution set up to preserve it, is not an ideal democracy. Yet notwithstanding our dismal history, the political math is changing as rapidly as our demographics. If the Democrats can hold the House and pick up just two Senate seats, making Manchin and Sinema irrelevant, all things become possible.

The first act will be to kill the filibuster stone cold dead, restoring majority rule to the United States Congress. Then we can: (1) make abortion legal by statute, at least before late term; (2) pass national requirements for voter registration, voting by mail, early voting (including on Sundays), and drop-boxes in all elections for federal offices; (3) guarantee rights of privacy by federal statute, including the rights of gays to marry nationwide; (4) heavily subsidize solar and wind energy and smart grids to put the US in the lead of energy conversion globally; (5) subsidize vital industries like semiconductors and electric cars to maintain our technological lead; (6) get the big tech giants under antitrust control, just as Congress did the railroads and oil giants in the last century; and (7) make a flying leap at racial, gender and social equity in education, housing, and home ownership.

We can even beef up equal employment rights for women with legislation. With the filibuster gone and clear Democratic majorities in both Houses, we can enjoy a progressive legislative cycle to match or surpass FDR’s first 100 days. We can revive America and make it work for all Americans. And we can do so in months, not years.

How can we work this “miracle”? Do we have to convince all the Demagogue’s cult that they’ve been duped? Do we have to get lifelong Republicans to vote Democratic? Do we have, in short, to turn long-established political wisdom on its head?

No, no and no! All we have to do is get all eligible Democratic and progressive-leaning voters out to vote as if their futures depended on it, which they do.

Turnovers in midterm elections have been reliable for a simple reason. Our nation has been politically divided for two generations. The party that loses the presidency does its level best to make sure that the party that wins accomplishes little or nothing in Congress, at least not right away. The filibuster, which appears nowhere in our Constitution, makes this easy.

Republicans raised this strategy to a high art under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Remember when Mitch McConnell, following the blowhard Rush Limbaugh, declared as a goal, just days after Barack Obama’s first inauguration, making him fail?

So what happens then? The rank-and-file voters of the party in the White House get dispirited. Nothing they were promised seems to be happening. The party out of power demonizes them and their goals and distorts their attempts at legislation. (Remember the “death panels” that Obamacare was supposed to bring?) It gets its voters out by making them fear what will happen if the other party can actually do anything. Dispirited, the power-party’s voters stay home in droves in the midterms, and the out-of-power party’s voters come out in fear, at least in greater numbers.

That’s the reason for the consistent “midterm turnover” for about two generations. It really is that simple.

So what’s the solution? It’s what got Obama elected, twice, as the first Black president ever. It’s a little thing called “hope.”

In the case of this fall’s midterms, it’ll be hope mixed with fear. Women know their long-held rights have been cut off. Voters of color see little progress in equality of voting. So they fear the future. But they also know, or should know, that things will get a lot better if Joe Biden gets a compliant Congress with no filibuster. Then their hopes can be realized, perhaps beyond their wildest dreams.

So, despite all the problems of our democracy—and they are many!—it really is up to us, Democrats and progressives. Poll after poll and census after census show that we can win if we turn out.

So we have to turn out. We have to vote (and register, if we haven’t already). We have to get our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, friends and coworkers out to vote. We have to persuade, nag, and harry them until they do so, because their and our own futures depend on it.

This is the wisdom of Stacey Abrams. This is why she will be the next governor of Georgia.

We don’t have to change minds. We don’t have to “recruit” or “convince” the other side. We don’t have to make a splash by wasting billions on TV and Internet ads. All we have to do is get our own side out in numbers and beat down the nonsense that voting is useless, that all pols are the same, or that nothing ever changes. (Not voting is a sure way to make sure that nothing ever will change!)

If we can do just that, the numbers say that we will win. We can kill the filibuster, establish majority rule and do all the things that we know the majority wants but that the oligarchs and demagogues and their lackeys have been willfully blocking.

All we have to do, in short, is keep the faith and keep hope alive. Each of us must spend a few hours registering and voting when it counts. Then we wait for the results. We are America, at least the majority, as poll after poll has shown on abortion, voting rights, gun control, energy conversion, marriage equality, women’s rights—you name it. Now we must act the part by voting.

Endnote on the presidency. As for the presidency, it’s impossible to predict two years out. But this column by Jennifer Rubin reports facts and figures showing that, if Joe Biden were to face the Demagogue again right now, Joe would win again. And distaste for the Demagogue and his lies and crimes will only increase with time, as more evidence becomes public and federal and state prosecutions begin.

So think about that. If the Demagogue runs, he will likely lose, if only because of general disgust and our nation having moved on. If someone else runs (DeSantis, Hawley, Cruz?) he will be largely unknown to the nation, perhaps much hated outside his own state, and unpopular among the class of Republicans who will go to their graves thinking the Demagogue wuz robbed. It’s not easy to imagine a better situation for whoever runs as a Dem.


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