Democrats lost a big chunk of the Blue Wall because they took the states for granted in the aggregate. They did not do so by having policies less advantageous than the Republicans. They did so by allowing Donald Trump to define the policies he purported to support, letting him highlight past Democratic policies anathema to the working class, and by giving him the win in the social media and electronic media domain.
I am on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s mailing lists. I make sure that I am friends with many Trump people on social media platforms to ensure the algorithms include materials from both campaigns in my feed. Hillary Clinton spoke to one’s intellect. Donald Trump addressed one’s animal brain.
To be clear, Hillary Clinton won the election convincingly, currently by more than 2.7 million votes (north of 2%). As such, we should not assume that Donald Trump has some mandate. He won the presidency because of a constitutional aberration intended to ensure a corrupt power structure the ability to override the will of the people. The Bill of Rights protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The electoral college is the Bill of Rights, the constitutional device of the powerful minority to usurp the will of the majority at will.
I bring this up not because of sour grapes but because of the future. The reality is that the plutocracy is just as happy with Trump as it would have been with Hillary Clinton. Given the stock market rise, maybe even more for Trump after realizing he was but a faux populist. A plutocracy does not fear an administration filled with billionaires, generals, and provocateurs. It has all the elements necessary for an oligarchy with their required side of fascism.
Immediately after the election, I read two articles from activists I respect, DailyKos publisher Markos Moulitsas piece “We oppose everything” and Bryan Henry’s article “Explain why Democrats, after eight years, should treat your party any differently than you treated ours.” Both pieces took me aback because I am a firm believer in ‘two wrongs do not make a right’ and that to move forward someone at some time need to turn the other cheek. I came to the realization that Democrats and Progressives turned the cheek at least one time too many.
Going forward requires foremost a robust and forceful opposition at all cost in a strategic manner.
It is imperative that Democrats do absolutely nothing to assist the GOP in implementing their Republican policies. This is a painful conclusion to come to, given that I strongly believe in cooperation between parties and compromising to ensure the well-being of all Americans. We preach that at Coffee Party USA, one of the groups I participate in. So why would I support behavior anathema to that? It is simple: one cannot reward extortion.
It is our duty to fight any substantial changes to domestic policy since most American’s vote dictate that we do so. We must be a visible opposition party. We must be welcoming and become the go-to place for those who realized they’ve erred.
So how do we do that? How do we get away from the platitudes of high-minded words and thoughts and convert those into action? Remember, Trump did just that to win a very slight majority in the areas he needed to do it.
Two-thirds of all Americans and ninety-percent of young people use social media. Campaigns on social media look very different than campaign on the airwaves. And by the way, most Americans do not believe in TV news and newspapers. Investigative reporters at Times wrote well-researched pieces that normally would disqualify anyone running for president. Trump’s narrative online and through the internet was better where it counted.
Starting now, in a decentralized manner, we must flood the internet with the Trump and Republican deception narrative in a way that highlight issues that directly affect those who were hoodwinked by Trump and the Republicans. We must challenge their upcoming Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security narratives with particular stories that directly hit the working class and the have-nots.
If we intend to keep all factions in our coalition, identity politics must remain a part of our campaigns, lest marginalization of some continues. We must ensure that as we address systemic issues like the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, women’s rights, healthcare rights, LGBTQ rights, systemic police brutality, etc., we use the tools to tailor the message. We must tailor that message in a manner that Republicans are unable to make it fodder for their white supremacist allies and many of their paternalistic beliefs. Honesty requires me to point out that this is a problem in the Democratic Party to a lesser extent as well though not codified as it is in the Republican Platform.
Finally, the ground game does not begin during an election. A ground game is ongoing. Grassroots connections require time, familiarity, respect, deliberateness, and consistency. Democrats opened the door for the false narrative that Democrats were not there for the factory worker, for the white working class, and much more. We all know that it is boat anchor of Republican orthodoxy under which we are still living that is the cause of the poor and middle-class ills and angst. The inability to pass legislation to prevent the pilfer by the plutocracy of the middle-class and poor is, in fact, the culprit. We can prove it, and it is measurable.
Donald Trump is providing tremendous opportunities to show that he conned those who placed their faith in him given his cabinet selections. His thin skin including his Twitter feud with some who elected him creates a metastasis of buyers remorse that we must monopolize on immediately.
We attained the effective control of AIDS by attacking the virus from several angles. We must do the same with consistency for the political virus afflicting the American people. We must do it in all fifty states. OurRevolution is organizing throughout the country. It is identifying issues and preparing real grassroots progressives to run for office throughout the country from school boards to State Congresses, to the House of Representatives and the Senate. Every progressive have avenues of participation either by themselves through their social media sphere or integrated into various new and old progressive organizations. Let’s get to work. We can make that Blue Wall the entire country.