How it all plays out

David Rosenberg
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

If you’re like me and many of my friends and colleagues, you’re wondering how this godforsaken, god-awful Presidency ultimately plays out.

Ignoring wishes for impeachment or resignation — certainly possible — here’s how I think it goes down.

Start here: this president isn’t actually FOR anything. He’s against Obamacare. Against transgender people serving in the military. Against Muslims or Mexicans coming to America to seek better opportunities for themselves and their children. Against science. (How can you be AGAINST SCIENCE?) Against Hillary Clinton’s — and lots of others’ — mere existence on earth.

This is true for most GOP leaders too, unfortunately — so at least they got what they deserved.

The only people in this administration who are really doing anything are the ones UNDOING great things that President Obama did. See: Sessions, Jeff; Zinke, Ryan. Like her or not, poor Betsy DeVos is trying to DO something at the Department of Education— but it’s not happening.

Considering the guy is best known for ditching his wives, firing people on TV and cutting people down at all hours of the day, no one should be surprised. But ultimately if you’re not FOR anything — and this goes for the entire GOP— then you’ve got no platform to run on again.

Which means that unless these guys suddenly decide to be FOR something and then actually implement it, one of two things is going to happen.

Option 1: In an effort to scare enough Americans into voting to re-elect, and with a vacuum of compelling ideas and vision for what we CAN do and CAN be, this team conjures up ever scarier bogeymen. Because if you’re not FOR anything, then your only play is to rachet up the intensity of what you are rallying people AGAINST.

If you thought the last campaign was demagogic, buckle your seat belt. It turns out it’s way easier to win election by being against everything than to get RE-elected — that requires not just stoking hatred, but actively mobilizing people to act on it. Check your history books — this is scary shit.

Which brings us to Option 2: Someone, somewhere comes out FOR a vision and set of policies that offer Americans a compelling alternative to fear, anxiety and saying no, no, no to anything that reeks of progressiveness — as in, making progress by building something better. Being against the guy who is against everything isn’t enough. In a battle of two people who are against stuff, the one who is better at it — which is the one who was authentically against everything in the first place — wins.

Democrats are now giving this a whirl. Unfortunately, serving up a heaping plateful of technocratic, re-warmed Clinton-era policies — and I say this as a person who worked for and was unabashedly pro-Clinton in the 1990s — ain’t gonna cut it.

But a compelling — dare I say exciting, or even inspiring — vision that gives people something to be FOR can have the same effect on haters, including the Hater-in-Chief, as water had on the Wicked Witch of the West.

So begins our quest for the person or people who will step up with a vision and policies FOR what a positive American future could be. Will it be Kirsten Gillibrand? Seth Moulton? Kamala Harris? Ben Sasse? Katherine Clark? A slew of Congressional and gubernatorial challengers in 2018? Someone/s completely outside the formal political system?

Whoever it is — the music needs to echo Presidents Clinton and Obama, each of whom helped enough of us find authentic hope and faith in the future. But the lyrics — the policies, the path — those have to change, because we have changed, and the context has changed. Bigly.

So that’s how it all plays out — an ever-descending spiral of hatred, unwinding and destruction, or a bold, new, compelling, century-shaping vision with accompanying visionary leadership. One option sucks. The quest is on.

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