We’re Not In Kansas Anymore. Or Iowa Or New Hampshire Or . . .
For the first time in years the Democratic Party has momentum. Its party nominee not only looks like America but represents — as leaders do so much more frequently in other Western Democracies — today, not yesterday. What some argued would be a contentious and maybe impossible path to choose a successor to President Biden has been, instead, a celebration. A grainy farmhouse door opened by Vice President Dorothy into a Technicolor world of possibility.
This world of colors and hope and, from the perspective of the campaign, energy, was apparently always there but kept under wraps by a party intent on looking backwards and patting itself on the back instead of looking forward. The President’s infirmity and increasingly obvious disadvantage in the election finally forced the Party’s hand and the results have turned the contest on its head. Each day that’s passed since Vice President Harris took the reins has not only introduced life and actual joy into the Democratic campaign, it’s amplified by contrast the clownish and mean campaign the GOP has been able to recklessly spew into the airwaves since Donald Trump rode the Trump Tower escalator down, taking the country in that same direction with him.
It’s time to get greedy. Moments like these can’t be manufactured and are rare. The Democrats must lean into this momentum and resist its institutional habit to overthink and exercise the kind of caution that’s allowed the proto-Fascists to thrive and win.
Winning this election is the last remaining hope of saving our country. Even a win comes saddled with GOP threats of a refusal again to accept the results as a best case scenario and civil war as the worst. These are not good people and they’ve been given permission by GOP leadership to act upon their worse impulses, from the bottom to the top. From the bottom could come violence (again) and at the top will come lies, fraud, and undemocratic exercises of power to Make America Great Again, which has always meant Make America White Again.
In her first days as a Presidential candidate so far Kamala (using her first name with all respect and because the one-name-branding is fabulous) has emphasized uniting Democrats to defeat Donald Trump and his off-putting Hillbilly-posing anthropomorphic campaign liability JD Vance. Good. That’s Job One, and it appears to be succeeding. A unified Democratic Party that appeals to all of its proper constituencies and not just “undecided suburban voters” at the expense of the poor, the marginalized, and the victims of the current oligarchic economy, will win. It’s time for Democrats to say the word “poverty” again, among other things, and to embrace a world that can be, not just a slightly-less-Republican one.
There are enough receptive voters and there is enough energy now, to do both the right thing and win the election while doing it. Nearly every one of the Trump Supreme Court’s anti-democratic and theocratic decisions this past term were contrary to the expressed desires of the majority of Americans. This corrupted Court is in the minority. MAGA itself is the minority but has played a better game to this point while the Democratic Party has played scared. It’s winning time, if the Party chooses to make it so.
Finally, time is of the essence. In Oz Dorothy opened the door to the new Technicolor world early in the movie. Here, Kamala’s opened that door but the closing credits are dangerously close to rolling. Unite the Democrats, yes. But she shouldn’t waste a second of the loudly ticking clock to try to “unite the country”. Of course that’s a noble goal and an important one. But first, that’s for later, and it only matters if she wins. Second, it’s going to take time that we don’t currently have. Third, regrettably, there are ideologies and people with whom we should not — ever — unite. How does one unite with a White Supremacist? How does one unite with a man who would jail a woman for having an abortion or her doctor for performing it or her friend for driving her across state lines to have it? How do you suggest uniting with someone whose response to the suffering of the unhoused is to allow them to be shot, or, jailed?
The answer is, one does not. Not now, not here, not this way. Not for votes. That’s for later. And only if we win. Lose and unlike Dorothy this wasn’t a dream at all but only the latest chapter in the nightmare that could end this nation.
