The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime
One of my earliest memories is of swimming in the waters of Grenada, the country of my father’s birth. I was just four years old, but that memory runs deep. Another one of my earliest memories came a few months later when President Ronald Reagan explained on national television why he was invading Grenada. It was a strange and unsettling experience, not just for four-year-old me, but for my family. Living in a country that was invading another country, one that my father called home. Hearing arguably the most powerful man in the world suggest this tiny island country — a place of unique personal safety and kinship — was a threat to me and my neighbors.
So I got an early and personal lesson: who is president matters.
Of course, that was not the unanimous view in many organizing and social movement circles, especially the ones I entered as a young man. Some very principled and thoughtful people active in social movements were skeptical that liberation could come from electoral politics. There were vigorous debates over whether electoral politics was actually a distraction from building long-term power that could reshape our society.
For me — and for a lot of other folks — the 2016 elections answered that question decisively. All people of conscience must be involved. We must organize. Because absenteeism is also a political decision, and it has just as many consequences. We can’t escape the impact of elections so we at the very least need a theory about how we engage with them.
This could be the most important election of our lifetime. White supremacists, corporations, and unapologetic misogynists have captured the White House. Two years into the Trump Administration, corporate greed has sucked trillions away from ordinary people and redistributed it to the very top. Violence against Black, Native, Latinx people and other People of Color is not only continuing, but it is also escalating. The planet is melting, burning, flooding.
This government is locking children in cages at the border and in our cities. Almost five years after uprisings in Baltimore, Charlotte, and Ferguson we’re still getting murdered and harassed by police. Reproductive rights are under attack. We are hurtling towards another endless war in the Middle East. And the powers that be seem happy about all of it.
I don’t need to tell you how urgent it is to defeat Trump. Or how much we need a mass electoral movement that can deliver change on the scale of the crises we face.
Fortunately, we can do both. In fact, I firmly believe the best way to beat Donald Trump in 2020 is to nominate someone with a bold transformative vision of real and sustained justice. One where everyone can thrive and seek happiness and pleasure in this life, no matter what you look like, where you were born, who you love, or how much money is in your pocket. And if we can win the presidential election on the basis of such a bold vision, we will move that much closer to winning the world we deserve.
Some people disagree. Some people think that all we need to do is go back to the world just before Trump. That is, the world that delivered us Trump. There are people who think the way to defeat Trump is with corporate-friendly centrism. Coincidentally, some of those people have the biggest media platforms. We know that Wall Street and corporate lobbyists are already picking their favorites. If we the people don’t speak up or organize ourselves, they’ll pick the nominee for us.
So here’s the bottom line: the Working Families Party is preparing to weigh in on the Democratic primary. In the coming months, we’re going to hold an endorsement process, where every single person that is part of the WFP will determine the outcome.
We are modeling the type of democracy as a party we believe we all deserve. And if you want to get involved and help us make this monumental choice, sign up here.
A few weeks ago, we sent out a questionnaire to the candidates, asking them to lay out their visions and their plans. Now, we’re narrowing the field of more than two-dozen candidates down to six.
Their names are: Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
We’re going to have a chance to ask all those candidates questions, and to debate and deliberate among ourselves as a party over the next months in a way that, whatever the outcome, we can be proud of our party for engaging in meaningful debate, principled struggle, and not shying away from making a call when our people are demanding we do.
If we do this right, I believe the 2020 election will one day be seen as a turning point in history. Not because the Democrats toss Trump and McConnell into the dustbin of history and win state-level elections by the barrelful, though we have to do that.
But more than that, it’s because 2020 could mark the beginning of a durable realignment in US politics, — where one day we’ll look back and say “that was the beginning of the end of the Republican Party”. “That was when racist appeals finally stopped winning elections.” “That was when we began to see our differences and still reach across them.” “That was when we realized that we have just but one planet and we are just but one people.” “That was when we began to live up to the true promise of a democracy that has NEVER yet been fulfilled.” “That was when we began to replace the society we were born into, with one that we can be truly proud to have created for the next generation, rooted in love and kindness and solidarity and dignity and even sanctity for all people.”
That’s the goal. Not to win an election, but to build a society that works for many and not the privileged few. And to build the multiracial base of everyday people to do it. I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and begin that work with Working Families Party members across the country.
Maurice Mitchell is the national director of the Working Families Party.
