Lick your wounds and get ready to fight

by | Nov 16, 2016 | Editor's Blog | 9 comments

For Democrats and progressives, this election has been the hardest in our lifetimes. For America, it could be the most damaging. Not only is Trump singularly unqualified and polarizing, most of the country believed we were about to elect the first woman President of the United States. Democrats and progressives are reeling from failed expectations and uncertainty about the future of our country.

That said, we should start to pick ourselves up and start moving again. In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency and brought with him 60 Senators—a filibuster proof majority—and a solid majority in the House. Two years later, his approval ratings were in the tank, the House majority was gone and the Senate was hanging on by a thread. If they overreach, Republicans could easily suffer a similar fate. People voted against the status quo, not for hard right policies.

Trump’s transition is a case in point. He’s bringing a bunch of misanthropes into his administration. Barack Obama offered “Hope and Change.” This crowd offers resentment and change. It won’t wear well for four years.

And all the talk about dismantling Obama’s legacy is overblown. Republicans can try to repeal and replace Obamacare but the most important aspects of health care reform are here to stay. Obama ended pre-existing condition clauses that prevented too many people from acquiring insurance. Today, fewer people are uninsured than at any time in the past 50 years. That was the point of health care reform. Republicans won’t be able to re-instate pre-existing condition and if the take insurance away from the 20 million or so people who have gained it, they’ll face a massive backlash. Premiums might be going up now, but they were going up faster before Obamacare so good luck with reversing that trend.

Already, some Republicans are pushing back against Trump’s suggestion that he’ll repeal Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects immigrants who were brought here as small children and have grown up in the United States. Trump’s also going to meet some harsh realities when he tries to scrap the Iran nuclear deal or pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He’ll learn that we’re part of an international community and other countries expect us to keep our word.

Certainly, progressives are going to have some rough days, weeks, and months in the coming years, but it’s time to figure out how to fight back. Protesting might feel good, but organizing is far more effective. We need to learn how to pick our battles and be an effective opposition party. We need to keep a close eye on the worst of the Trump administration and look to build short-term alliances when necessary to ensure that we protect our liberties and freedom.

So have a Great Thanksgiving. Celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever works for you. But once January gets here, get ready to organize and to fight. It’s not time to give up on our country yet.

9 Comments

  1. Chris Telesca

    We need a permanent ground game. Yet the NCDP is poised to foist on Democrats one of the shortest precinct organization seasons I’ve ever seen. Precincts have an official two-week window from March 1-15 to organize. County Party conventions are scheduled for April 1 or April 8. Under the NCDP Plan of Organization, any precinct that meets and elects officers and delegates up to 14 days before a county convention gets those delegates seated. So in reality, any county that decides to hold a county convention on April 1 can only seat delegates who get elected by March 15. Counties which hold a convention on April 8 have until March 22. Two or three weeks MAX to organize precincts and elect delegates is not enough time after the ass-kicking we took this last general election.

    In 2016, we had precinct meetings scheduled for Feb 27 and March 12, and had two or three weeks more to organize precincts and elect delegates. 2016 was a Presidential election year, but 2017 is even more important than who gets to go to the DNC convention and take selfies with new friends and candidates. But in 2017 we are given half the time to organize precincts than in 2016.

    Contrast that with the scheduled dates of the Congressional District Conventions on May 22 – 6 to 7 weeks after the county conventions. Why on Earth do we need so much time between the county and district conventions? I’ve been a District Secretary and had to gather resolutions from 9 counties and I never needed that much time in between the two conventions.

    It seems to me that conservaDems don’t want to lose control of the county and district officer seats – especially the District Chairs on the State Executive Council. Not giving enough time for precincts to get organized means that a smaller and less diverse group of Democrats will get to vote at the county and district conventions – keeping in place some of the same fools that have lead us down the road to defeat in the last four election cycles (2010-2016).

    A smaller window for precinct organization will also result in the election of the same sort of party insiders elected to the SEC in April 2017 – just like the ones elected in April 2015 who are too busy to show up for SEC meetings, or who leave too early and cause the meeting to lose quorum.

  2. Dorothy Verkerk

    So when are we going to stop writing incredibly well written blogs and comments? Take action. Mr. Mill, can you join The Rev Dr Barber on the front lines of protest and courts? I know what I am doing. Do you?

  3. Jay Ligon

    Processes that have changed the structure of the American economy and our politics for decades reached a final stage on Tuesday with the election of a racist, fascist sexual predator. No good will come of it.

    Debating whether Hillary or Bernie would have been better is a waste of time. Either of them or anyone else would have been better. There were Republican choices who would not have threatened our Constitutional government. However, this ignorant electorate chose a clear and present danger, a faction of our world who want to destroy the United States and to gamble the future on a morally bankrupt would-be despot.

    Fascism is guided by a belief in social Darwinism: the strongest prosper, while the weaker are rooted out. Or in Trump World – winners and losers.

    In practice this means protecting the interests of successful businessmen, and the destruction of trade unions and other organizations of the working class. An important element of fascism is the close, not adversarial, relationship between big business and government. The president-elect’s world is rife with conflicts of interest due to his far-flung business connections including business relations with governments and high-ranking government officials. Republicans are discussing on the public square how the nation can adjust to the vicissitudes of incipient fascism. Trump will never divest himself of the more than 500 ventures he has around the world.

    Fascism need not have a racist component, but in Trump’s case, racial divisions are useful. Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals and Jews provided the Red Hats with a scapegoat, a group to fear and a target for white rage. Racial hatred costs nothing and it motivates some voters. No vision or articulated plans or ideas are necessary when your audience is composed of knuckleheads. They are not interested in ideas and content with hateful chants: “Build that Wall” and “Lock her up.”

    The joy of being able to shout out racial epithets will be the only compensation the trailer park conservatives will see. The truth is that there isn’t much work for poorly educated, hateful racists in a world dominated by sophisticated technology, scientific solutions and competent machinery. There are smart people all over the world, even in third world countries. Being able to blow a hole in another human being is a skill with limited utility in a world connected by fiber optics. It is a skill of last resort.

    The Trump circus at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not the main event. The people want bread and circuses, and Trump will bite the heads off chickens and do crazy things. The networks will be all over it. Because he is an ignoramus about government, he will be the weakest of presidents. He doesn’t know what government does. He apparently learned that there are three branches of government last week, because he moderated his bombastic pronouncements about what he and he alone would do.

    The main events, though, will be taking place in Congress which, because of the unfitness and stupidity of a very weak president, will have its way. The men and women who were bought by multi-national corporations will do the bidding of the billionaires and corporate “people” accompanied by serene elevator music. It will be a complete transformation of our institutions when all is said and done. The corporate overlords got an early Christmas with the election of majorities in both houses of Congress and the election of a racist imbecile to the Presidency. Now that the Evangelicals have given the green light to immorality in every form, the party on K Street will never stop.

    Anyone who speaks of “competition” as a reason for preferring Capitalism should be shot on sight, as a liar and a fraud. Those charlatans would have received an “F” in my intermediate economics class. Capitalism takes many forms including monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition, and, by definition, Monopolies have no competitors. Almost every sector of the U.S. economy has consolidated into very few producers. These massive corporations have an outsized impact on the economy and on our government. Anyone who has observed what happens to small businesses in a town where Walmart sets up shop on the bypass knows that small businesses are no match for big ones. Walmart wipes out downtown. Gone are the furniture stores, the stationary shop, the clothing stores, drug store, the nursery and garden store. The hollowing out of towns and small businesses has been going on for decades. It isn’t just Walmart. The demise of small businesses is on-going.

    The Koch Brothers own more Congressmen than you do. Exxon owns more Senators than you do. Citibank has more influence in Washington than you do. The Fortune 500 calls Congress and someone returns their call. You call and leave a message.

    Little people, liberals, unions, and democrats have fought a strategic retreat against these massive forces for four decades trying to hold back the tide of money and power. We lost. It is not yet done, but it is a fait accompli. Hillary or Bernie would have been able to install some protections with Supreme Court appointments. They might have been able to remove the Republican obstruction to jobs and middle class prosperity. The court will be lost for another generation now. The Congress will never require the multi-nationals to bring back jobs. When the Red Hats stop fondling their guns long enough to see what happened, it will be too late. It’s already too late. We are in Trump’s America now.

    • Norma Munn

      I think you are right. This is not just a change. It is a long range slide into an entirely different form of government. I wonder what the impact of social media will be on this change. My guess is nothing helpful, despite its ability to transmit within hours real news, or to have minority views reach millions quickly. I think it too will fall victim to the control of Trump & Co.
      As for Trump not making the changes he talking about, he does not have to. Ryan is busy doing it, with a little help from McConnell. Ryan is already promising to privatize Medicare along with repealing Obamacare and providing vouchers for those who cannot afford private insurance. Sheer idiocy, but he has the votes. No one except very wealthy people can any longer afford private insurance. That is one topic I know far too much about. I am deeply fearful that my loved ones will be without medical insurance in another couple of years, which in the starkest terms will mean either bankruptcy and/or their early death. For those who think this is a rare situation or it won’t happen, you are wrong, very wrong. People without health insurance regularly receive less than adequate care. And I am not alone. Regardless of Hillary’s so-called shortcomings, health insurance would not have been at risk and we might have seen some improvements in the ACA. As Kay B said above, the ACA can be rendered useless by price gouging, the latter is in the hands of state insurance departments, most of whom are now under the control of the GOP and rarely see a rate increase request they don’t like. So don’t ask me to figure out how to fight back, or organize, etc. etc. for 2018. I am trying to figure out how to my loved ones survive.

  4. Chris Whitaker

    Thomas, we’re going to be looking to people like you to provide leadership in the fight. You have to step up. Get some rest, of course, but we need your leadership and providing it will be just as tough as the campaign was.

    How do we fight back? Where do we put our money? What is happening that we can only know about through someone as engaged as you are? These are questions only you can answer.

  5. Christopher Lizak

    I would say the Election of 2000 was much, much, much harder – since we actually won that election, and Bush only took office by organizing a riot across state lines ( a felony) to stop the recount by any means necessary. That was a coup d’eat. And I mean that very literally. The GOP illegally seized power in 2000, with truly tragic consequences flowing directly from that less than a year later.

    I am not reeling from dashed expectations in any way this time around. No matter who won this election, the American People were clearly going to be the losers. With one candidate ignoring their deeply held fears and concerns, and the other offering snake oil solutions to very real problems, the American People were not going to benefit from anything flowing out of this election cycle. Clinton was as despised as Trump, and would never have been able to get anything through Congress – but she would have had unilateral control of the military to get her wars on. She hardly represented a liberal utopia.

    Don’t get me wrong, Trump, Inc. could very well be the worst thing to happen to America – but we’re not there yet. I don’t think that Trump even knows what he’s going to do yet. He’s been a Democrat most of his life, never a conservative, and always a dishonest huckster shilling inferior products. He’s in uncharted territory with the rest of us.

    Let’s set the record straight and correct a GOP myth that Thomas is perpetuating. The reason the Democrats got clobbered in 2010 was not due to overreach – because the only thing they reached for was Republican-created Romneycare. Democrats were wiped out because they sold out the American people in favor of the campaign contributing 1%, and made no attempt to hold the banks or the politicians (of both parties) responsible for the looting of the American Banking System through their derivatives con job.

    When you promise Hope and Change, people expect you to work for, you know, hope and change. They don’t expect you to lock in the criminal gains of Organized Crime on Wall Street, and side with the banks against the homeowners. That’s same-old-same-old, business as usual, status quo, rich man dances while the poor man pays the band crap.

    Compared to the last 16 years, the election of Trump actually opens up the possibility of real change. Now that’s just a POSSIBILITY, maybe not even a probability.

    I say we follow Bernie’s advice and work with Trump on the things where we agree, and fight him on his bigotry and issues where he supports the right-wing view.

    Cheer up, if gridlock continues, or things don’t get better for average Americans (as under Obama) for any reason – it’s all their fault.

  6. Kay B

    Although the pre-existing clause of the ACA will not be removed, you failed to state that the premiums for those who need it can be raised to such a level that they who cannot afford it!! That’s the way around for the insurance companies. That needed to be stated. Also, what will he attach that clause to if the base or foundation of the ACA is removed?

    • Thomas W Hill

      Thomas, Thank you for having the courage to point out the collapse of our party’s control of the federal government in 2010 following Obama’s failure to deliver on his lofty promises. Most Democrats will not admit this fact, and living in denial prevents us from remedying the problem. Obama cowed to Joe Lieberman (who supported McCain in the 2008 presidential election), Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson on the public option, and we have been paying the price for a flawed ACA ever since. Here is another question — Why is the GOP the only party crying foul over 2016 voting problems? Prior to the election, the party of Republican Wisconsin governor Scott Walker passed laws that would make it much more difficult for 300,000 people to vote, and the voter turnout dropped in that state during a national record turnout. Trump currently leads there by about 20,000 votes. Hillary should be protesting and calling for recounts there, and in Michigan and Florida. We Demos lack a willingness to fight at the gut level.

      • Norma Munn

        Point on voting in Wisconsin well put. I suspect it is also true in other states which used different forms of voter suppression.

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