Increasingly the stars are aligned against Trump. Or to use another time worn expression, the writing is on the wall for 45. I believe it’s a Reuters poll that has 3 per cent of the people believing Trump won the election. 79 per cent don’t. No coup, soft or hard!

Antonio Delgardo, Democrat district 19 NY, which is where I happen to live, won reelection in a closely contested campaign. And it wasn’t because of his political timidity or digital organizing ineptitude that he didn’t register a bigger victory. While he won in the more populous counties, he ran behind in the less populated, rural parts of the district where voters are more prone to be swayed by Trump and right wing media. If he had positioned himself further to the left he could have run the danger of losing. Tacking left no matter what the circumstances can quickly become a fool’s errand and a formula to return to private life, not to mention result in the unnecessary loss of Congressional seats. A mature party and popular coalition should be mindful of that reality.

Biden’s lead in the popular vote and the vote in the battleground states continues to grow, moving from narrow to substantial and historically notable. It makes me think that Democratic Party voters, beginning in South Carolina and then soon thereafter across the South and Midwest picked the best candidate to go up against Trump.

To say, as some on the left do, that organizations of the left nearly singlehandedly dragged Joe Biden and Kamala Harris victoriously across the finish line in the major metropolitan areas of WS, MI, PA. and GA. strikes me as hyperbole. Are we to believe that the public sector unions and Black churches did nothing or next to nothing to inform and activate voters? Are we to believe that the Democratic Party and surrogates like President Obama had no hand in mobilizing voters? Are we to believe that African Americans stood on the sidelines in the run up to his election? Are we to believe that the candidates and their campaign committees, not to mention their paid political advertising on a range of platforms, had no impact on voter mobilization? Finally, are we to believe that the organization and encouragement of early voting by the Democratic Party were of minor significance to Biden’s (and other Democratic) victories in the battleground states?

Unlike four years ago, a number of progressive/left social justice organizations stepped had a considerable hand in organizing voters in this election. That is an important achievement and will position them well going forward. Moreover, to acknowledge and take pride in it completely understandable. But it should be done in such a way that the other organizations, institutions, and people who also had a major hand in the election’s outcome in the battleground states aren’t rendered invisible. It take a village to win an election and it will take the same and more to meet the new challenges in the post-election period.

Or, as Amilcar Cabral, the great African revolutionary,
famously said, “Tell no lies, Claim no easy victories.”

The strategic concept (or political guide) of uniting the left and center is one that I’ve found helpful over the years. But in present circumstances, it can be more trouble than its worth if it takes out of field of vision the progressive-liberal-democratic bloc that inhabits space between the two or collapses this bloc into the center. Think about the massive coalition that defeated Trump and elected Biden. A broad swath of it doesn’t fit comfortably into either category – left or center. What is more, if there is a dominant bloc in the Democratic Party, it is this bloc.