Someone called me a moderate recently. Ouch! In reply I wrote that I was a realistic radical and highly recommend such a posture. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes as a political and tactical posture no matter what the circumstances may feel righteous and heady, but it can just as easily turn into fool’s gold.
This is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote in the fall of 2016:
To understand the recent surge of the politics of hate we have to look beyond its loudest and most odious amplifier – Donald Trump. Where do we turn? It may seem counter-intuitive, but the beginnings of an answer lie with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the political dynamics that followed.
The election of an African American president was rich in symbolic (as well as political) meaning. For African Americans, election night was an occasion of enormous joy. Tears mingled with happiness and pride as millions of Black people watched the newly elected president and his family walk onto the stage at Grant Park in Chicago. A barrier, seemingly insurmountable, had been surmounted. A long stride down Freedom Road had been taken. It was a landmark event, a sea change in U.S. politics.
But among white Americans, the reaction wasn’t as uniformly positive. Certainly millions felt profoundly happy and expressed as much in Grant Park and across the country. In electing a Black president, they believed the country had taken a significant step to measure up to its highest ideals, even if much more still had to be done to make the union a more perfect and equal one.
But many other white people considered the election of an African American to the presidency to be a traumatic and wrenching experience. Their world was turned upside down. The election signified for them a new stage in the retreat and decline of a seemingly natural – even ordained – racial and social order in which African Americans were locked into an inferior and subordinate status on the basis of skin color in every area of life, while white people, also because of their skin color, were accorded a position of racial superiority and advantage.
While these differing reactions to Obama’s victory initially went largely unnoticed in the widespread exhilaration of the moment, it soon became clear that the election of an African American to the presidency not only generated great enthusiasm across a diverse populace, but also triggered a spike in racial anxieties, resentments, and rage among a section – millions in fact – of white people.
Moreover, this spike intermingled to one degree or another with a whole panoply of toxic ideological notions – sexism and misogyny, nativism, homophobia, xenophobia, and fear of creeping collectivism – all of which were fueled further by a global economy collapsing and tumbling out of control at the time.
A charged atmosphere
In this charged atmosphere, right-wing extremists, ranging from media flame-throwers like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly, to Fox News and Republican Party leaders such as Senator Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, to right-wing think tanks and political action committees, had a field day. This rogues’s gallery, with the lavish support of a group of multi-millionaires and billionaires, like the Koch brothers, egged on, gave voice to, and provided the talking points for this disaffected and angry grouping of white people.
“By any means necessary” became its organizing principle, “Take Back America” its battle cry, and raw and unapologetic racist rhetoric its calling card. The new president was labeled a usurper, an alien, un-American, someone to be brought down “ASAP.”
What followed was the birther movement, assassination threats against President Obama, and legislative obstruction and gridlock, including a Republican-engineered shutdown of the federal government that could be described without exaggeration as a “U.S. style” coup d’état attempt. The war on women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and labor scaled up along with police violence against young African American men. Social media exploded with vile racist rhetoric and images, while the racist fringe and neo-Nazi groups used the moment to come out of the shadows. Finally, on the wave of this racist resentment against the new president, the Tea Party was born, Republicans won back control of the House in 2010 and the Senate two years later, and a majority of state governments fell into right-wing Republican hands.
Earlier episodes in our history
At first glance it may seem like a paradox that this right-wing, racist surge erupted on the heels of Obama’s historic victory. But on deeper inspection, it could have been predicted. Earlier episodes in our history – the Civil War, Reconstruction, the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s – show us that sections of white ruling elites and their supporters were thrown into disarray by the undoing of their power, prerogatives, and mode of wealth accumulation.
But after the initial shock, they regrouped and strenuously resisted new anti-racist and other democratic realities. In fact, they doubled down and went on the offensive to restore their political, economic, and cultural dominance and overturn the newly won gains of the African American people and their democratic-minded allies.
In each instance, the preferred weapons of these elite-led coalitions of racist revenge included the reconquering of legislative and administrative positions in government and the systematic use of force – official and unofficial – to strike terror in the hearts of African Americans and their supporters, along with the re-invigoration and adaptation of racist ideology to new conditions.
In short, history never repeats itself exactly, but echoes and similarities from its past episodes can be found in the present moment.
It is against this background that the meteoric rise of Trump is best understood. He is as much a creature as a creator of this new discourse of hate, division, and violence that first surged in the wake of Obama’s election eight years ago. He didn’t create the wave; others did. But he is riding, extending, and orchestrating it now.
This doesn’t make him any less dangerous. In fact, what distinguishes Trump from his mates in elite political circles on the right are four things. First, he, much like those demonstrators against the president in 2008, makes no attempt to conceal his hateful invective; it is unapologetic, in-your-face, raw, and unadorned. He says publicly what the rest of the Republican right in high places say only in coded language.
Second, his behavior is reckless and unpredictable; he isn’t a team player, which causes much consternation among high ranking Republicans and their well-heeled financial supporters.
Third, Trump is a clever demagogue. No one else on the right is able to exploit as adroitly as he does the profound shifts at the political, economic, and cultural level that have caused an upheaval in the lives and thinking of a lot of Americans – not to mention shine an unfavorable light on the failure of both parties to adequately address this mounting turbulence of everyday life accompanying these shifts.
Finally, Trump possesses a “strong man” authoritarian streak, the likes of which we haven’t seen in American politics. (If he would lock up Hillary Clinton, imagine who else this bully would lock up.)
As for his mass constituency, it has some new wrinkles, new faces, but it is largely composed of Tea Party insurgents who angrily attacked President Obama and others going further back who provided the sweated labor for the rise of right-wing extremism (and the reactionary political and economic elites that organize and orchestrate its every move) to an ascendant position in U.S. politics over the past 35 years.
This merger of reckless and bullying demagogue with unruly and violence-prone supporters, it barely needs to be said, constitutes a new and unprecedented danger to the country’s future. It doesn’t necessarily mean that fascism is stage right and about to make its entrance if Trump is elected; in fact, fascism isn’t the preferred or easily executed option of the top circles of the right.
But what could be in our future were Trump to be elected is a form of authoritarian, relentlessly anti-democratic rule that would drastically roll back political, economic, and social rights; impose a harsh austerity regime; ratchet up the politics and ideologies of hate, division, and inequality; forestall any action on climate change; crush efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system and rein in the police; and reassert the use of U.S. power here and around the world.
Despite her slip in recent polls, I still support Elizabeth Warren for president. She has, I believe, a unique combination of qualities, all of which were on display in the Nevada debate earlier this week and likely rebooted her campaign. Among them are an empathetic and expressive heart, intelligence, the gift of storytelling, bold ideas that reach beyond the prevailing wisdom, and a modest background. More than anyone else in the field, she has a conversational and analytical ability to organically center and interconnect race, gender, sexuality and class within a wider narrative.
She also possesses feminist sensibilities and the makings of a soaring eloquence, which our great presidents — Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Obama — had in buckets. Each used this gift in their own time to inspire tens of millions burdened by the weight of their circumstances and searching desperately for a road to a better future. Finally, she has a leg up over her rivals — and this is crucial — in her ability to unite the Democratic Party and the larger electorate of independents, moderates, liberals, progressives, and the left nationally and across the Midwest.
I like Bernie. A lot in fact. And in the debate this week he acquitted himself, as he consistently does, quite well. He more than anyone else has moved the Democratic Party and the national conversation in a progressive direction, while lending an incisive voice to working class issues and activating an impressive and powerful movement of supporters. Young people, in the first place, feel a kinship to his policies, honesty, and authenticity. In their world, he tells it like it is. He gives them hope that their present won’t be their future. Is it any wonder why they so enthusiastically identify with his campaign? He also has popularized and put flesh to the bone of democratic socialism, while rightly distancing himself from socialism’s very flawed 20th century iteration. And, right now, he is the clear front runner in the contest to win the Democratic Party nomination.
But, to be candid, as much as I like Bernie’s message, and doggedness over a lifetime, I worry that he is unelectable, that he has a ceiling that will leave him short election night, if not in the popular vote, then in the electoral college against the most dangerous demagogue in the country’s history. Bernie’s political pedigree and some of his positions, I fear, can be easily and negatively caricatured by Trump and his far-flung propaganda machine and enough of them will stick to allow Trump to land once again back in the White House and then at ramped up speed further eviscerate democracy and consolidate his version of right-wing, white nationalist rule long into the future.
Rumor has it that Trump and his team would like to run against Bernie. And their reasoning is clear enough: Trump believes Bernie can be easily slimed and turned into something he isn’t and, in effect, made unpalatable to many independents, moderate voters, regular Democrats, and women in the suburbs. Indeed, if Bernie is the nominee, the American people will be inundated by a sustained and savage avalanche of fear-mongering, lies, distortions, and red-baiting the likes of which we haven’t seen since the early days of the Cold War when Communists were turned into an “enemy within.” And, I’m not confident that enough American people will resist this onslaught.
Furthermore, Bernie’s path to victory in November rests on particular constituencies, including young people, new voters, people of color, and high school educated white workers, turning out in record numbers. That may well happen, but I don’t believe anyone can answer that question with any authority.
Of course, Warren will be slimed too, if she ends up the nominee, and much the same way that Bernie would even though she isn’t a socialist. What is more she will face the extra hurdles that sexism puts in her way. But, by the same token, she can more easily deflect this slime as well as reach out to social constituencies that aren’t so keen on Bernie. Then there’s her appeal to women, who are an increasingly powerful voting constituency that could make the difference as they did in the midterm elections two years ago.
Young and disaffected voters would be disappointed if Bernie doesn’t win the nomination, But Warren more than anyone else in the field could, albeit with Bernie’s help, earn their respect and maximize their turnout. She also can enthuse other parts of the democratic base. None of the moderates in the race have this potential. Said differently, Warren, and only Warren, has what it takes to bring together a multi-racial coalition of activists and voters on the scale necessary to beat Trump. It will look like the Obama elections coalitions of 2008 and 2012, but hopefully be broader and deeper.
That’s my take on what I know is a contentious issue. Bernie’s supporters will surely differ. They will argue that I underestimate the shift in popular thinking regarding socialism, the popularity of his positions, and the breadth and depth of his support, including from some of Trump’s working-class supporters in the battleground states.
But I’m not convinced that the possibility of realigning politics in general and class politics in particular pivots on Sanders’ election and the greatest danger is to fritter it away. A Warren presidency, even though she doesn’t have Bernie’s socialist pedigree and long history in class politics, does have other qualities and experience that will make her a great president, coalition builder, and change maker. And, more to the point, her chances of winning in November are better than Bernie’s. And nothing matters more than that.
Bernie is neither a New Deal Democrat nor a full blooded socialist. If elected he would, provided the Congress is willing, make the country more just, egalitarian and fair. Unlike Trump he wouldn’t lay waste to our democracy, constitution, institutions, and rule of law. In fact, he would defend and breathes life into them. While I favor Elizabeth Warren in part because I find her more electable than Bernie, I would gladly support and canvass here and in some of the battleground states if Bernie is the nominee.
Declaring “War” on the Democratic Party Establishment is strategically misguided. It may feel good, but it’s akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Come fall, if Bernie wins the nomination, he will need the help of the Democratic Party Establishment, party regulars, and leaders, like the Obamas, in states like PA, OH, MI, WI, IA, Fl, and NC, not to mention across the country. The overarching (strategic) task is to beat Trump in November, but a badly fractured Democratic Party will erase that possibility. And the same advice would apply to the DNC and moderate Democratic Party leaders as well.
By the way, if Bernie has a substantial lead in the delegate count in June, and it looks like he will, he will be the nominee. Only if it is close will the selection process be contested. And that’s understandable, not a conspiracy.
