Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that Democrats won lots of seats and offices on Tuesday. I won't go so far as to claim that Democratic victories in New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, and elsewhere proves that the authoritarians do not have elections sewn up so tight with their anti-democratic restrictions and gerrymandering. Or that this means Russia has stopped monkeying with our elections. Or that republican ratfckers were unable to hack the system and rig the totals. For all we know this is part of the traitors' plan, letting the marlin run a bit before yanking it back in during the midterms. But now that the voters in those states have hired Democrats to run their governments it will be more difficult for the authoritarians to manipulate them. The coming months will be an interesting test case as to whether Democrats can actually make anything out of their wins.
Let's be honest, for the next generation at least, we will be digging out of the hole that the republicans dug and then pushed us into. The last three Democratic presidents were nothing but caretakers of tradition, attempting to hold up the banner of good government and trying to clean up the mess left behind by their republican predecessors. Jimmy Carter had to whether the storm of distrust in government left be Watergate and Nixon's crimes. Bill Clinton seemed like a new beginning as he was the first president elected after the Cold War supposedly ended, but he had to deal with the incredible abuses of power by the Reagan/Bush regime and by corporate America's smash and grab job done to the average citizen. In retrospect the Clinton administration, with its deal-making and appeasement of republican monsters and the monied elite didn't actually do that well. The go-go Nineties left out enough people that the professional ratfckers in the "conservative" movement were able get away with incredible cruelty while cheered on by the re-programmable meatbags who are just too fucking stupid to realize how much they were played for suckers. The republican party, reformed into a vicious machine loyal only to itself and the right-wing billionaires they work for, has no interest in what's best for America. They are the definition of Niebuhr's children of darkness, for they recognize no law that is not in their self-interest and the rest of us be damned.
After the lying and thievery was propelled to new heights along with the national debt during the George W. Bush years, with anyone who stood up for the constitution being attacked as disloyal traitors, you would think the next turn at bat would have found Democrats finally willing to lead with their chins and unilaterally disarm. But then Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the table when people mobilized enough to finally push Democrats into the majority and Democrats did nothing to counteract the brazen sedition and vandalism of the public sphere by right wing media and elected officials. Dubya left office, the only good thing he ever did, and left the country in ruins. Did republicans show any remorse for what they did? Of course not, they committed to obstructing Barack Obama's agenda at all costs. An agenda which basically consisted of cleaning up the mess their guy left and trying to help all the people who got run over by authoritarian cruelty and corporate abuse.
Was Tuesday the turning point? Where the people finally wake up that republicans are ruining their lives and they have to get involved, stay involved, and show up to vote each and every time? If we the people push enough Democrats into office, even if they won't fight for us, at least the bleeding could finally slow. It has to be us, the average citizens, who educate and help each other to push back. Authoritarianism and right wing extremism will never go away, even at the accelerated rate that boomer republicans are dying off, American citizens who believe in democracy and the rule of law have to show up and keep pushing it back into the shadows. If Tuesday was the turning point, I will be the first one to cheer and congratulate all of the hard-working volunteers who put in the time and effort to get republicans out of office. But what if it was just a psyche-out? If the authoritarian elite just let this one slip by so they can dash our hopes in the mid term elections with all of their voter suppression, gerrymandering, and gobs of money? Similarly, what if activists rest on their laurels and decide the average voters are stirred up enough to keep going? Or if those voters figure it's in the bag and they can stay home, "somebody else will take care of it."
Hillary Clinton's administration was supposed to be the one that finally allowed Democrats to stop being janitors and start making progress. It would have been the first time a Democratic administration succeeded another one since before the Civil War. We would finally see if all those horrible things Thomas Frank said about Democrats in Listen, Liberal were really true or if they would have the courage and confidence to tackle the big problems. The basic objective that Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. set out over seventy years ago still holds, liberalism must become and maintain itself as a "fighting faith". If we the voters show up and push Democrats to embrace that faith, find their backbones and challenge the right wing myth of submission, then it will be clean up crews no more. Eat my dust you authoritarian vandals!
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