A Moment in Time

Let me begin by joining a national chorus in expressing my sadness over the passage of an American hero.  I took the opportunity last year to pay tribute to John McCain.    (http://empathicrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-tribute-to-soldier.html)   I would add only one obvious point -- that the Senate should re-name the Russell Office Building after him.  That’s the least this country can do for the man.

Today, while so many of us are thinking about the American political arena and one of its true lions, allow me to point out just how critical a moment in time we are facing.  On the surface, America exemplifies one-party rule.  The GOP controls the White House, both Houses of the U.S. Congress, and the vast majority of Governors mansions.  Their nominees are also on the verge of taking control over the Supreme Court.  But if we look deeper, we can see that the “majority party” is, in fact, anything but.   Just consider that according to the Wash. Post-ABC News Poll released today, 78 percent of Republicans, but only 36 percent of the American public, approves of the President’s performance.  That’s not exactly seeing eye-to-eye with the majority.  Consider also that of all ethnic groups, only the Anglo-Saxons seem to be primarily Republican.  In fact, a recent University of Virginia Center for Politics report indicated that in party registration states, 12 million more people are registered as Democrats than as Republicans; percentage wise, that’s an advantage of 40-29, with Independents representing another 28%.  With the passage of time, the GOP number is likely only to drop further based on current ethnic trends.  Truly, the GOP is a minority party that has all the power.  If you think that is a stable situation, you must not think this is much of a democracy.

In light of the above, it is not surprising that the GOP captivates our interest. While the Democrats keep winning battles, the Republicans keeps winning wars.  They are a fascinating success story, and this story now has a face: the party’s leader and the nation’s President, Donald Trump.  Nobody can watch cable news for two minutes without hearing about him -- his tweets, his lawyers, his children, his wife, his girlfriends, his trade policies, his views on football....  The news has become all-Trump, all-the-time, for if we’re not talking about him, we’re talking about how other politicians react to him.  Our interest in Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell or, for that matter, Mitt Romney, is dominated by what they are, and are not, saying about Trump.   In fact, you would forgive him for uttering the words “L’etat c’est moi.”  Those words pretty much ring true.  And because of Trump’s association with the GOP, his party is understandably at the center of our thoughts.  To the extent the Democratic Party exists, most of us see it merely as a place to register disapproval for the President and the GOP, rather than something of intrinsic interest.

Not me, though.  I find the Democratic Party right now far more interesting than the GOP, or even the President.  What is going on right now among Democratic voters and leaders (in that order) may help determine American policy for decades.  I’ll grant you that those decades may not begin for another several years, but the Democratic storm is coming.  Need I remind you that the number of “minority” children will exceed the number of non-Hispanic white children by the end of next year, that America will be majority-“minority” in no more than 25-30 years, and that the so-called “white” demographic includes groups like Jewish-Americans who vote primarily Democratic.  The GOP is definitely playing with house money.  The only questions are, when will their luck run out?  And at such a time that the Democrats will get their shot to rule the roost, what kind of party will they be?  The party of the Clintons, Barack Obama and Joe Biden?  Or the party of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez?

I don’t know.  But I do know a few places to look for bellwethers.   And perhaps the best of all is the upcoming Governor’s race in Florida.  There, we will see a fight in the nation’s largest swing state between a Bernie guy and a Trump guy.  If the Trump guy wins, moderate Democrats can point to this race for years as proof of why the Sanders/Warren wing of the party can win only in deep blue places like Vermont and Massachusetts (or in a few large coastal cities) and should never represent the party on the national ticket.  That was clearly the conventional wisdom among so many people I knew who back in 2016 claimed to prefer Bernie to Hillary personally, but voted for Hillary because she was “electable” whereas Bernie wasn’t.  (Sorry.  I’m still laughing.  Give me a moment please.)

By contrast, if the Bernie guy – aka Andrew Gillum – wins, now that would be a story.  Gillum was supposed to get trounced in the Democratic primary.  He was going against a number of far-better funded candidates, including a former Congresswoman who was the daughter of a former U.S. Senator and Governor from Florida, and who had developed her own reputation for being a liberal, bipartisan, pro-Israel voice.   She was, in short, the poifect candidate to represent a center-left Democratic Party in the fall.  And yet Gillum is the one who will be taking on the pro-Trump Republican candidate in a huge state that Trump won in 2016. 

Gillum’s nomination was, by all accounts, a shock to political junkies and Floridians.  But a victory for Gillum in the fall would be the shock felt around the nation.  It would mean that the centrists can no longer question the viability of the “Medicare for all” set.   Or that if you rail against economic inequality and don’t worship at the altar of corporate fundraising, people will have to argue against you on substance and not on electability.  It would also mean that Democrats would have free reign to focus once again on poverty and the poor, and not merely on the “middle class.”  And it would allow us to contemplate a Presidential ticket composed of statesmen who are readily distinguishable from Republicans as soon as they open their mouths.  Imagine a Democratic Party that didn’t come across as Republican-lite? 

People say that I’m a dreamer.  But I’m not the only one.  Perhaps one day you’ll join us.  But first – pay attention to Florida in November.