Time to Step up to the Plate

It is easy to be a member of a minority party.  All you have to do is throw mud.  You can channel Senator Mitch McConnell and, in essence, announce that you’re going to oppose everything the President does so your own party can take over the Presidency (even if it means hurting the country in the short run).   Hell, you can even channel Groucho Marx as Quincy Adams Wagstaff and say, “I don’t care what they have to say.  It makes no difference anyway.  Whatever it is, I’m against it!”

It worked for the Republicans in 2010.  It worked for the Democrats in 2018. 

But this is 2019.  It won’t work nearly so well for anybody now, because each side has some power and will be held accountable for how it wields it.  Accountability is critical to the functioning of society, both in the political and the business context.  Unfortunately, with accountability comes pressure, tough decisions and, yes, the risk of demonstrable failure.

This afternoon, the world will watch as President Donald Trump tries to hold the Democrats accountable.  His team has leaked that he will make a proposal to end the Government shutdown that will not remove funding for his cherished Wall/Barrier but will include other concessions to the Democrats.  His goal, presumably, is to include enough concessions so as to cause the nation’s attention to shift to the House Democrats.  Are they willing to find a reasonable way to end this national stalemate for the good of the country?  Or are they simply playing the role of Professor Wagstaff?  To date, nobody has been holding the Democrats accountable for this shutdown.  And why would you, given the famous meeting among Pelosi, Schumer and Trump in which the President announced that “I’ll take it.  Yes, if we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call — I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government. I will take the mantle.”   Today, the President’s job is to pass that mantle – or at least be perceived that way.

So let’s say he succeeds and sweetens the pot sufficiently to make the Democrats look bad if they don’t enter into negotiations to end the Shutdown without jettisoning the Wall.  And let’s say the Dems bite the bullet, fund the Wall, and re-open the government.  We would finally see something we haven’t seen in the past two years – vocal divisions within that party.  Some people might fear that development. Personally, I’d welcome it.  You see, I feel a desperate need to have the Democratic Party consciously redefine itself, even if it means tightening up the breadth of its coalition. 

The last time the Party of the Donkey redefined itself was in 1992, when the Governor of Arkansas and a Senator from Tennessee convinced the membership that they had moved too far to the left to be electable and needed to chart a “Third Way” between the path of the “old” Democrats and the majority (Republican) party.  That resulted in eight years of Clinton Gore Triangulation, followed by eight more years of Republican Rule, followed by an Obama Administration that campaigned on something as nebulous as “hope and change” and never really could define what it was about (other than saving the economy from collapse and implementing Romneycare), followed by two more years of Republican Rule. As for the Party of FDR, Truman and LBJ, we haven’t seen them in power for so long that if we attempted a New Deal or a Great Society today, it would probably be viewed as an act of socialism rather than a Democratic Party initiative.  To me, that must change.  A conscious re-definition is called for.  That starts with the willingness to tackle tough decisions and not shy away from public disagreements in doing so.  The Democrats might even lose a few points in the polls as such a family feud plays out in the press, but they also might just gain a soul in the process.  Do you have the guts to do that, my fellow Democrats?

On a local level, we’re seeing this kind of internal battle play out within my own community – the non-Orthodox Jewish community of Washington, D.C.  The vast majority of us are progressive Democrats.  But we’re totally split on the issue of whether to attend the Women’s March, which will be happening at the same time that President Trump makes his announcement.

In what can only be described as an “unforced error,” Tamika Mallory, one of the leaders of the Women’s March, turns out to be a big fan of Louis Farrakhan, the celebrated Jew-hater.  For reasons known only to God and Satan, Mallory won’t renounce Farrakhan’s hateful words, and to some degree appears to have endorsed them.   Now I think it’s safe to say that nobody in my local Jewish community sympathizes with Farrakhan or even Mallory.  The question is whether her conduct, and the lack of a stronger rebuke by the other leaders of the march, warrants a decision to avoid the march altogether.  Area rabbis are giving speeches or writing letters to their congregations, weighing in on one side or the other.   

Personally, I’m in the “Hell no, I won’t go,” camp.  But I have no inclination to bore you with the details of my reasoning.  What’s most important to me is not whether to attend the march, but how we can best build a center-left movement that will effectively meet the needs of our society and our planet.  It starts with the courage to frame the issues publicly, even if it means we air our disagreements.  It includes a deep desire to identify leaders who have distinguished themselves based on the righteousness of their values, rather than simply their opportunism and ambition.  And it involves the willingness to engage in civil, respectful dialogue whenever you disagree with members of the coalition. 

Now, in including that last sentence, I am aware that I violated that principle in the way that I discussed Farrakhan and Mallory.  I did so consciously to make a point.  It is vital that the members of this movement I’m discussing figure out just how big a tent it wants to create.  Should it include people like Farrakhan who have done plenty of good things for lower-income communities but who also have outed themselves as rank anti-Semites?  (I say no.)  Should it include people who strongly disagree with the progressives on hot-button issues like abortion rights but who nevertheless side with them on most other issues and support the Democratic Party?  (I say yes.)  Again, however, the important thing to me is not where we as individuals fall on these specific questions.  It’s that we embrace this kind of conscious, soul-searching process so that the movement we create is built carefully and wisely. 

In short, this is a crucial time in our history.  You can see that every time you turn on the news.  Clearly, the party in power is failing us.  Our challenge is how to replace it – and if we want to do this well, this will require soul-searching, courage, and some growing pains.  Are you ready to do your part?  Stay informed and stay active.  Please.