How Did We Get into this Mess?

1.

Today, I begin my seventy-seventh year on this planet. It has been quite a rough ride.

It is normal for some one in his seventy-seventh year--especially one, like me, with health issues--to think about one's impending obliteration. If this is true--and it certainly is--along with the exigencies of personality and other factors, I can be considered normal--and then some.

Yes, I might not have all that long to live. Yes, I'm getting used to that. Millions of Americans are in similar shoes, some whose soles are worn down a good deal more than mine. You get old and die.  That's nature. It's only natural to experience the 'slings and arrows' of advancing age; get used to it.

I have, or, more precisely, almost have. But one thing I wasn't counting on is the very real possibility that the country of my birth might not even survive my own death. A horrible thought!

Imagine a dialogue between my present self and the self I once was, aged about fifty.

Old man: I hate to tell you this, but in twenty years or so we will have elected a man who will be as qualified to be president as the milk man you remember from your youth. (The guy who used to collect the empty glass bottles and provide new ones filled with a liquid white as a Pepsodent tooth--remember the fifties jingle, "You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!") This president's term will be an unmitigated disaster. His handling of the pandemic (don't ask) alone would be enough to relegate him to join the company of Buchanon and Johnson as the very worst presidents in our country's history--a fact which will be attested by history books long after both of us are gone.

Imagine this president solidly losing an election, but, not only refusing to concede, insisting that he won by a landslide. It turns out that this is not so surprising, since that president is a pathological narcissist, but here's the kicker: his party will largely not contradict him. Republicans and their base will support what will be known as the Big Lie, namely, that he who lost won. Tell a lie insistently enough and it just might become an accepted truth. The author of 1984 knew this; totalitarian regimes then and now make telling Big Lies the cornerstone of their autocratic prisons. 

Before you die, this will not only have happened in Russia, China, Nazi Germany and elsewhere, but will be happening right here in the United States. What does your poor middle-aged self, think of that?

Younger Self: Impossible! This isn't Saudi Arabia. This isn't Pakistan. This isn't Rumania.

Old self: Nevertheless, I really hate to tell you this, but it's true.

We are now at a time when, if Trump or one like him wins in the next presidential election, democracy in this country might very well not survive. (This is not merely the ranting of an obscure old man; the distinguished foreign affairs specialist and academic, Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia, recently has said the same thing.

How did we get into this mess?

2.

If the the hands of the non-Black working class ever joined hands with the Black working class, we would have a different and better country. Such a coming together would strike terror into the hearts of the (mostly) white-skinned bodies whose pockets runneth over with dark money. They have so effectively pitted the two groups against each other, that it seems increasingly unlikely that such a wished for (by me at least) state will come to pass in the near future. Why is that?

Daniel Shor, a well known data analyst believes that the Democratic Party, the only one which could bring all members of the working class together, is, to use Ezra Klein's words, "sleep-walking to disaster."

Many members of the white working-class are angry and grossly misinformed; Democrats still need to reach out to them. There is no other way.

For the  white working-class racial identity nowadays trumps economic self-interest. Non-college educated whites feel that the Democratic Party, which they have traditionally supported, has abandoned them. College-educated elites, the so-called East Coast liberals, according to working-class whites, are more concerned with diversity than they are with traditional working-class values, such as support for unions and many of the items in Biden's Build Back Better proposal.

The Republicans have played the race card brilliantly. They very effectively have burdened the shoulders of liberals with the race issue on one, and its variant, immigration, on the other. They have convinced their base that the Democratic Party is the party for them. This would not be so bad if the Republican base were evenly distributed across America, but it is not. The Electoral College and the fact that underpopulated states, where so many of the white working class reside, elect two senators each, just like the most populous, and mostly blue states. Do we have a functioning democracy when a state like California, with a population close to 40 million, gets the same amount of senators as a state like Wyoming, which has a population of fewer than 600, 000 people? (Thomas Jefferson, what were you thinking?)

The Republicans know they are a minority party and therefore have to cheat to win. They have done an admirably immoral job. While the Democratic base focuses on presidential elections, the Republicans made sure that they got control of governorships and state legislators. The undemocratic nature of this arrangement is evinced by the fact that, even in red states, the Democrats usually receive more than fifty percent of the votes, yet they still lose seats due to the egregious gerrymandering of districts in favor of Republicans. 

The present situation is so bad that, even though two-thirds of the population support abortion on demand, it seems increasingly likely that Roe v. Wade might be overturned, according to the will of the Republican minority.

Each segment of the Democratic Party seems to want justice for itself rather than striving to win. We hear advocacy for reparations, but doesn't one realize that reparations, however justified, would radicalize the opposition? How can one advocate for reparations in a country that doesn't even have universal health service, etc, etc. 

I call the hindrance to the passing of progressive legislation the Tennessee factor. (Lincoln, before the Civil War, wanted to get more Southern votes by appointing Andrew Johnson from Tennessee as the vice president. We all know how that turned out. The racist Johnson looked the other way as Jim Crow conquered the South.)

What I mean by the Tennessee factor is that Democrats must become more practical and concentrate on winning. They should reach out to rural red states with traditional working-class policies and tamp down stress on 'identity politics" for a while. (Note, as a white member of a large brown and black family, I am an ardent supporter of integration. As a means to this goal, I want Democrats to win and win big. I believe this will not be accomplished if Democrats don't take the Tennessee factor into consideration and become more practical.)

These are heady times--if Democrats don't get their act together, the last act will belong to the Republicans. It will end in tragedy.

If Trump or someone like him gets elected, it may well signal the end of our democracy. Democrats, our only hope, please stop squabbling amongst yourselves and concentrate on winning. If you don't, liberty and justice will go down with you.