And shake off the helpless feeling
Fear may be the mind killer but powerlessness immobilizes. Dahlia Lithwick this morning laments that during the pandemic she held herself together by thinking things could not possibly get worse. Then they did.
The assaults on Roe, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, plus mass shootings and the Republicans’ collective shrug left her feeling near-hopeless (Slate):
As Amanda Marcotte noted last week, once a majority of any population has fundamentally given up on politics, on institutions, on voting and education and protest, you’re in pretty good shape to be rolled by the next wave of Trumpism.
“You may support abortion rights and gun safety laws, but why give over a beautiful Saturday morning to a protest when you believe it will not move the needle? It’s not “selfish” to want to use your free time enjoying your life instead, not when you are starting to believe that political action is a flat-out waste of time,” as she so aptly put it.
Nurturing powerlessness keeps Russians in line.
Nothing fuels that feeling more than the aftermath of another mass shooting, Marcotte continues, “Demoralized is right where Republicans want Americans to be.” Disempower the people, empower the oligarchs.
So why get up every morning and do this? Lithwick offers one answer:
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Surrendering to helplessness is to let the bastards win. And you can’t win if you don’t show up to play. Sometimes in politics you get run over. But not staying down is how you keep from feeling like roadkill. It’s something.
“[Y]ou can’t make an election into a referendum on an issue if you can’t point to anything winning the election would accomplish,” Josh Marshall writes this morning. Be specific. He offers one idea for how Democrats might win this fall. One. Make protecting Roe the centerpiece of the fall campaigns (New York Times):
Here’s one way to do that: get clear public commitments from every Senate Democrat (and candidate for Senate) not only to vote for the Roe bill in January 2023 but also to change the filibuster rules to ensure that a majority vote would actually pass the bill and send it to the White House for the president’s signature.
It won’t work with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but that’s not the point. Identifying the other holdouts is one way to pressure them to get on board. A single focused message could make Manchin and Sinema irrelevant anyway: “Give us the House and two more senators, and we will make Roe law in January 2023.”
No ambiguity, no haggling, no living in Senator Manchin’s head for a year. You give us this, and we’ll give you that. That tells voters exactly what will be delivered with a Democratic win. It also defines what constitutes a win: control of the House and two more Senate seats.
The campaign message is clear: If you want to protect Roe, give us those majorities. If this is your passion, here’s where to channel that passion. These are the Senate seats we need to hold (in New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada) and here are the ones we need to win (in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and possibly in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina). With those commitments in hand, one question should be on the lips of every Democratic candidate. Will you make a firm commitment to never vote for a federal law banning abortion nationwide?
The last is about turning up the heat on Republicans who will not dare make that commitment. Elections involve drawing contrasts. Do it in black Sharpie.
Effective campaigns are built on connecting the intense beliefs of the electorate — their hopes and fears — directly to the hard mechanics of political power. You’ve got to connect those wires. If you were testing some new electrical contraption, that’s the first thing you’d do: make sure the energy supply is wired to the engine that makes it run. This is no different. Without tying a specific electoral result to a clear commitment to a specific legislative action after the elections, you’re not connecting those wires.
Democracy is in peril. No question. But with Americans numbed by the politics of division, asking Democrats and independents to get off their couches to fight for an abstraction may be asking too much.
Sure, conservatives come out to vote for “freedom,” but like states’ rights that’s long been a dog whistle for keeping Those People in their places. They fought a war to preserve that situation (and lost). “The House and two more senators” unlocks more than defense of Roe. Focus half the poulation’s attention on that rather than the usual checklist of policy proposals.
“We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future” before resisting, Lithwick reminds readers. Marshall reminds them that they cannot rely on Democratic leaders to unify around defense of Roe. “You don’t need to wait on Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or President Biden. You can get the ball rolling by calling up your Democratic senator today.”
For those of you lucky enough to have one.
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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com.