Keeping it may require attitude adjustment
Jason Kander in the Kansas City Star:
Democracy is supposed to be dead today.
The authoritarian forces in the Republican Party who brought us the Dobbs Supreme Court decision were well on their way to a red wave large enough to complete their long-pursued American Ragnarök. Poised to sweep state legislatures, secretary of state offices and even the U.S. Senate with wide margins, they’d be in a position to strike a series of fatal blows.
The rest of us would wake up on Nov. 9, 2022, with the same thousand-yard stare we’d worn on Nov. 9, 2016 — except this time it’d be worse, because it would be permanent.
First we’d ask, “What the hell happened?” And then we’d pivot to blaming this unceremonious end of the American experiment on “Democrats” and “bad messaging.” Meanwhile, budding fascists at Turning Point USA would delightfully post memes of us crying, and Mitch McConnell would say something vacuous and faux-inspiring about “freedom” to a thunderous crowd of suits who donated more than I paid for my house in exchange for the Senate majority leader’s cellphone number.
We’d have explanations about voter suppression and gerrymandering and stolen Supreme Court seats, but it wouldn’t matter, because democracy would be dead and buried, replaced by a new system of exponentially increasing single-party control referred to as “democracy,” but only out of tradition — the way North Korea calls itself “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Spoiler alert. That did not happen. Not yet, anyway.
Michael Beschloss tweets, “Paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia 1787, we have the happiness to be shown once again this week that our sacred American democracy is a rising and not a setting sun.”
“The thing about trying to assassinate democracy is that failing has consequences. Once a people realize someone has tried to take away their right to self-determination, they awake from their doldrums …” Kander explains.
Don’t be a buzzkill
Remind everyone you know under 30, under 45, that their votes in 2022 saved the country from American Ragnarök. (Retweet a link, maybe?) The last thing to do is to take what they did for granted. Make a fuss. Younger voters may not have stormed the beaches at Normandy, but their votes helped stem the red tide, even if they did not turn it back entirely. Reinforce that behavior. Scooby snacks. Be liberal with praise, just for once. Even make it a habit.
The bane of progressives is not just “budding fascists” but our own posturing cynicism.
A few sours will complain that younger turnout was not enough here, or there, or as much as it might have been. Glass-half-empty progressive Eeyores’ first reflex is to complain about what the “establishment,” the neoliberals, the centrists, etc., did not deliver, that nothing is better than half a loaf. That’s a buzzkill. Ever notice how few want to join them?
Be winners. Be proud (but not haughty). Be the cool kids people want to hang with. Give voters under 30 and under 45 a reason to want to. We need each other.