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Our Turn

All the way through the tape

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, from her Facebook page.

Heather Cox Richardson recounts how when in the 1850s it seemed “elite enslavers had become America’s rulers,” Americans (might we say real Americans?) organized and fought back, ending slavery once and for all:

In less than ten years the country went from a government dominated by a few fabulously wealthy men who rejected the idea that human beings are created equal and who believed they had the right to rule over the masses, to a defense of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and to leaders who called for a new birth of freedom. But Lincoln did not do any of this alone: always, he depended on the votes of ordinary people determined to have a say in the government under which they lived.

In the 1860s the work of those people established freedom and democracy as the bedrock of the United States of America, but the structure itself remained unfinished. In the 1890s and then again in the 1930s, Americans had to fight to preserve democracy against those who would destroy it for their own greed and power. Each time, thanks to ordinary Americans, democracy won.

Now it is our turn.

It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. It could be a long night. Then again, it could be a blowout loss for the orange blow-up doll. Filmmaker Michael Moore predicted a month ago that “Trump is toast.” He still thinks so.

Moore wrote in October:

Right now, if you know how to really read the polls, or if you have access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites, Wall Street, and Members of Congress, then you already know that this election was over weeks ago. 

That feels right. So I’m increasingly annoyed that the press and the Harris campaign are portraying the presidential election as razor thin. They have their reasons. Holding eyeballs, for the former. (For the press, it’s also obeying in advance.) Keeping volunteers juiced and door-knocking, for the latter. It’s as if there’s a giant, um, agreement(?) to hype a photo finish. But a close-race narrative is just what Trump is counting on to give credence to Big Lie 2.0 when he loses. Not helpful.

Be joyful warriors and keep running through the tape, as Coach Walz says. That’s helpful. Run up the score. There’s another once-and-for-all to accomplish. Because our present rhymes with our past, Richardson reminds us:

In our era the same struggle has resurfaced. A small group of leaders has rejected the idea that all people are created equal and seeks to destroy our democracy in order to install themselves into permanent power. 

And just as our forebears did, Americans have reached for whatever tools we have at hand to build new coalitions across the nation to push back. After decades in which ordinary people had come to believe they had little political power, they have mobilized to defend American democracy and—with an electorate that now includes women and Black Americans and Brown Americans—have discovered they are strong. 

Reflecting on the movement built since Trump arrived on scene, Richardson has hope. “[I]t looks to me like the revolution of the 1850s that gave America a new birth of freedom.”

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