I share in ko’s enthusiasm when we read the polls and hear reports of Trump cratering. I am not one of those progressives that tells themselves to “Act like you’re 10 points down!” when my candidate is 10 points up. Despite the fact the Trump paid off a porn star, is a literal national security threat because he owes millions of dollars, and is responsible for internment camps and separating parents from their children, Donald Trump was competitive until COVID struck. It is a sad testament to America that it took that much pain and suffering to get Americans to break Trump’s spell on their minds, but here we are.
My mind now turns to the future. Barret will be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Pointing out hypocrisy is moot against a group of people who don’t even believe in the concept of morality. Republicans will line up and install another Trump judge. The Republicans will stall on more stimulus. They’ve already got their base to hate the idea of bailing out Americans, and they can play to the free market crowd that this should all “just be allowed to play out.”
What I’m wondering is how our side will deal with the next two years. That’s all we have. Our side is notorious for not showing up during mid term elections. Biden’s coalition will have a lot of center right people, and they are only here because they hate Trump and their hatred broke through the programming that tells them to hate Democrats. I think slick Republicans that sound centrist enough will be their natural roosting place once Trump is gone. The Republicans can easily take back the Senate in 2022 and undo some of the damage in the House. Furthermore, with the Federal judiciary and the Supreme Court under Republican control, you can say good bye to many progressive achievements. Gorsuch and the gang have an agenda, and it doesn’t involve fixing climate change or restarting the American economy. It involves shrinking government with a smile.
Will the Democrats in the Senate have the balls to do the things that will help them stay in power while simultaneously dealing with the damage of the Trump regime? It’s going to take a massive effort to de-Trumpify the government. Trump has installed corporate insiders and lackeys into the bureaucracy. What’s worse, he’s shown that agencies, like the CDC, that we need to trust in times of emergency, are pliable to political interference. How can we get the bureaucracy back on track, with better talent, and more independent moving forward? What should we get rid of and what should we add?
What I’m hoping is that a Biden administration is unapologetic.
- Congress should add 4 Supreme Court Justices.
- We should go through the long and arduous task of adding a constitutional amendment to limit the number of judges to 13. Why the number of judges wasn’t explicit in the first place is beyond me, but that’s another rant. I’m not into the idea of term limits because I do like the idea of knowledge of the law accumulating.
- Washington D.C. should be granted statehood and someone with a fine pencil can be sure the constitutional boundary is observed.
- The federal judiciary should be expanded with judges put in place around the country.
- Puerto Rico should be given the option of statehood.
- We need to take the regional compacts that formed during the COVID crisis and make advisory panels from people in those regions to handle issues within those regions. I felt good that Governor Whitmer, Tony Evars, and Mike DeWine coordinated their COVID response. These compacts can be formed with states that have an economic link with one another, which will also make it easier to govern the country as a whole.
- These economic zones, in conjunction with the federal government, can set up UBI as a means of getting the country out of its morass and as a means of support moving forward as automation takes hold.
- Which leads me to my next idea: Focus on what’s local. Many progressives won their elections in the house because they focused just on their district. I’d love it if there was a Dem structure that drilled all the way down to water commissioner. We need our people in all layers of government. We are too focused on the top. We did that with Obama. Look at the burning remnants of the Democratic Party that resulted.
- By doing this I think we can combat the deep rooted cynicism that has infected the American voter. No one expects their representative to be honest. People are deeply cynical, but they need something forward thinking to remove them from their morass.
- We need a constitutional amendment for basic voting rights. We should not be allowing governors of states to randomly change how people vote a few weeks before the election.
- DREAMERs need to be given citizenship.
- America should take a break from the foreign policy its been pursuing for the last 50 years. Let’s rethink the war in Afghanistan, which still rages on, as well as our expansive presence in Western Africa and the Middle East. Can’t someone else shoulder this burden while we work on ourselves?
Sure, Republicans will scream, but the Left needs to scream louder. We lose too much ground each cycle to their siren song. We keep thinking common sense will win out, but as we can see from all the anti-mask idiocy, that is not always true. We need Biden to use his powers of empathy to get the average suburbanite to know that he is on their side. We need this coalition to understand that they have to show up during the mid terms. I don’t know what the 2020 equivalent of a fire side chat is, but I feel like we’ll gain power only because of the monstrous incompetence of our opponent, not because the polity wants us to rule. We need to take the opportunity to do something big. When we wake up Tuesday, Nov. 8th, will we see the QAnon Tea Party waving triumphantly from the House, or will we have a lasting change and the full de-Trumpification of America?