Regardless of the outcome on Nov. 3, if the Democratic Party does not embrace bold progressivism, Donald Trump will not be the last Donald Trump.
It’s the Friday before the Nov. 3 election, the Marquette Law School poll has placed Joe Biden at a steady five-point lead over President Donald Trump, and the world seems to be a whirl of phone banking, last-minute literature drops, and very anxious Democrats.
“Don’t worry about political forecasts, just put in the work and ride out the wave until Tuesday,” organizers repeat on social media to stressed-out volunteers. In the face of an abject failure by the Trump administration to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, the pressure to deliver a Biden/Harris victory far exceeds the usual demands of partisan politics — it has now become a race against a deadly virus that threatens to take 200,000 more lives than it already has, leaving our economy shuttered in the process.
Wisconsin specifically is quickly approaching record community spread of the coronavirus. Locally, partisan bickering in the Capitol has left our state without a plan to bail out small businesses that are going under. And with the prospect of a cold and unfriendly winter ahead, economic and political insecurity continue to be a reality for many Wisconsinites. Republicans on the national and statewide level have failed to act and we have found ourselves living in a vacuum of leadership.
There is no doubt that the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been in recent American presidential history. Fascism is no longer at our door, it has sat itself down for dinner and served our country a heaping plate of corrupt, dysfunctional bureaucracy with a side of Neo-Nazism and deadly cognitive dissonance. But the lesson does not lie in whether or not we cast out this ghastly dinner guest. No, the lesson lies in who opened the front gate and welcomed it in.
We need to recognize that Donald Trump is a symptom of a more painful disease — the failure of the American experiment to uplift and protect all of its people — rather than just an aberration
In a post-2016 election survey, Reuters found that a majority of voters felt that the economy was rigged to mostly help the wealthy. Years of neglect of the working class in favor of the 1 percent by both Republicans and Democrats seem to have paved the path for a Trump presidency.
And while it is easy to cast the millions of Americans who voted for Trump aside as fascist enablers, as racists and misogynists, it is dishonest to play down the deep disparities that lead many to see him as their savior. Trump yelled his way to the ears of America’s unheard, particularly in rural communities, and gave them a sort of quasi agency. “Drain the swamp” became a euphemism for class unrest, never mind that Donald Trump himself was the swampiest of swamp creatures.
And whether or not Trump operated in honesty and logic during his campaign doesn’t really matter; a significant population of America believed anyway that he would fight for their economic interests and that Democrats wouldn’t and hadn’t. After the 2016 election, about eight in 10 rural voters said they were either very or somewhat confident Trump would improve health care and create jobs in their communities. Many appreciated Trump’s economic policies and did not believe that federal government programs had done much to help them.
Ironically, the trickle-down theory of economics — which forms the foundation of fiscal conservatism — is a mechanism for the rich to get richer and perpetuates the wealth gap we see today. It is a trick. The Republican Party is not in theory or in practice a champion of the working class. So then why didn’t Democrats do better in 2016? Why is Donald Trump still competitive even after his failure of a first term?
It is because the Democratic Party also suffers from a deeply entrenched elitism. We suffer from a crisis of messaging and a crisis of imagination. What this election has shown is that our party institutionally chooses moderate incrementalism over bold progressive policies that would alter the lives of so many across Wisconsin and this country. And we do this because of an irrational fear of ceding ground to Republicans. When 69 percent of all registered voters and 88 percent of Democratic voters support Medicare for All, why on earth is that not part of our presidential platform? Especially in the midst of a global pandemic that has laid bare the gaping holes in our healthcare system. Why does the moral courage to call for universal health care evade us?
If the Democratic Party continues to shy away from bold progressivism, especially when it comes to economic and social policy, Donald Trump will not be the last Donald Trump. If we do not heal the deep economic inequities that plague our society, fascism will extend far beyond the past four years.
Therefore, while it is important to vote for Biden and Democrats down the ballot, we must also grapple with the truth that the moral fabric of our nation had already begun to rip long before Donald Trump took office. In fact, it has never been strong enough to hold the promise of America for anyone who isn’t a rich white man. We need to strengthen it by proudly standing for the Green New Deal, universal healthcare, universal broadband, abolishing ICE and defunding the police. We also need to fight against any policies that further climate change and to reject the settler colonialism that has hurt our Indigenous communities.
We cannot build back better if we do not learn our lesson.
Nada Elmikashfi is a former candidate for state Senate and chief of staff to state Rep. Francesca Hong.
