On the morning of November 9, 2016 we
woke up to a nightmare. Somehow, despite poll after poll showing
Hilary Clinton was headed to the White House, Donald Trump took the
prize. Not only that, but his Republican party enablers had hung onto
both the House and the Senate. A trio of GOP misery was well and
truly upon us. Countless Americans were worried and fearful, as they
remain now.
Since then, three things have been very
noticeable.
First, Trump’s behavior, entirely
predictably, has become worse and worse and he is clearly not fit to
be President.
Second, Mitch
McConnell and Paul Ryan’s Republican party have put on a Vichy
style display of acquiescence and indulgence of Trump’s aberrant
behavior simply to hold on to power – and for no other reason than
that.
Third, the Republicans have taken
repeated beatings in any number of local, state or congressional
elections since Trump’s victory.
One of the most recent was a state
Senate seat in Wisconsin where a Democrat won big, overturning
Trump’s 2016 margin of 18 points.
That was the first time that a Democrat
had won that seat in over 40 years.
The much vaunted “Blue Wave” is
being touted in advance of the forth-coming mid-terms in November of
this year. Poll after poll has shown how anti-Trump and anti-GOP
resentment has been boiling up for 18 months now. This is though
where the opposition, the resistance, however you want to call it,
needs to be careful that the Blue Wave stays as one and doesn’t
fragment into smaller, much less effective waves.
If the Democrats can secure the
mid-terms, flip the House and the Senate, Trump is in a much more
precarious position. No longer will he be able to rely upon a
dog-whistle Republican party with puff-pastry for a spine. His
nefariousness can be checked more frequently and yes, the prospect of
impeachment (and never was there a President that that word was so
designed for) becomes a more realistic possibility.
The Democrats absolutely cannot afford
to splinter the anti-GOP vote come November. If your preferred
candidate doesn’t make it through a primary, take the hit. Because
if you don’t, stay-at-home liberals and progressives translate into
Republican electoral wins – it’s that simple.
Waking up on Wednesday November 7, 2018
and finding that the House and the Senate are still in Republican
hands would be Groundhog Day style horrific. The only thing that
would be worse would be finding out that Trump had secured a second
term in November 2020, which would make implementing any actual progressive policy difficult, if not impossible, on a national level.
Progressives need to understand that
these two nightmare scenarios are intrinsically linked. Break the
first one and the second one has less chance of occurring. And more importantly, it will greatly increase the potential for the progressive agenda to become actual policy.
Voting is not about a purely
performative expression of the “purity” of your political views,
but rather a social mechanism which results in actual material consequences
for people in real life. Having your candidate make it through the
primaries is great. However, if they don’t, they are still very
likely part of the broad spectrum of anti-GOP, anti-Trump alliance.
Stopping the Trump agenda is an
essential part of the overall progressive agenda. Therefore, genuine
progressives who are serious about achieving material progress which
can affect people in real life, should not stay home in November even
if their favored progressive candidate did not make it into the
general election.
