Biden up 3! Trump up 4! Democracy down 6!
How the horse race obscures what's really going on in this election
Biden up 3! Trump up 4! Democracy down 6!
The fog of media racing to project and call races across the country threatens to obscure what’s going on tonight.
A wildly erratic conservative is on track to beat a moderate conservative to the Whitehouse.
That script could flip but an unimaginable horror looks set to repeat itself. The progress made in the 2018 midterms does not look to have repeated itself tonight.
This is not over but it’s not looking good.
It’s not looking good for people worried about health insurance, unemployment insurance, jobs, staying healthy, schools and eviction notices.
Whoever wins tonight – America loses.
The only question is if we lose by a lot or lose by a little.
What, you didn’t think it would be that easy did you? Put a career Democrat in the White House and all would be well?
I do believe the U.S. would be a better place under a President Biden. We’d plug the hole in the dam for about a minute. Two minutes, tops.
We have to have more ambition than that.
Whoever wins tonight – we have to steel ourselves to go back to work.
Whoever wins tonight, we have to steel ourselves to go back to work. To fight district by district to reclaim America from White Supremacy. To reclaim America from the corporate class. To reclaim America from religious extremists who insist on forcing their beliefs on to the rest of the country. An unholy trinity of racism, greed and hate.
And most important is to steel ourselves and others from those who claim to be on our side who will throw minorities under the bus to avoid the spotlight being turned on people like them.
The messaging has already begun – the same people who Insisted that Hillary Clinton lost because she was a woman (“it’s not her fault, it’s the misogyny of others that means women can’t win”) are already laying down the narrative that Trump is doing well because of Latino voters.
Not only is this wrong, it’s a strategy that attempts to divide the Left and turn us against each other.
Even if Latino voters supported Biden is slightly smaller numbers than they supported Hillary – that’s not why Trump has done well tonight.
Trump’s biggest demographics are White, Male and Old.
If Trump wins, it’s because of white people, it’s because of men and it’s because of older people. We can’t simplify that into “it’s because of old, white men” (although they have played their part). It’s white people, male and female. It’s men, white, black and Latino. It’s older people, male and female.
Trump is likely to have gained 48% or more support from each of those three key groups. Because of the large size of these populations their influence dwarfs that of those being blamed. It’s white people, not minorities. It’s white men, not women. Those groups have the population size to easily change the course of an election.
The rush of (mostly white) media talking heads, advisors and lobbyists to blame Latino voters, Black voters, anyone-but-white/male/older voters is a willingness – an eagerness – to throw minorities under the bus to avoid hard questions being asked of the majority.
This casual racism is particularly galling because it comes from supposed allies. Democrats are not immune to the evil of racism. The Left has not been innoculated against racism. We need to firmly resist these attacks and amplify the voices of Latino communities in pushing back against racist narratives. We need to make sure there are spaces for minorities to speak for themselves.
We need to make sure every ally from a disenfranchised and discriminated against minority feels our full support.
The blame game is easy to play and ineffective. Don’t look for a scapegoat. Don’t look to yesterday. Look to the future.
Tale a minute or ten to process your emotions and then channel them into your work. Roll up your sleeves and decide where you’re going to make a start, how you’re going to make a start, then set forth and get to work.
We’d love to hear in the comments where and how you are going to make a start and where and how you are going to get to work.
I'm going to get to work on supporting our collective psychology (as described in https://www.collectivepsychology.org/ ) in whatever ways I can. It's certainly never been more true than now that we need to move ourselves from "powerlessness to agency", from "disconnection to belonging" and from "fear and anxiety to conscious self-awareness".
I realize this is a tall order and requires so much creative, difficult work, especially now that so many of us are running on fumes at this point. But my thinking is that if we're in survival mode, we may as well build the tools we'll need to survive long term and stop being tortured by feeling powerless, disconnected, and fearful.
I'm going to start with my friends and my community and I'm going to look for resources to help. We work better and stronger as a team.