Despite it all, there are some bright spots out there.
It’s kinda like Spring Training. Everything is possible and no dream is off-limits. Hey, we could actually win the pennant this year!
Despite everything going on in our nation and our world, this sense of optimism is on full display as Democrats, progressives, and everybody on our side who ever caught the “campaign bug” and can’t seem to quit politics travels to DC, Chicago, LA, and points in between to strategize, share ideas, and dream.
Sure — as I’ve been writing in this newsletter — there hasn’t been enough attention yet to fixing the numerous weaknesses in Democratic politics that landed Donald Trump back in the White House.
And yet.
Democratic Spring Training offers much to be hopeful about.
Working together. Conservation activists from California. Electricians from Ohio. Abortion access defenders from Illinois. There are as many different kinds of people in our movement as there are people in America. We don’t all always agree with each other — in fact we can have some hellacious disagreements — but at the end of the day, we usually find a way to put our differences aside and keep making progress toward a better America.
The Youth Movement. As I age further into being a Guy of a Certain Age, it’s exciting and inspiring to see people in their 20s and 30s continue to stream into this business to build a better and more humane America. New ideas, vibrancy, and energy are definitely needed right now and these newly-minted political pros bring a lot of it.
Resiliency. Way too many of our friends and neighbors continue to be assaulted by assholes, from the Oval Office on down to your least favorite brother-in-law. Nobody should have to endure the abuse and the vitriol and the violence but hearing the stories of how people all over the country — in rural Georgia, in Minneapolis, and throughout the country — are refusing to give up inspires the rest of us to get up in the morning and get to work again.
American Values. The violence, cruelty, and racism on full display these days has, of course, always been part of the American Experience and our inability to purge these vicious impulses from our national character is a source of enduring shame. But despite it all, when you talk to people whose families came from all over the world to settle here, they often talk about the better kind of American Values: Family, love, hard work, optimism, and building for the future. I would never be called a cockeyed optimist but there are still enough good things about this country that it’s still worth fighting for.
The resistance to the resistance. Slowly but surely, little rays of change are starting to penetrate into the closed system of Democratic politics. It’s not a wave yet, more like a babbling brook. But more and more Democratic political pros are starting to say what everyone knows: Our approach to campaigning doesn’t work anymore. And all the bad polling numbers for Trump and the optimism for the midterms doesn’t change that fact.
So yes, despite the wall-to-wall bad news and doomscrolling, there are some things to feel good about right now.
While the most corrupt ruling class since, well, never continues to rob the country blind and make America the laughingstock of the world, be assured that right now, somewhere in America, there is an underpaid, overstressed person figuring out how to get 10 more people to tomorrow night’s City Council meeting.
She, we, haven’t given up and I hope you haven’t either.
There’s much work to be done before November 3rd.
Join us.
Stop scrolling, quit kvetching, and join us.
Today.