How does a constitutional democracy defeat an authoritarian movement?
The Democratic Convention just gave us that answer:
Nominate charismatic leaders, uncork a countermovement with full throated endorsements from iconic political leaders, and have a big, boisterous party that shows how great our country’s future could be if we are ready to embrace a multicultural democracy. The convention speakers tried to help voters to understand the stakes: The Republicans are trying to install a dictator who will deconstruct our democracy and move the country back about 100 years. Clips of what was said at the convention will populate on social media and the Harris campaign will use its $540 million dollar treasure trove of donations (since Biden dropped out of the race) for ad buys across the country.
It has been 16 years since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. During and after his 8 years in office, a backlash grew in reaction to a Black president. Right wing opposition metastasized: white supremacists, Christian nationalists, the Tea Party, right wing encroachment over of state houses, the Federalist Society take over of our Supreme Court pushing it far out of the mainstream. To be successful, that anti-democratic movement requires a populace that embraces divisiveness, exclusivity, hate and fear of the “other”. A majority of people in America do not share those values in part because our country has become so much more diverse.
Just as most cultural movements do not fully die off but only die back, the energy and hope for a multicultural country where Americans can live in peace with each other not in fear of each other, never died off either. It is that movement towards diversity and inclusivity that has come roaring back, more energized than before. It is powering the Harris/Walz campaign.
Diversity is also our country’s ultimate destiny. From the inception of this country, there has been a need for Americans to learn that to be our best version of America we need to be fully inclusive: people of all backgrounds, people with all kinds of talents and abilities, women as well as men, people from other cultures with different skin color, all of us are valuable and worthwhile. We need this faith in humanity in order to reach our fullest potential as a country. This is the uplifting movement we saw having a big, fun party at the Democratic Convention!
This has been a cultural movement waiting for its charismatic leaders. Trump has dominated the airways and our political consciousness for almost a decade now, even with Biden as president. In that time Trump created the very backlash that will eventually take him down. A majority of Americans are sick and tired of this man’s whining and grievance filled diatribes. His message is dark. It is a message of hate and divisiveness, denigrating our military, our rule of law and our governmental institutions. The energy for backlash to Trump has been bubbling under the surface, stoked by Trump himself and the MAGA clown show in the House. It just needed to be uncorked. But Biden couldn’t do it. It was Biden’s removal from the top of the ticket that uncorked this massive energy.
As so often happens in history, the movement also found its charismatic leaders who are ready to rise to the occasion. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz along with a deep bench of Democratic politicians and disaffected Republicans are rising up in opposition to Trump and the MAGAs, leading what I see as a powerful progressive cultural movement that could defeat a pervasive right wing movement that has hijacked our state houses, our Supreme Court, the House of Representatives and infected the minds of Americans who vote to keep toxic MAGAs in power.
Charismatic leaders are not the only thing that is needed to win an election against a corrupt man and his political party, but it is a good start. You also need to expose your opponent, the leader of the MAGAs, over and over again for being the horrible, awful person he is doing the divisive, damaging things he is doing to our country, which isn’t hard because Trump is Trump, after all. In fact, Trump got beat up pretty good at the Democratic Convention, not only by the nominees but also by representatives from the military, the Republican Party, unions and local sheriffs as well. It was a joyful convention where excitement about the future we could have and the fear of Trump and what he and his allies will do to destroy our country, generated almost complete and total unity in the Democratic Party.
HATE IS NOT AS POWERFUL AS LOVE
Trump is powered by hate and grievance. He is already vowing to attack Harris at the debate. He says he hates her.
“This is just the way I am. I hate my opponent. I hate my opponents,” Trump told a confidant who advised the former president to consider backing away from calling the vice president “stupid” or “dumb” at their high-profile standoff in a few weeks, which he has done repeatedly.
Trump explained to the confidant that he’s treating Harris the same way he did Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. “Hillary, Joe, Kamala. It doesn’t matter. I just hate them.”
To another adviser, Trump was blunt about taking on Harris: “I’m going to be mean.” (Bulwark)
Trump is the perfect authoritarian wannabe because of who he is: a deeply, even tragically, flawed human being. The man is naturally self-centered, has no core values (so others can get him to do what they want if they pay him off), demands power for himself without accountability, and has deep seated grievances from childhood that haunt and disturb him and then get played out on the world stage if he gets into a position of power- he always has to be stroked and flattered, he is greedy and corrupt, insatiable about what he can get for himself. And he lies as he breathes without compunction. Given who he is, he cannot help but generate chaos and division.
All of these traits set him up to be the perfect imperial president. But they have also created a huge sense of revulsion and exhaustion in America about him and the MAGA movement he leads. When the MAGAs got into micromanaging women’s private lives and deeply personal decisions about their bodies, they set themselves up for defeat and spawned the catch phrase of the backlash that will take them down: “We Won’t Go Back.”
If Trump does attack Harris in the debate, as he promises to do, it will reinforce the extremely negative view that a majority of Americans already have about him, and remind people that with Trump in power you get chaos, anger, pettiness and divisiveness. It will get more Americans to the polls to vote against him.
THE BACK STORIES OF HARRIS AND WALZ
What Harris and Walz stand for, just by looking at them, carries the message of a mixed race blended future for America that no one needs to fear. This is what holds the promise of peace, freedom, fairness, prosperity, relief and joy. They express this message: We are ALL Americans and we are all neighbors who help each other. When you combine that shift in thinking with love of country and a belief in the value of the common good, you have ignited the positive energy that America has needed to power up to defeat Trump and the MAGAs.
The Democratic Convention introduced Harris and Walz as middle class Americans who made it to where they are today based on grit, and the opportunities they had as Americans to craft and build their own futures. Their stories define what they stand for when it comes to future policies: helping hard working people in the middle class to be successful. We heard their personal stories met their families. Harris is the child of a mother born in India and a father born in Jamaica who always faced down the bullies in her life and became a prosecutor to defend and protect the victims of crime. Walz grew up in rural America and joined the military to further his education after his father died. He was a teacher, an elected Democratic representative to congress from a deeply red district, and eventually the governor of Minnesota who made his state better for middle class Americans.
The Convention helped Harris sketch the outlines of her policy positions which will be filled in with more details in the next few weeks. Harris made an excellent first impression in her new role as nominee for the presidency. She came across as presidential. She is ready on day one. Her roll out was pretty flawless. Many people who did not think Americans were ready for a woman as president (and I was one of them) are rethinking that idea. Maybe it has helped all of us to be more open to that idea of a woman president thanks to so many series and TV shows and even children’s movies depicting powerful women including women presidents, since Hillary ran and lost to Trump in 2016. Maybe it has also helped that Harris is running at a moment in time that is perfect for someone just like her- a former prosecutor who can contrast her background against Trump’s: she is for the people, he is for himself; she is the prosecutor, he is the felon.
HARRIS’ CLOSING ARGUMENT: FOR THE PEOPLE
Just because the Democratic Convention was joyful and energetic and that energy is erupting across the country, does not mean Harris and Walz will win. We face an existential moment in this country: in the next election we could lose our democracy or we could fulfill our country’s multicultural promise.
Arguably the most compelling motivation to vote for Harris and Walz is what Trump will do to us if he wins. Trump and the MAGAs, with their rotten, horrible Project 2025, have a plan to dismantle our government and subject all of us to their will, their idea of what is acceptable behavior. This is why Freedom has become the touchstone of the Harris/ Walz campaign. But the Harris/Walz campaign is not negative. It gives us a lot to vote FOR. The Democrats want to make government work for the people.
Joe Biden already did a lot to make the government work for the people, but his successes were not effectively messaged to the country. Biden’s bipartisan legislation, rivaled only by FDR, was made possible by the pandemic which got Republicans to vote for measures that required huge sums of money spent to help average Americans- something they generally refuse to do. Biden was able to get congress to pass The American Rescue Plan, The Chips Act, The Infrastructure and Jobs Act, The Child Tax Credit, reversed hundreds of Trump’s executive orders and shored up NATO and the World Health Organization and much more. Most recently his administration has managed a soft landing after the pandemic. Biden succeeded in accomplishing something most pundits said was not possible. America has the strongest economy in the world and the Fed just announced it will lower interest rates because we reached that soft landing without a recession. Biden will go down in history as one of our finest, most effective presidents.
THE POWER OF COMMUNITY AND WOMEN
The messages and the passion we saw at the Democratic Convention are the answer to the MAGA assault on our country. Trusted leaders are speaking out about what makes our country so terrific. It is a sense of common good, care for each other, a willingness to accept that others may love differently or live differently or pray differently, but they are still our neighbors and we will look out for them and help them. It’s that parents should be trusted to know which books they want their children to read, that people should be able to choose who to love, and what they should do about their own bodily decisions. The power of women and mothers was one of the hallmarks of the Convention. Many of the speakers talked about their mothers and what they learned from them and from being in a supportive community. In short, love is more powerful than hate, joy is more energizing than anger, and common good is more empowering than divisiveness.
As Kamala Harris said in her closing remarks:
America, let us show each other—and the world—who we are. And what we stand for. Freedom. Opportunity. Compassion. Dignity. Fairness. And endless possibilities.
We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And on behalf of our children and grandchildren, and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love.
To fight for the ideals we cherish.
And to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth. The privilege and pride of being an American.
So, let’s get out there and let’s fight for it.
Let’s get out there and let’s vote for it.
And together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.
HOW TO DO SOMETHING
As Michelle Obama said in her speech at the Convention…now is the time to “Do Something!”
Now is the time to jump in and help get Kamala Harris and Tim Walz elected.
Get active with:
- Current signature drives to get abortion rights on the ballot in these states: Florida, Maryland, NY, AZ, Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota
- Register voters
- Write post cards to voters in swing states to remind them to vote
- Text and make calls
- Canvass for Democratic candidates
- Sign up to be an election judge
- Participate in election protection teams
- Cure ballots after the election
- You can find these opportunities online or simply go to the website for the Harris campaign to find out how to volunteer.
Let’s do this!!