Joe Biden wasn’t a charismatic challenger, but he was a refreshing answer for a nation dealing with massive death, disruption and unemployment.
We can argue about what happened in the last four years under Biden and Kamala Harris, such as the US government’s support for Israel’s genocide and its failure to address economic anxiety.
Still, we should realise that our problem is deeply historical.
The Democratic Party’s rightward shift in the 1990s alienated it from its base, no longer the political expression of organised labour and the champion of women and racial minorities. Just look at how many Latinos voted for Trump.
The Democrats can fundraise, but the national party has little grassroots support. There is no feeling among the working class that it is Democratic policy that puts food on their tables.
The party can get celebrity endorsements and stage a glitzy convention. But we’ve never heard of policy changes to move away from for-profit health care and reduce the rising cost of living.
Put this in contrast with former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who I critically covered as a journalist.
His old-guard liberalism delivered us rent freezes, raises for public sector workers and universal preschool. This is not a socialist program but a standard liberalism that delivers real things for millions of people, who will likely become Democratic voters as a result.
This is the exception, not the norm, when it comes to today’s Democratic Party.
We went from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms Speech” to an endorsement from Taylor Swift. As a result, a great deal of the nation feels politically alone.
Malcolm X spoke of the American political system’s indifference to Black suffering in his famous “Ballot or the Bullet” speech (which I listen to before every election) and why African Americans should move away from political campaigns to a nationalist program of self-liberation. “They’ve become disillusioned. They’ve become dissatisfied,” he said.
That same feeling of abandonment has spread, and the country is looking for answers.
We can mock Americans for being seduced by the circus of Trumpism. The seduction only exists because of the political vacuum created by contemporary liberalism.
If the left can’t give people an answer to that dissatisfaction, the right will. Think of the Simpsons joke: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”
I don’t have an immediate answer about what to do.
I consider myself a New Yorker first and an American second. That sounds like cheap snobbery (subways over cars, high rises over suburban plots). But the things that matter most to me, my family, and my friends are local institutions – our schools, local unions, public health, and other services.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is my socialist congresswoman, and that’s great. But it’s our state and city lawmakers who have some agency to make changes that impact our lives positively and materially in ways that seem so far off in the national realm.
I take some comfort in the fact that I will probably continue to live this way, and I am optimistic about local progress. In a world full of anti-immigrant rabble-rousing, my neighbourhood’s vibrancy and multitude of languages and religions feel like a resilient multicultural barrier against the impending national storm.
So, where does that leave everyone else?
Americans must get politically involved at the local level. This sounds like a retreat, but this is how the right built power since the 1960s, creating the worlds they wanted to see locally and building them up from there.
This is not just a survival method for us over the next few years but the path forward in building a relevant political alternative to authoritarian nationalism and degenerated liberalism.
What is true and frightening is that whether one lives in New York City, rural Kentucky, Los Angeles or Montana, the rights of LGBT, women, and immigrants will be under attack, and federal agencies that safeguard public health and safety will rot, putting us all at risk.
Imagine an unvaccinated world with no national weather monitoring during a climate crisis and crumbling infrastructure. If you thought Ronald Reagan was bad on aviation safety, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Our public education system will continue to shrink, and the idea of learning will be a special treat for the upper class.
We must do our best to protect each other and maintain a wall of solidarity against these forces. It’s time to wake up, get clear-eyed, and work hard to survive.
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Photographs courtesy of Ari Paul. All rights reserved.
