I know it’s easy to say it’s what we deserve but is it really? Doesn’t that come from a place of privilege? Do brown people, women, and any other minority that are seeing their rights, their organs, and their children stripped away deserve this ?
My real fear is what comes next? It’s not like the 37% of the country will just switch gears and trust facts and truth because of the opposite in Trump/GOP
Is there anyone who could unite this country or is it a lost cause ?
It absolutely comes from a place of privilege on both sides.
You have the predominantly white racist leaning, fox news binging, truth denying 37% on the right.
And you have the predominantly white, younger, far left progressive side that view the more centrist views of the Democratic party as just as bad or worse than the republicans. (FYI, that is absolute nonsense) Probably more around the 20% range.
Both of those sides refuse sensible change and in the current atmosphere with Russian and Saudi bots filling their feeds with complete bullshit propaganda to boost their narrative, it seems unlikely we see much movement there.
One interesting statistic that was shown last night by Steve Kornacki, was the shift in support of Trump by that mind-bending voting block that voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. Their support for Trump has dropped from 85% to 66% over the last 2-3 years.
It shows that the fight is not at the margins and the farther wings of the right and the left, but the large and growing "independent" voting block in the middle. Add to that the malleable "lean" voters. Those college educated middle of the road voters that could be persuaded to vote either way depending on the year and the candidate and THAT is where progress is made.
I know some here in this forum and many thousands more outside of it reject any form of "incremental change". But as I've said before, that is how our whole system was created and for good reason! The left doesn't want the right coming in and making no holds barred changes across the map, and vice versa. That's why we have divided government and checks and balances.
For Example. As much as medicare for all is the ideal end product for healthcare. There may need to be smaller steps before it to get to that end product. DaveC used gay marriage as an argument against incremental change (and i get where he's coming from), but to me, it really was an argument FOR it. The fight for equality in the LGBT community started in earnest in the 60's, and it was not an easy road, but in the end, marriage equality became a reality.
It may take years, it will be a hard fight. But to me, its better to have someone on the Dem side get into office to start down that road.
When one voting block only wants absolute and instant change and reject those that don't offer that, what ends up happening is the exact opposite of what they really want. It backfires and actually leads to any progress being reversed.
Lots of "progressives" sat out 2016 or voted third party and we got Trump. So now we have the Judicial branch decimated for decades, any health care progress rolled back, environmental progress rolled back, women's choice rolled back, education reform and progress rolled back, the list goes on.
I challenge self-proclaimed "progressives" to stop and realize that people that want to support candidates that are more centrist, don't actually want the end product to be a centrist, half-measure law. But we see it as the necessary steps to take to get to the more progressive law in the end.
Is there anyone that can bring the country together at this point? I really don't know. Something crazy would have to take place. I really don't think it is so much at the presidential level. I think that could actually happen. A VERY moderate Republican, or Democrat could get into office. Probably pull a bit of the country together. But what you see at the Congress and Senate level is SO... sick. That i just don't know. Listening to Republican Senators defend almost 200 contacts with RUSSIANS, and secret back channel communications with them, and seeing nothing wrong at all with a "president" obstructing and lying at every turn, it just turned my stomach. And makes me think that there may be no path to getting back to where we used to be, where house members on both sides would do the right thing no matter what party they belonged too. That is gone.