Instead of “Yes we can,” many Democrats have adopted a new slogan this election year: “We shouldn’t even try.” We shouldn’t try for single-payer system, they say. We’ll be lucky if we prevent Republicans from repealing Obamacare. We shouldn’t try for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The best we can do is $12 an hour. We shouldn’t try to restore the Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment and commercial banking, or bust up the biggest banks. We’ll be lucky to stop Republicans from repealing Dodd-Frank. We shouldn’t try for free public higher education. As it is, Republicans are out to cut all federal education spending…. Most of all, we shouldn’t even try to get big money out of politics. We’ll be lucky to round up enough wealthy people to back Democratic candidates. “We-shouldn’t-even-try” Democrats think it’s foolish to aim for fundamental change - pie-in-the-sky, impractical, silly, naïve, quixotic. Not in the cards. No way we can. I understand their defeatism. After eight years of Republican intransigence and six years of congressional gridlock, many Democrats are desperate just to hold on to what we have.
As is true in any Presidential election cycle, voters this time around are presented with a stark difference in the choices available to them. Do they choose Candidate X, who would rid the Earth of terrorism by dropping enough nuclear bombs on the Middle East to make every mosque and sand dune glow in the dark? Or so they cast their lot with Candidate Y, who’d steal money from good, God-fearing, hard-working Americans and redistribute it to gay atheist drug addicts and their Liberal lesbian lovers? The candidate Americans choose will impact the course of our country now and into the future, and while the choice may not be quite so dramatic, their votes do matter.
With that in mind, why would we not choose a candidate who’s willing to take dead aim at making fundamental changes in the way government does business? Why we settle for someone who’s campaign slogan may as well be “NO, WE CAN’T!” I get that a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with the sort of sweeping changes proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders; I hear that a lot in my own home. What I don’t understand is the willingness to settle for less than what we deserve. “What will Bernie be able to do if Congress is still Republican?” is something I also frequently hear…yet for some reason I don’t hear that question asked about Hillary Clinton. Do Clinton supporters REALLY believe their candidate will experience more success against entrenched Republican intransigence that Sen. Sanders would?
What I don’t understand is why Clinton supporters believe we shouldn’t aim high, that we shouldn’t try for broad fundamnetal change because we might fall short. Better to proceed incrementally, to settle for less than we deserve because we might not get everything we want. Why proceed from the presumption that settling for incremental change is the only way to real change?
[E]ver since the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision opened the political floodgates to big corporations, Wall Street, and right-wing billionaires, many Democrats have concluded that bold ideas are unachievable.
In addition, some establishment Democrats - Washington lobbyists, editorial writers, inside-the-beltway operatives, party leaders, and big contributors - have grown comfortable with the way things are. They’d rather not rock the boat they’re safely in.
I get it, but here’s the problem. There’s no way to reform the system without rocking the boat. There’s no way to get to where America should be without aiming high.
Progressive change has never happened without bold ideas championed by bold idealists.
We would never have acheived voting rights or civil rights if we’d been willing to settle for incremental change.
Change- REAL change- doesn’t come about through tinkering around the margins. It doesn’t happen when people are willing to settle. It certainly doesn’t happen when we decide that doing things incrementally so as not to aggravate the opposition is the only truly effective way to bring about change.
[T]ime and again we’ve learned that important public goals can be achieved - if the public is mobilized behind them. And time and again such mobilization has depended on the energies and enthusiasm of young people combined with the determination and tenacity of the rest.
If we don’t aim high we have no chance of hitting the target, and no hope of mobilizing that enthusiasm and determination.
The eventual Democratic nominee will face a Congress which may well remain in Republican hands and intransigent to the bitter end. At this point, it would be inimical to our best interests to proceed from that assumption and come to the conclusion that we should only pursue incremental change. We either want to create a different world or we don’t. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t assume that civil rights would only be realized if pursued incrementally. Gandhi didn’t force the British Empire to abandon the Indian subcontinent a little bit at a time.
There are circumstances when pursuing incremental change may well make sense. Today, though, we face a world crying out for things to be done differently. With income inequality growing with each passing day, along with an increasing collective sense of anger and intolerance, this is no time for baby steps.
Real change is hard. It can be disruptive, difficult, and uncomfortable- but sometimes you have to create inconvenience and disruption in order to get from where you are to where you want to be.
From where I sit, it’s a very simple question: Do we want a Democrat whose slogan, if honest, would be “NO, WE CAN’T!!”? Or do we want someone willing to look at fundamentally changing our priorities and making America a compassionate place that cares and looks out for everyday Americans, instead of maintaining the status quo of being the personal property and playground of oligarchs?
Your choice, America….
