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The Democratic victories in the 2020 election were vital, but they were not enough. We ousted Trump, maintained control of the House, and made some gains in the Senate. However, we have more work to do if we are going to truly move this nation forward, if we are to get a Green New Deal and Medicare for All and a living minimum wage and so on. The GOP has a hammerlock on the Supreme Court, and since the Senate is 50\/50 they can still block a lot of programs that Democrats propose thanks to the filibuster.<\/p>\n
Republican Congressman Chip Roy was caught on hidden camera saying \u201cHonestly, right now, for the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down and get to December of 2022\u202618 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done. That\u2019s what we want.\u201d Roy proved that Republicans are concerned with only party loyalty, and this country and its citizens and residents be screwed. They are willing to oppose any and all programs Biden and the Democrats propose for no reason other than toeing the party line. Trump cancelled a pandemic early-warning program in September 2019 just because Obama set it up, and that is just one of many reasons why COVID-19 was so devastating in this country. Republicans have become Trump\u2019s stooges, forced to do his bidding lest they be ostracized. Look at what happened to Liz Cheney when she dared to call a spade a spade.<\/p>\n
We need to get rid of \u201cnot liberal enough\u201d and start agreeing to disagree. We need to focus on our common goals rather than split hairs. As long as we let infighting hobble us, the Right will ride roughshod over us and ram through statutes we are powerless to stop. We need to stop being so squeamish about offending people. Avoiding racial, ethnic, etc. slurs is one thing; feeling as though you have to walk on eggs with every word you say is another.<\/p>\n
We also need to rein in \u201cwokeness\u201d and political correctness. Taking down statues of Confederate generals and leaders is one thing, but removing statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington just because they owned slaves is another. The Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians are changing their mascots; does that mean the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, Kansas City Chiefs, etc. should follow suit? Remember what Voltaire said: We are all creatures of our time; very few of us rise above the ideals of the day. Many things we regard as acceptable today may be unpalatable to our great-grandchildren. You have to draw the line somewhere.<\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s a timeworn cliche to harp on how we are all in this together, how we all need to work together, blah, blah, blah. However, this cliche has some basis in fact. We need to stop letting the Right divide us with \u201cidentity politics\u201d – straight versus LGBTQ, citizen versus immigrant, white versus people of color, and so on – and unite inside and out. We can focus on the big picture and worry about the details later.<\/p>\n
Getting liberals to work together is like herding cats. Traditional methods don\u2019t work. You can, however, \u201cherd\u201d cats with food. The can of tuna is victory in elections – local, state and national – over the next few years. We need to focus on winning elections, because only winners make policy; all the losers can do is protest.<\/p>\n
Democrats need to grow strong spines, both individually and collectively. It\u2019s the only way we will be able to tackle the Republicans who are dragging this country towards destruction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Democratic victories in the 2020 election were vital, but they were not enough. We ousted Trump, maintained control of the House, and made some gains in the Senate. However, we have more work to do if we are going to truly move this nation forward, if we are to get a Green New Deal […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}