by Joe Courter
I did not expect it to come out that way, but there it is, profound evidence of the varied information bubbles we all live in now. Once I saw the numbers piling up the evening of Nov. 5, I knew we had entered a new and perilous period of history.
This one was not like the feeling of profound sadness and shock I felt in 2016. No tears, just a grim dark feeling of horror that so many fellow citizens would choose Trump over Harris in spite of all we knew about him, his history, and the battle plan of Project 2025, and that here in Florida that 60% threshold for abortion rights was too steep. A double whammy of bad news.
The analysis of why is all over the place, with many different takes on the reasons for Harris’s loss. A big one is that fewer people voted for Harris than had for Biden in 2020, showing a deep aversion to Harris and her campaign messaging. Why was the negative campaigning against her so effective? What rings true for me is racism and misogyny in many people, which made them more likely to fall for the crap thrown at her. Working folks saw the celebrity glitter, elite attitudes, and constant fundraising, but nothing that would motivate them personally, like universal health care. The MAGA messaging was powerful, and no defense was offered other than attacking Trump, to whom his base were unconditionally devoted, and to claim our democracy itself was under threat. That hypothetical threat was not as daunting to many as the perceived direct threats to their lives caused by immigrants stealing jobs and a failing economy. (And of course a good dose of “fuck the libs.”)
A new one rising to the top is that Harris was “too woke,” but I blame that problem on the media itself, who helped create the “woke” boogeyman with their lazy reporting that caricatures and denigrates the movement. Critical Race Theory, a 40-year-old “set of ideas holding that racial bias is inherent in many parts of western society, especially in its legal and social institutions,” was reduced to a buzz word the Right could latch on to. And the transphobia was off the charts, one particular rather offensive ad about trans athletes I heard ran over 400 times during NFL games.
So we progressives were to blame? We who advocate for peace, justice, true history, and human rights; who have our views mischaracterized and oversimplified by the lazy media, we were the problem? Instead of all the intentionally deceptive social media messages that poisoned the public well, coming from domestic or foreign sources? Oh, gee, pardon us for trying to make the world better, to speed up the process of acknowledging and dealing with institutional racism, to overcome the corporate greed affecting our health care delivery and housing availability, and working to expose and face down the growing Christian Nationalist threat to our democracy. The Democratic Party had backed itself into a corner, and although Harris energized a lot of people (I bought into it), there were glaring messaging problems that kept people home, or made people hunger for change and promised solutions by Trump to overcome his many negatives.
Many decades of social justice organizing have gained us a better, but far from ideal society. The taking away of a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy was but a start of the unraveling of that work. Obamacare was a feeble start to help people have affordable health care; that may be lost. Social Security and other perks of living in a civilized country are threatened. We can talk about a coming tyranny, and well we should, but what we have right now has serious problems of entrenched poverty and injustice, things a lot of us knew we’d have to fight to rectify in the coming Harris presidency, as we have continually been doing with every administration. Now instead we face Trump 2.0, operating with few guardrails and a fawning Republican Party in control of the House and Senate, with the Supreme Court already shown to be in his corner as well.
Solidarity is the answer. Hold your loved ones close, reach out to your neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances. Build bonds, connections, and organizations that can withstand the blows that are coming our way. This is how we build the society we need, with love and community.