We Are All the Future of the Democratic Party
It is difficult for one person to hold onto two conflicting values at the same time. It is even more difficult to hold two people with conflicting values together in the same political party.
Our instinct is to part ways. To insist on identity. To diminish those who differ.
We forget that politics is a team sport. Unlike the lone heroes in popular culture (Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and a host of others) who beat the bad guys with nothing except their own ingenuity and skill, the politician requires a posse to get the job done.
The most fundamental rule of democracy is it takes a majority to make decisions. The game is a game of 51: get 51 percent of the vote, you win the election; win 51 percent of the legislative races, you govern; with 49 percent you get nothing.
One individual acting alone may get a movement started, but success depends on reaching out and building a majority.
The discussion about how Democrats can win in 2020 – in which many have participated, often vigorously – usually focuses on one path. We have to be progressive. We have to be moderate. We need a revolution. Let’s make what we have work.
We have to build the urban vote. Suburban women are the key. Voters of color are the Party’s future. We have to motivate the young. We have to learn how to talk with rural folk. We have to get back to our working-class roots.
None of those paths, taken by itself, is a winning formula. It will take all of them, plus, to build a majority. To win, to succeed, we must welcome all those who want to join us, even those who don’t agree with us all of the time.
I grew up in a fundamental protestant tradition. There are parallels between politics and religion. We hold our beliefs strongly, they are matters of principle, there is right and wrong, there is truth and falsehood and we divide into groups.
In my church, we weren’t sure if Lutherans and Episcopalians were Christians; Catholics definitely were not. We were sure of our faith, that our truth was the one truth.
When truth is singular continual division into smaller fragments is inevitable. I recently googled Baptist denominations and I got Conservative Baptists, American Baptists, Southern Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Regular Baptists, Freewill Baptists, Progressive Baptists and a dozen more.
You can get to heaven if you are the one True Believer, but to win elections you have to persuade more than half the people to join you.
As Democrats, because we have strong beliefs, we are tempted to divide into groups, to demand ideological purity, to exclude those who are unable to recite the whole creed. We see other Democrats as the main enemy of progress. If we go down that road, we will lose.
The answer is not to water down our beliefs, but to find a way to hold our beliefs, to fight for our beliefs, without fragmenting. We do that by holding our beliefs with some humility, some element of self-doubt, some recognition that none of us embody all of the Truth or have all the answers. At times we might even be wrong.
Politics is a team sport. There are many roles that have to be played. Different skills utilized. Various tactics used. Without agitators there is no progress. Without conciliators there is no community.
Some choose to work within the system. Some promote change from without. We can reach the same destination whether we travel by Interstate or rural roads. We will succeed as a political Party to the extent we open our arms wide and embrace all who are traveling in the same direction.
In Wisconsin, in 2018, we elected Tony Evers governor even though the incumbent Scott Walker increased his vote total from when he won his second term in 2014. How did we do it? By increasing the Democratic vote in every part of the state – by a total of more than 200,000; enough for Evers to win by less than 30,000.
Every part of the state contributed: Milwaukee, Madison, the suburbs, the Fox Valley (Green Bay) and the more rural areas of the west and north. Each added more than 30,000 Democratic votes to their previous total. If any had fallen short Walker would have been reelected.
All of us are necessary. All of us are the future.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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