My Dear Fellow “Blue” Party leftists, liberals, and
progressives, the
self-proclaimed “party of the people,” this
is no time for another bloodless panel
discussion, another think-tank memo, another
white paper stuffed with polite phrases and
professional cowardice, or another polished
Ivy League blueprint served up like brunch
to people who still think fascism can be
defeated with better punctuation.
Hell no, it can’t be.
We are in the middle of a political
high-speed train wreck, sparks flying, steel
twisting, smoke everywhere, and some of
y’all are still standing on the platform
asking whether the tone of the warning bell
is too
aggressive. Sometimes
history does not ask for nuance first.
Sometimes it demands backbone first.
Sometimes what the moment requires is not
elegance, not etiquette, not some dainty
performance of reasonableness, but raw
nerve. Plain old guts. Heart. Fire. Some
balls. A backbone that does not collapse
like a busted lawn chair the minute some
blow-dried fool on Fox News starts
hollering, or some Trumped-up goon wraps
racism, greed, and authoritarian filth in a
flag and calls it patriotism.
That’s it, in a nutshell.
That ragged, battle-tested bundle
of human qualities, courage,
conviction, grit, defiance, and the willingness
to stand
flat-footed when the wolves start circling,
is what this hour is crying out for. And
after more than six decades on this earth, I
can tell you plainly: those qualities are
harder to find in Washington than honesty,
decency, humility, or a conscience that
still has a heartbeat.
I understand that the brunching,
summering-off-the-coast-of-Aruba liberals,
the polite salon progressives, the
hand-wringing essayists over at places like
The New
Republic and the
soft-voiced custodians of acceptable concern
at NPR, do not like getting their hands
dirty. They are my allies, and I there’s -
yet they prefer clean sentences, careful
moderation, and a political style that never
smudges the furniture. They do not want to
do the heavy lifting. They want to sell the
Girl Scout cookies, stack the folding
chairs, or help clean up after the fireworks
have scorched the damn field. They want politics to remain
a tasteful disagreement among civilized
professionals, as if one side is not
openly drooling over strongman rule and
racial hierarchy.
But at some point, grown people
have to stand up in broad daylight and say
the obvious thing out loud, with their chest
inflated with the truth.
The Ku Klux Klan, the American
Nazi Party, the John Birch Society, the
White Citizens’ Councils, the Proud Boys,
the Minutemen, and far
too many current and former law enforcement
officers and military personnel have, in
spirit, in energy, and in political
appetite, merged into the well-armed Cult of Donald Trump. That is who these people are.
That is what this movement is. It is not
mysterious. It is not complicated. It is not
some grand sociological riddle requiring
twelve podcasts and a Columbia symposium to
decode. It is the same old American poison
in a new red hat.
And what do they want? What they
have always wanted:
White dominance.
White control.
White social priority.
White cultural centrality.
White male rule dressed up as
patriotism.
Christian nationalism dressed up as
morality.
Authoritarianism dressed up as law
and order.
They want to wave a greasy magic
turkey drumstick over the country and make
America white again, straight again,
submissive again, obedient again, and
grateful for the insult. That is the
project. That is the mission. That is the
destination.
So how complicated is the situation
at hand, really? How hard is the question in
front of us? Kamala Harris tried to tell us.
In so many words, she tried to warn us: these motherfuckers are crazy. Not eccentric. Not merely
“misguided.” Not simply “concerned voters
with economic anxiety.”
Crazy.
Dangerous. Power-drunk. Historically familiar. But too
many people, especially in respectable
liberal circles, did not want their tender
little virgin ears to process the blunt
truth. They wanted softer language. They
wanted something more nuanced, more decorous, more graduate-seminar
friendly.
And now here we are, still acting
like MAGA is some passing irritation instead
of a full-throated anti-democratic movement
with fascist bones and Confederate blood
pressure.
Ain’t this all a mindless bitch?!
We keep pretending not to see what
MAGA really is, what it really wants, and
where it wants to drag America. But it is
not deep. It is not especially subtle. It is
not a puzzle box. It is an old, ugly script.
It is “backlash” with an Ol’ Glory flag-pin.
It is All-American apartheid nostalgia with
a podcast mic. It is the tantrum of a
population segment that cannot stand the
idea of fairness and equality resulting in a
sharing of power in a multiracial democracy.
Can I say it again? MAGA is the
child-like tantrum of a pampered portion of
the US population that cannot stand the idea
of fairness
and equality resulting in a sharing of power in a multiracial
democracy.
That idea sounds like some Nat
Turner/Malcolm X/Che/Huey P. to MAGA world.
Nevertheless, let’s stop talking
like the solution requires mystical
complexity.
Our plan is Romper Room level: we
must win the midterms, assuming there are
still free and open midterm elections worth
the name, and then we must win the
presidency in 2028.
That is it.
Straight jab. Hook. Roundhouse.
Winning combination.
No pirouettes. No filibustering
ourselves. No overthinking our way into
paralysis. No more Democratic addiction to
turning urgency into a book club. We need
turnout in the midterms like our lives depend on it, because politically, civically,
institutionally, they do. And the 2028
ticket needs to be plain, clear, visible
from the moon, and impossible to
misunderstand. Identity politics in it’s
plainest terms Black and white, male and
female.
Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom… Take Back America.
A Black woman and a white man.
An America of color and a European
American, standing on the same ticket and
asking the country a simple question: do you want democracy, or do
you want the madhouse?
It is self-explanatory. It is
visual. It is strategic. It is morally
clear. And if we are serious about winning,
not merely impressing each other at liberal
donor retreats and Progressive think-tank
luncheons, then we need to appeal to the
broadest possible slice of humanity in this
country. Sly Stone’s
Everyday People. Not just
the faithful. Not just the
already-convinced. Not just the people who
know the language of progressivism
and can
pronounce “authoritarian creep” over
craft-cocktails. Everybody. The
left. The middle. Independents. Irregular
voters. Working people. Tired people.
Confused people.
The jackass party’s establishment
is trying to interject the notion “only a
straight, white male” can win, and that’s so
ass-backward thinking one has to ponder if
it’s not originating on the Right, being
planted and pushed by MAGA, knowing that a
bland, safe candidate like that will fail,
miserably so, to motivate and mobilize the
Black and brown female base.
People who may not agree with us on
every line item can feel, in their bones,
that this country is being marched toward
something ugly, stupid, and cruel.
There is no real question about it.
This is our best shot at getting everybody
to the polls. One more time - Everybody. Not just our like-minded friends.
Not just fellow aging Flower children. Not
just the people who already have the right
yard signs and know when to clap at the
fundraiser. Everybody
who can
still detect the stench of national decay. Everybody who can still recognize a con when
they see one. Everybody
who is sick
of watching this country be steered by
grievance, paranoia, racial resentment, and
the political descendants of every hooded
coward and club-wielding bigot America ever
produced.
Because right now it feels like we
are all strapped aboard the 2:15 to the Lake
of Fire, the Hell Express, with a soulless
con man at the helm, a choir of zealots in
the dining car, and a whole class of nervous
liberals in first class still debating
whether it would be impolite to pull the
emergency brake.
Well, pull it.
Pull it hard baby!
Pull it before this whole country
goes off the cliff chasing one more
fraudulent promise to restore a past that
was only “great” if you were white, male,
rich, obedient, or too blind to care what
was being done in your name.
This is the hour. This is the test.
And this is no time for decorative courage.
This is the moment for Democrats to stop
behaving like cautious museum docents of
democracy and start acting like people who
understand the damn building is under
attack.
We do not need prettier language.
We do not need more refined
surrender.
We do not need another symposium on
messaging.
We need nerve.
We need clarity.
We need fire.
We need to tell the truth about who
we are up against.
And then we need to fight like hell
to beat them.
