So You Want to Make America Great Again?

Fine. I can work with that.

\Photo by Dalton Caraway on Unsplash

Donald Trump won Indiana in 2020 by 16 points. Eric Holcomb, at the end of his term, will mark twenty years of continuous Republican occupation of the Governor’s residence. The Hoosier state sent to Washington in the 118th Congress two GOP senators and a congressional delegation consisting of seven Republicans and only two Democrats. A GOP supermajority has held the state Senate since 2010 and the state House since 2012. By most accounts, Indiana is the reddest state in the Midwest. How can progressives possibly win in such an environment?

Given the particularly virulent strain of conservatism proliferating since the advent of the Tea Party movement and its metastasizing into Trumpism, one may think - especially if you consume your media within an information silo - that there is no common ground with the other side. Increasingly, Americans are self-sorting into communities with others who share their political values, never needing to interact with those folks with whom they disagree. It’s easy to see how somebody could be duped into believing an election was stolen when you don’t know ANYBODY who voted for the other guy.

Now, I get it. Some folks are just unreachable. I’m not suggesting we try to come together and sing kumbaya with the racists, fascists, Islamophobes, homophobes, xenophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, and Christian nationalists. Hillary Clinton may have shot herself in the foot with her “basket of deplorables” comment during the 2016 campaign, but it certainly contained a grain of truth. A not-insignificant number of Trump’s supporters certainly belong in that basket. Those hard-core MAGA red-hat-wearing, rally-attending, flag-waving, capitol-storming, Q-anon believing loons are gone. But I know and love people who voted for Trump. Even I, over here barely hanging on to the left flank of the Democratic Party, briefly considered it. Be they uninformed, misinformed, disinformed - or motivated by a sincere desire to do something, anything, to shake Washington to its core - I refuse to give up on the rest. And in a state like Indiana, if we want to win, we can’t.

President Trump governed like a typical, conservative Republican: advocating lower taxes for the rich and decreased social spending, while stocking his cabinet with Wall Street cronies. Candidate Trump however, had run like a populist, promising to “save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts”, oppose free-trade deals that shipped jobs overseas, and fight corruption by “draining the swamp”. Conservatives opposed him throughout the 2016 primary process.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders gave overwhelming favorite Hillary Clinton a much more difficult contest than anyone expected. Sanders ran as a left-wing populist, also advocating to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, oppose free-trade deals, and fight corruption by getting money out of politics. The Democratic establishment opposed him throughout the 2016 primary process.

Look at the overlap. On social spending, on trade, on the corrupt influence on money in politics, on infrastructure, “Trump and Sanders [both channeled] anger from people who feel the American dream is no longer within reach.” It is my firm belief that when decent people say, “Make America Great Again,” what they mean is “Make the American Dream Possible Again.”

Most Americans agree on the issues, even the most controversial ones. On the economy, inequality, money in politics, taxes, minimum wage, workers’ rights, health care, education, climate change, gun safety, criminal justice, immigration, abortion, cannabis legalization, and same-sex marriage, the majority of Americans favor the progressive stance. Nearly all of these positions are popular with 60% or more of respondents and have significant support from Republicans as well.

It is my firm belief that when decent people say, “Make America Great Again,” what they mean is “Make the American Dream Possible Again.”

We, the people, are not the problem. We generally agree. The problem is that we are forced to fight over “culture war” issues while "economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence." That is to say, our elected representatives listen to their rich donors, not us. The American Dream has been made impossible by corrupt elites.

We all recognized it back in 2008. The administration of George W. Bush was reviled as among the worst in the country’s history. The failure to see the warnings before 9/11. The lies leading us into two interminable foreign wars. The torture. The attempted privatization of Social Security. The deficit-exploding tax cuts for the wealthy. The botched response to Hurricane Katrina. And the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The full wreckage of thirty years of corrupting neoliberalism laid bare for all to see.

The United States saw in Barack Obama a young, upstanding, outsider. A fresh start. Hope and Change. A personification of the American Dream. A chance to Make America Great Again.

And the elites stonewalled him. Obama spent most of his political capital pushing a whittled-down Affordable Care Act before running into the Tea Party. The anti-tax Tea Party movement looked to the naked eye, and was treated by the media, like a spontaneous grassroots organization. Upon further review, the entire movement was a completely manufactured astroturf operation by Charles and David Koch, Jim DeMint, and other radical libertarian property supremacists through front groups and nonprofits such as the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and FreedomWorks. Despite reelection in 2012 and a largely scandal-free administration, Obama was stymied by an obstructionist Congress and unable to deliver the much-needed systemic change upon which he campaigned.

THIS is why Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate in 2016. Sure, she was eminently qualified, certainly more so than her general election opponent, but she was the establishment candidate in a change election. Sanders represented change. Trump represented change. Clinton represented more of the same. And the same hasn’t been working since at least 1980. Corruption persisted. The rich grew richer and more powerful. The rest of us lagged behind.

This is why I considered voting for Trump in 2016. Maybe, I thought, he’d be so bad that a hard turn to the left would surely ensue. That tendency might be described as accelerationist. From, Southern Poverty Law Center:

“In most scholarly contexts, the term is used to describe a movement separate from the white supremacist variation. Other ideological variants of accelerationism seek to push beyond capitalism by bringing it to its most oppressive and divisive form, prompting a movement to build a just economic system in response. In the case of white supremacists, the accelerationist set sees modern society as irredeemable and believe it should be pushed to collapse so a fascist society built on ethnonationalism can take its place.”

I, a Sanders supporter, was a left-wing accelerationist. Trump supporters would be considered right-wing accelerationists. The goal of both was to end what they considered an unjust system, so a new system could be birthed in its place. In my own disappointment after Sanders defeat to Clinton, I expressed my exasperation to a friend, who happens to be transgendered. As a member of a vulnerable minority, she explained to me the major drawback to accelerationism: people will get hurt in the interim. As I wrote in this very space just a few weeks ago, America is a house with a rotten foundation. It needs major structural repair. You can either blow up the whole thing and start over, displacing everybody who lives in the house, or you can undertake a controlled, step-by-step renovation, safely completing repairs while the inhabitants go about their lives. I voted for Clinton.

Well, we all know what happened next. The change candidate won and, sure enough, people got hurt. And they damn near blew up the whole thing. In the aftermath of Trump’s shocking upset, media seemed baffled that approximately 9 million Americans that had voted for Obama four years prior would throw in their lot with the bellicose billionaire this time around. Likewise, countless think pieces wondered how 10-15% of Sanders primary voters could have swung to Trump in the general, enough to have perhaps cost Clinton Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and thus, the election. It’s not nearly as difficult to decipher as the corporate media thinks. People want systemic change. They didn’t get it with Obama. They knew they wouldn’t get it with Clinton. And Trump was certainly… different.

Now, two years on from the abject disaster that was the Trump administration, less than two years before the next “most important election of our lifetime”, what lessons can we take away from all this? How can progressives use this information to build a new coalition? Here are a few humble suggestions from one working-class Hoosier:

• We cannot give up on Trump voters if we want to win states like Indiana. Sure, 25-35% are completely batshit insane. Ignore them. Try the rest.

• We agree on more issues than we disagree. Our shared priorities are ignored because of corruption. They hate government because it’s captured by monied interest groups. We hate monied interest groups because they’ve captured our government. Focus on this.

• On the “culture-war” issues, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. No matter how abhorrent their views, we need their votes. I believe if peoples’ material needs are sufficiently met, if they’re not struggling, then the hatred and bigotry will largely subside. You don’t need to blame somebody for your condition if you’re in good condition. Additionally, I like to dismiss things like abortion restrictions, book bans, and LGBTQ discrimination as “big government overreach”. Use their language.

• Be unapologetic and authentic in advocating your positions. The people who liked Trump did so because he didn’t mince words, wasn’t “politically correct”. Sanders voters likewise appreciated his authenticity. Look at a guy like Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) and how we ran last year. Nobody likes politics-speak. It’s okay to be angry. Hell, we should be angry. But we have to direct our anger in the right direction.

Look, as progressives, you and I know that America has never been great for everybody. People of color, women, and queer folks have been fighting to be fully included from the beginning. We must continue the struggle to advance their cause. But if we don’t defeat the rising authoritarian movement, no progress can be made. We’re trying to rebuild the New Deal coalition here. From the 1940’s to the 1970’s, at least for cisgender, heterosexual white people, the American Dream was possible. Some of our neighbors remember that. They remember a government that taxed the wealthy, supported the middle class, and expanded social programs. They remember a competent bureaucracy that worked for them, not corporate overlords. So, let us not focus on the “Again.” If there are Americans who want to “Make America Great,” assume good faith and see if we can’t make America great, together.