Love those anti-Trump ads. Very amusing. Satisfying. Really twist the knife. That said, brief reminder: You know what was before Trump: the worst foreign policy disaster in US history under Bush, Citizens United, gerrymandering, court packing, Merrick Garland, bad tax laws...
...the end of the Fairness Doctrine, a right wing campaign to win statehouses and set election guidelines, voter suppression, racism in the GOP, sexism in the GOP, the rise of the hard right, Newt, Tom DeLay, the Contract with America, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin...
Mitch McConnell has been a Senator for 25 years, the Reagan Recession, the Bush Recession, out of control military spending, blocking giving healthcare to all Americans, attacking a woman's right to choose, deregulation mania at the expense of the environment...
...the list goes on. Many of the folks who make those hard-edged anti-Trump ads actually helped promote those things. And when Trump is gone, they will return to promoting them and related initiatives. But our problems don't stop there.
There have been policies under Democratic presidents that have contributed to the crises that are bringing America down. Pandering to the right with calls for more police and welfare reform and ending Glass Steagall during the Clinton years.
Misguided immigration policies, slow-walking financial reform, not be sufficiently aggressive on environmental reform under Obama. We should remember that bad things can happen under good or average presidents-that long-term destructive trends can continue or worsen under them.
The emotionally satisfying political stance of the moment is to beat Trump. But remember there will be a day after Trump. The country will still need to be governed. The forces that got us here will still be active and strong. On that day, we'll need more than a new president.
We'll need to end McConnellism in the Senate and House. We'll need to undo the manifold ways that the GOP has corrupted and rigged our political system--from voter suppression to packed courts, from gerrymandering to enabling dark money. We'll need to fix what is broken...
in that system--from the electoral college to the way we choose Senators. But we will also need a positive agenda...to know what we are for rather than just what we are against. We can't fix US inequality or the institutional racism or sexism here just by getting rid of Trump.
We need to guarantee healthcare for all. We need to fix a corrupt tax code. We need money out of politics. We need to fight to save the environment. We need to create new jobs and plan a path for recovery out of the COVID recession.
We need to restore American leadership worldwide. We need to fix institutions attacked by Trump. We need to punish wrong-doers and corruption in the Trump team and ensure that no one or no group is ever able to operate as they did, above the law, again.
We need to fix our schools and our infrastructure. This list goes on as well. And none of these agenda items are going to happen by splitting the difference with obstructionist Republicans. Each of these are big, bold, and urgent items that require a Democratic Congress.
But even with a Democratic Congress they will also require leaders--in that Congress and in the Administration--who will advance this essential agenda, this agenda upon which the future of our society and our future status as a country and as a democracy depends.
If you see the problems we face today as all-Trump then you will not fix them. Indeed, you will create an opening for decades of terrible, destructive, unjust, un-American policies to continue. We don't require just a new leader. We require a new course.
And that new course requires a new generation of clear-eyed, creative leaders who will push the Democratic establishment to do what, frankly, it has failed to do for most of the past four decades. Beat Trump. But know that to truly win, we must both retake and remake US politics.
