The pessimists (I was one) weren’t right, but neither were the optimists.  At this writing, it looks like we’re in for more of the same in the nation’s politics.  The American electorate is worried with many voters saying and doing contradictory things.  

But let me focus on some optimistic notes.  Given what many expected, the Republican victory in the House is Pyrrhic.  It’s also testimony to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.  Given the defeat of a number of Trump-backed Republicans, the election may unleash a war between De Santos and Trump, which would benefit the country.  There is no question:  Democrats did far better than expected. 

If Democrats win the Nevada and Arizona Senate seats, it will strengthen the Nevada UNITE/HERE Local—a good thing both for labor and the country.  For example, let’s hope the new Teamster leadership develops an electoral program like that of the Las Vegas hotel, restaurant and entertainment workers.  In Arizona, a strong on-the-ground operation contributed to the Democratic victory.  The damage done by Andrew Cuomo to the State Democratic Party may create new opportunities for the Working Families Party in New York.  Where the issue was on the ballot, anti-abortion rights propositions were defeated; where it was a key campaign issue it helped pro “choice” candidates as well.  

Candidates are important.  John Fetterman’s Pennsylvania win demonstrates that a politician who cultivates a relationship with voters can translate that into victory while, at the same time, having a history of progressive stands and victories, including:  criminal justice reform, legalizing marijuana, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, environmental racism and economic justice.

Here are some bigger picture thoughts on what it will take to significantly change things.

Problems

Democrats, Labor, Socialists, Social Democrats, et al, no matter what the country, failed for many years to deliver on election promises.  Over the longer term, and the short term as well, voters don’t forget.  

Faced with “redlining” (broadly defined here as withholding money to get desired political results) in a variety of forms by investors/lenders/global financial institutions and others with $$, or the control of money, these leaders concluded they had little alternative—Syriza is perhaps the best example; its capitulation to European demands to pay its debt no doubt contributed to its political demise.  

What if instead of getting bogged down in “negotiations” that weren’t real, Syriza had won the cooperation of longshore unions across the globe to refuse to unload a product targeted for boycott of a highly visible German brand?  Or what if it had organized allies to pull deposits from a targeted European bank.  Or…  The point being that Syriza got trapped in what Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis later characterized as non-negotiations:  it was clear in retrospect that the lenders were not going to make substantial concessions.  

Obama’s bank bailout that left homeowners in the lurch while bailing out bankers is another example.  Nor was that an exception to the rule:  he has a long history of ties to the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) complex in Chicago.

These failures leave incumbent social democrats, liberals, “progressives” and socialists the objects of skepticism from those whose economic interests they slightly served (at least better than the Right), if they served them at all.  American voters in the industrial Midwest know that Bill Clinton brought them NAFTA.  (You can’t successfully pursue immigration reform without stemming the tide of Mexican, Central and South Americans forced from their farms, homes and jobs by American support for corporate-defined “globalization”.)

Confidence in Institutions

Here’s how Gallup sums up its current annual survey of confidence in American institutions: “Americans’ confidence in institutions has been lacking for most of the past 15 years, but their trust in key institutions has hit a new low this year.”

Most of the institutions Gallup tracks are at historic lows, and average confidence across all institutions is now four points lower than the prior low.

“Notably, confidence in the major institutions of the federal government is at a low point at a time when the president and Congress are struggling to address high inflation, record gas prices, increased crime and gun violence, continued illegal immigration, and significant foreign policy challenges from Russia and China. Confidence in the Supreme Court had already dropped even before it overturned Roe v. Wade, though that ruling was expected after a draft opinion was leaked in May.

“The confidence crisis extends beyond political institutions: a near record-low 13% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.  Confidence in institutions is unlikely to improve until the economy gets better — but it is unclear if confidence will ever get back to the levels Gallup measured in decades past, even with an improved economy.”  

The problem has become deeper than economic performance.   The gap between promises and results alienated vast numbers of voters, especially white working, and lower-middle class, who then were vulnerable to the appeal of the man on the white horse. “I, and only I, can solve these problems,” said Trump, as did his Swedish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish and other counterparts.   

Powerless to attack those with the real power, this constituency needed someone to make them feel better — attacking “The Other” served them and right-wing politicians perfectly.  For example, few Democratic politicians call out NAFTA as a major source of Mexican immigration to the United States.  To do so would require attacking a history of Democrats supporting the treaty and “globalization” of which it is a part.  Lord Acton’s warning about the corruption of power needs to be balanced with the corruption of powerlessness which damages the human spirit and creates the soil Donald Trump tilled.

Civil Society

What follows when civil society institutions erode and disappear?:  isolation and the destruction of community.  Social media are non-stop.  They feed the anger.  The alienated can find relief by blaming The Other: “kick the dog” when you can’t kick its master.  For those in power, divide and conquer is a useful strategy.

It is a mistake to dismiss all this as scapegoating.  “I want to be somebody” is an expression of being recognized, of meaningful membership.  And that is what is being shouted out now by people who feel ignored, abandoned, voiceless, and without hope for the future.  (They were depicted by Hillary Clinton as a “basket of deplorables,” and Barack Obama said during his run for President, they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them…as a way to explain their frustrations.”)  Whatever elements of validity there might be in his argument, a Presidential campaign is not a seminar.  

The erosion of community, the increased isolation and loneliness of people, the powerlessness that arises when one does not belong to a democratic collectivity that offers a powerful voice—these are among the results of the erosion of civil society.  The causes are long-term, and the solutions will not come overnight.  No single election campaign, or even series of them, can rebuild what has been torn-asunder over a long period of time.

In a community, people talk with one another; there is deliberation among them.  Organizations to which they belong, and in which they have confidence, have the capacity to evaluate political proposals and offer alternatives.  But unions, for example, have largely become service and advocacy organizations:  they provide things for members and act in their behalf, rather than serving as vehicles in which members argue, discuss, deliberate, make compromises and act collectively for themselves.  Instead, a member “files” a grievance which may take years to resolve and is done without his/her participation. At contract time, full-time union officials haggle with management over the terms of a contract. The process takes place in downtown hotels; participation by members in “glass house” negotiations is, for the most part, a thing of the past.  The contrast is expressed in a familiar labor organizer complaint that “members act like their dues bought them an insurance policy”. When they’re in trouble, they want the union — understood as a third party — to provide them benefits. 

Ironically, the better full-time elected leaders and paid staff perform the “representation” task, the more difficult it becomes to persuade members they have to do anything more than vote in public and union elections, and pay their dues.  When profits were growing and markets expanding, some sharing of the benefit with workers worked for major corporations.  But with slowdown and foreign competition, things got tight.

Even given the above, union membership has an impact on political preferences.  But the private sector is now down to about 6%!  Stirrings in places like Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, and poll results showing growing support for unions, are hopeful signs.  There’s a long road yet to go.

The alienation described above is not limited to urban and rural moderate-to-middle income whites.  It extends across lines of race, gender, age and geography.  It is at crisis proportions.  I have focused here on this group of white people because they are the volatile factor that is most vulnerable to appeals from demagogues and the use of scapegoats.  But beware:  there are signs of Black and Latina/o shifting to Republicans.  A small gain by Republicans in these two constituencies can have a major impact on election outcomes.   

Corporations fought back.  

That shouldn’t be a surprise.  On the occasion of their 1937 defeat by the United Auto Workers/CIO, General Motors’ negotiator John Thomas Smith said to CIO leader John L. Lewis, who had strategized and led the winning campaign,“Well, Mr. Lewis, you beat us, but I’m not going to forget it.  I just want to tell you that one of these days we’ll come back and give you the kind of whipping that you and your people will never forget.”  GM lived up to its word.  

In the film Salt of the Earth, management finally decided it couldn’t break the miner’s strike.  Hartwell, the on-site representative of the corporation, says, “I’ll talk to New York. Maybe we better settle this thing…For the present.”  

In both these cases, it was a union that brought the power structure to the negotiating table by its power to deny profits to the corporation.  The farm workers did it with grape and lettuce boycotts.  At the peak of its influence, the civil rights movement did it with mass disruption and the threat of breaking apart the Democratic Party alliance that included both Blacks and Dixiecrats.  

Building sustainable people power is what led to these results.  When that power eroded, so did the victories. Keep your powder dry!

What Follows?

ORGANIZE!  These are not a short-term problems to be overcome by slightly better candidates offering better messages by more sophisticated means. Nor is it overcome by ad hoc “mass mobilizations” after which “the troops” go home—sometimes with a victory but more often with little to show for their energy—leaving only the activists for the next “demo”.  

ORGANIZE democratically with a lower case “d” so that members are the real owners of people power organizations and create a counterculture of deliberation thus able to realize when compromises aren’t sellouts because they decide they’ve stretched as far as they can and need to get back to their day-to-day lives. They conclude, because they’ve learned this truth from their own experience, that the way toward better compromises is broadening and deepening the base, and engaging it more in the life of the union (or whatever organization we’re discussing—neighborhood, interest, identity, etc).  Instead, we have a seemingly endless proliferation of narrowly-focused advocacy nonprofits and social media substituting for people-to-people politics.

Lowest Significant Common Denominator Demands

We need a path to majoritarian politics that recognizes the rights and interests of the constituencies comprising it while not demanding from potential allies that which they cannot deliver in their own respective constituencies.  That’s a tough one, especially for the most oppressed and discriminated against. This difficult road to navigate must include short-term benefits for whatever segment of a majority we’re talking about. But it pays far higher dividends in the longer term.  

To take a controversial example:  in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, there was widespread support among Americans for criminal justice reform.  With a longer-term perspective, the shift in recognition of the reality of police brutality could have created majorities for significant change.  Instead, “defund the police” became the dominant campaign—divisive even within the Black community, and certainly not a winner among the rest of the American electorate.

There are other examples.  Since the 1954 Brown v Board decision on school integration, reliance on Supreme Court decisions to win major policy changes seemed a good way for minorities to achieve rights.  This path was followed in Roe v Wade.  It seemed to work.  Now it looks problematic.  To win by persuading everyday people of your point of view takes a longer-run view of what it takes to win durable victories.  It begins with establishing relationships that go beyond “deep canvassing” let alone phone-banking or mailing postcards.

Reporting on their work in Kentucky, SURJ said, “We are headed to bed on election night with a huge victory to share: after SURJ members made more than 110,000 calls as part of a powerful, multi-racial coalition in Kentucky, we just blocked a near-total ban on abortion. This is how we beat the Right. SURJ brings white people into multiracial fights by engaging real issues that affect them. When we organize, we win.”That’s the right road.  They’ve just started down it.

Conclusion

Given where we now are, a reasonable timeframe would take us to 2040, with the 2032 presidential election an important marker along the way, and numerous smaller victories that bring both concrete benefits to people and changes in the relations of power—the “us versus them”.  

The bigger game is more transformative –which at the center involves economic and social equality, and the break-up of vast centers of unaccountable power into units that are either member-owned (consumer and worker coops), or whether publicly- or privately-owned are accountable to “the people” through their civil society institutions and public policies they support.  Electoral politics are part of that.  So are mutual aid, member benefits, direct negotiation and action with and against power centers, boycotts, and other forms of popular power that make small “d” democracy a reality.

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