“Now, generally speaking, would you say that things in the country are going in the right direction, or have they pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?” – (Morning Consult, right track, wrong track poll question).
Concrete Rules
I’ve been a student of politics since Mom pinned a “Kennedy for President” button on my blue sweater. I was three years old and it was in 1960. And there are “age old” rules in politics, that proved themselves accurate over the more than sixty-five years of my lifetime. One of those, concrete, indisputable rules is this. If the majority of the nation think the country is on the “wrong track”, then the Party in control of the government will be the “loser” in the next election. That makes a lot of common sense. Democrats control the House, the Senate, sort-of, and the Presidency. On August 15th, 70% of the country said that the United States is on the “wrong track”.
Morning Consult breaks this down by political party affiliation. 47% of Democrats thought we were on the “wrong track”, 78% of Independents, and 91% of Republicans agreed. And that fits perfectly with the “age old” rules.
So I’m a lifelong Democrat. I can count on the finger of my right hand, not including the thumb, how many Republicans for any office I’ve actually voted for. I actively campaigned for ten different Democratic Presidential candidates, including working on the professional campaign staff of one. So if you’re looking for what a “Democrat” thinks, I think I should count.
I think the United States is on the wrong track. And I don’t blame Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer a bit.
Driving that Train
So will the “wrong track” poll make me vote Republican, or even make me not show up to vote in November? Are you kidding me – I haven’t missed a contested election since 1974 (when I turned eighteen). And I am more motivated than ever to go out and support my candidates. Just as importantly, I am motivated to do everything I can to stop those that I blame for our Nation being on the “wrong track”: the Republican Party.
It’s not a matter of policy disagreement, though there are a whole lot of Republican policies I disagree with. I disagreed with a lot of Republicans all of my life. But through most of that time, I felt that we shared a common goal: the good of the United States. My Republicans friends (and family) just had a different view of how to get to that goal, and I respected our differences. In our current era though, for the first time in my sixty-two years of politics, I don’t feel that we share a common goal.
Blocking the Tracks
I don’t even need to get into the “MAGA” Party that dominates Republican life. Senator Mitch McConnell is the embodiment of establishment Republicans, called by many of his fellow party members a “RINO”, Republican in name only. And yet his avowed goal, since Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, is to stop all Democratic legislation. He isn’t interested in governing, and wasn’t able to get much done even while he had the reins of power in his hands. But he absolutely wants to prevent anything and everything from happening. Failure of the Democrats is enormously more important to him, then the good of the nation.
Give him his due; while McConnell had power, he was able to achieve two “stellar” legislative actions. He passed a trillion dollar tax cut. By definition, tax cuts cut taxes for those who pay the most, so the wealthy got the most benefit. And he transformed the Supreme Court into a branch of the Federalist Society. they now promote a view of America as “set in legal concrete” at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
But past that, McConnell sees the Senate as a political battlefield, without a larger view of serving the good of the nation. It’s that obstructionism that motivates me to go out and vote for any Democrat I can find. And I haven’t even gotten to MAGA.
Jump
Our country is definitely on the wrong track. One of the two major parties is the engine leading us down that track. They are headed away from “small d” democracy, and towards a more authoritarian and oligarchical (gotta love that word) society. While it’s easy for even the “good” Republicans to disclaim the extremists that control their locomotive, what they don’t seem to get is the entire Party is enabling America to race away from our core values.
There are a few: Liz Cheney, John Kasich, Larry Hogan; who tried to change the direction of the Republican train. They want to “pull the switch” and move their party back from the “crazies”. But, like a car stuck at the crossing as the freight comes through town, they’ve been swept aside, hardly even slowing down the MAGA juggernaut.
The only way for us to get on the “right track”, is to jump from that train. And that’s the critical fact that may break the “concrete, indisputable” precedent of electoral life. I’m hoping my fellow Democrats, and the rest of America, do that in November.
