Who is Equal
I’ve studied politics since I was four years old in 1960. Well, maybe studying might be too strong a word for that first decade, observing might make more sense. But, really, since 1968, still one of the most horrific years in American political history, I’ve studied politics. America is a push-pull of political ideology, and it has been since President Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas. And it’s not so much conservative versus liberal: it’s been a battle of America’s “destiny”.
In the early 1960’s, the Civil Rights movement challenged America to live up to it’s mythology. “All Men are created equal” was Jefferson’s founding phrase. He absolutely knew the personal and governmental contradiction evoked by that. Jefferson owned over a hundred slaves, and regardless of his personal “ideology” was economically unable to change that status. And the Nation recognized slavery and racism as a structural doctrine. “All Men are created equal” was an aspiration, a “dream” that for the Founding Father’s was some future generation’s problem.
Almost two hundred years later, Martin Luther King and many others demanded of that Nation their right to the Dream. While the Kennedy Administration played around the edges, it took a racist President from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that put statutory language to the Declaration’s key phrase and the results of the Civil War a century before.
Betrayal
Many white people saw Johnson as betraying their vision of the American dream. They saw America’s destiny as a white majority Nation, the continuation of the Manifest Destiny brought over from the 19th century. It was that idea that drove the Native Americans to “land jails” called reservations, and propped up the Jim Crow Laws.
George Wallace, the racist Democratic Governor of Alabama, embodied that tradition. He led a “rump” party in the Presidential election of 1968, taking most of the old Confederacy with 46 electoral votes. At that time, the South wasn’t ready to vote for a Republican, the Party of Lincoln. But they were willing to vote for a Democrat who spoke their segregationist, state’s rights language. And that opened the door for the Republican Party. Nixon became President.
By 1972 Nixon consolidated his position in the South, beginning the Republican tradition of Southern electoral hegemony. It wasn’t that Wallace’s philosophy changed: it was simply subsumed by the Republicans; the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Rockefeller now the party of state’s rights and the language of white superiority. Need an example? Google Willie Horton.
Since then little has changed. Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, didn’t embrace Nixon’s change, and lost to a Southern Democrat and moderate Jimmy Carter. But Reagan did, and so did Bush of Maine (the father) and Bush of Texas (the son). In between was another southern candidate, Bill Clinton, assisted in his first election by a Texas billionaire who split the Republican vote.
2008
All of that changed in 2008.
One last political “fact” to keep in mind. Democrats have been a majority in this country since the 1930’s. The power of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition, and his thirteen years in the Presidency, echoes down the generations. It wasn’t about which party has more “members”. For sixty years there were always more Democrats than Republicans (Pew). The critical factor wasn’t “identification”, it was always about turnout.
In 2008, the young Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, motivated Democrats to come to the polls in record numbers. He symbolically changed the landscape of American politics. A Black man as President, leader of the Nation, seemed to signify the arrival of Martin Luther King’s Dream.
But just as Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation triggered the backlash of George Wallace, Obama’s election began the “Last, Great Fight” for America’s destiny. “Last, Great” because a decade from now, America will no longer be a white majority nation. The Manifest Destiny dream of the 19th century will meet its end at the ballot box, that is, unless supremacists can alter the structure of our laws to protect their power. And that’s happening: voter suppression laws, extreme gerrymandered legislative districts, and the built in anti-democratic compromise of the electoral college might maintain their white power a little longer.
Imperfect Vessels
And in the last two decades, a new wrinkle was added to American life: a “bifurcated” media. There no longer is a single “truth”. Just last night, 51% of Iowa Republicans believed that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election (Register). Our “post-truth” era allows the Trump “miracle”.
A miracle; because a single scandal, much less ninety-one felony charges, would have ended any political career just twenty years ago. Look at Jonathan Edwards, leading early candidate for the Democratic candidacy in 2008. Even the possibility of charges against Hillary Clinton were enough to tilt the 2016 results. But today, Donald Trump has made court appearances the core of his Presidential campaign. He’s made “victimhood” an honor. In Christian terms, Trump is the “imperfect vessel” who is “suffering” for his fellow man (at least, fellow white men). And “his” media backs his story. Even Fox News, after losing over $700 million is legal damages for lying about the 2020 election, is “back” to supporting Trump.
Trump is placed as the hero, supporting the “common man” (read, white man) against the rising tide of change. And he’s done a remarkable job of staying in that position, even if it’s mostly his attempt to stay out of jail. Certainly the Republicans of Iowa believe him.
Which leads us to the election of 2024. Some Democrats are struggling to “get behind” Joe Biden, another “imperfect vessel”. But this election is about something so much more important than the “vessels”; it’s about what the American Dream should be.
It’s going to be an election between two old white men. But it’s really a choice echoing back to the founding of the United States in 1776. Are “all men (and women)” really created equal? November will decide our destiny.
