Biden Won. Now What?

Don’t just go back to brunch.

We won the presidential election, but the real struggle begins now. The problems that America faces didn’t start with Trump, and they won’t go away once he’s gone. Further, we can’t even lay the blame at the feet of the Republican party exclusively.

Though the Democrats will retain house control, the Senate will likely remain in Mitch McConnell’s hands until at least 2022. And if the past is any indication, McConnell will be reluctant to allow Democrats the political victory of delivering COVID-19 relief under Biden. For Americans struggling under the pressure of the pandemic, a Heroes Act appears as a pipe dream. A troubling mélange of political failures and unwillingness to compromise, resulting in a lack of material benefits for the American people.

Pollsters predicted a more decisive Blue wave, and the conventional political wisdom agreed. Why couldn’t democrats win big when it seemed like the entire country — almost the entire world — was against the president for his bungling of the pandemic and laughable rejection of science? As liberals, progressives, socialists, leftists all, we must now reckon with the fact that this election was much closer than we believed it had any right to be.

A tweet shared by the Biden campaign in September 2020 declares that there were 100,000,000 eligible voters who didn’t vote in the 2016 election. Turnout in 2020 was slightly better, but there are still huge swathes of the electorate that aren’t being reached. It seems clear that these are folks who don’t feel that their needs are represented by our current politics. That may be either a “feature” or a “bug” of the political establishment, but either way, they deserve to be held accountable for it.

It’s clear that the democrats’ strategy to peel off rich suburban voters from the traditional Republican base at the expense of working-class constituents isn’t working. Republicans won voters over with strongman populism — “Trumpism”. Why do Americans succumb to this, and how must the Left answer? It’s time for a new strategy.

The youth coming of age in America right now have inherited a politics in which many of the non-conservative institutions are infuriatingly meek. Many politicians in the Democratic party downplay progressive views they have, catering to moneyed interests instead, even if the majority of the country supports these views. A good example of this is common sense gun reform, often touted as the main dealbreaker for republican voters, but which in reality, most Americans support. Yet Democrats still haven’t found a way to outmaneuver the staunch resistance and “they’ll take your guns” rhetoric espoused by Republicans to pass meaningful reform.

I believe that it’s important to understand why mainstream Democrats often shy away from fights or choose to compromise with Republicans. To me, it’s simple — it’s much easier than mounting a meaningful opposition. And it’s very easy to assume the mantle of “the party of science and virtue” when your opponents are denying science and separating children from their families. We have no choice, this is where the bar is in our country. The democratic establishment commands an immense amount of power and money, despite the fact that they often don’t deliver for their constituents, for the sole fact that they’re not at war with science and reality.

I believe that after a generation of often getting elected, despite not delivering, Democrats haven’t been conditioned to be fighters. They’ve been conditioned to be the sane alternative to a right-wing death cult. As a result, they don’t know what to do when the situation calls for them to actually oppose.

So it’s frustrating, albeit explainable, when an elected senator from the most progressive state in the country praises an illegitimate confirmation process constructed to jam a radical right-wing justice through the supreme court. The fallout (or lack thereof) from the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, is an uncomfortable reminder that our most powerful elected officials have much more in common with each other than they do with us, regardless of party affiliation.

Take the hypothetical situation of an overturned Roe v. Wade decision. If a congressperson’s granddaughter needed an abortion, her family could pay for a flight to anywhere in the world to have the procedure done. The only people that an outright abortion ban would affect are people that don’t have the financial means to travel outside of their state/locality.

Realizing that working people have more in common with each other than with the rich and powerful, is to be conscious of our class interests. They may have money, but there’s more of us than there are of them. As Obama said in his 2020 DNC speech, they’re “counting on [our] cynicism”. Yes, they are — Republicans, incumbent Democrats, establishment politicians all.

The fact is, we have to push centrist democrats further to the left if we want any kind of meaningful reform. We have to pressure them however we can — through direct action, protests, and primary challenges if necessary. We’ve seen successful grassroots campaigns against out-of-touch Democratic incumbents from several Justice Democrats in recent years. Small in numbers they may be, it’s proof enough to register as a real fear for establishment Democrats. There may still be relatively few of us, but the Left is more powerful now than it has been for decades. Let’s not stop now, let’s keep up the momentum.

What can one person do? Donate or volunteer with organizations such as Justice Democrats. Get your news from progressive media sources. Be open-minded towards others who identify as liberals, progressives, socialists. Words may seem scary, but people are people. The Left can decide to stop the cancelling and the political litmus tests, and unite through our shared devotion to creating a more equitable world.