Some thoughts on the election

!. I expected that Democrats would do well on election night, including winning the House and Senate, but I never imagined — few did — that the scope and depth of the Democratic victory would be so far reaching, so earthshaking, so consequential to the country’s future.  

To say that a political realignment occurred across the country doesn’t capture what happened on election night. I heard it described as a tsunami which in my reading of the results seems like a better characterization of what occurred. Nowhere was this better evidenced than in the South which historically, and to this day, has been the citadel of racism and reaction. 

If this tsunami was first felt in Georgia, it continued in South Carolina, spread to Texas, even Arizona, and returned to Mississippi.

One can say that the South — and the country — will never be the same. Historically a bulwark of slavery, Jim Crow, and political reaction and a drag on the democratic and progressive development of the country as a whole, it now contains the political makings of a new era in which justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, begins to flow down like a mighty stream. 

None of this happened on its own. It took, among other things, the sheer determination of people grinding every day for a more just world and tens of millions of people using the power of the vote to rebuke Trump and Trumpism on election day. Even Trump, in the early hours after the election, had to acknowledge that fact. But true to form and type, a day later he quickly did an about-face, naming Stephen Miller, the heartless and nazi like architect of his onslaught against immigrants and democracy, as his new chief of staff. 

Two days later, Republicans in Congress following the dictates of Trump, successfully opposed the impeachment of the war monger Pete Hegseth and elected their House leader of the Republican caucus, the fascistic Jim Jordan. 

These actions signal that Trump and MAGA are digging in and preparing to resist the new political realities that issued from the elections..

This isn’t an argument for a cautious posture on the part of Democrats. To go forward they and the far flung democratic movement have to go, well, FORWARD!

While Democrats are taxed with the responsibility of cleaning up the damage of the Trump administration and his loyal acolytes in the Congress and the Supreme Court, they also have a duty to press forward an ambitious agenda.

A point of departure, it strikes me, is to undo the “Big beautiful bill before its punishing effects go into effect at the beginning of the new year as well as shutting down the war with Iran. Other legislative priorities, not least affordability, will surely and quickly follow.

2. The solid south is no more!!! A third reconstruction is underway. Thank you Mississippi!

3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. characterized Mississippi in his “I Have a Dream” speech as “a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression.” Mississippi is changing!

4. There is more work to be done in Mississippi and elsewhere, much more in fact. But on this night when a Black man, Scott Colom, has been elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, some celebration is in order.The two main political currents — center and left — in the Democratic Party registered victories in last week’s election. While the progressive–left current impressively scored important electoral successes, it seems to me that centrist-liberal current registered even more. If that is the case, it should surely inform the tactics of both currents now and especially when the new Congress convenes.

5. It is said by political commentators in the election’s wake that social gospel politics entered the arena of politics on the Democratic side for the first time, thanks to newly elected Senators, James Talirico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas. But anybody acquainted with the Black political tradition knows full well that social gospel politics has been a cornerstone of this tradition since time immemorial. And that remains the case today as it was in yesteryear.

Rev Martin Luther King was the peerless voice of the social gospel in the 20th century, but he didn’t invent it nor did it die when his life was tragically cut short. It continues in the Black church and in the political life of Black people, who generously share this inspiring and lucid tradition with the rest of us.Rev Martin Luther King was the peerless voice of the social gospel in the 20th century, but he didn’t invent it nor did it die when his life was tragically cut short. It continues in the Black church and in the political life of Black people, who generously share this inspiring and lucid tradition with the rest of us.

6. If one wants to know about the strategic and special role of Black people in class and democratic struggles in general and in electoral struggles in particular one has to look no further than their role in the South in this recent election.

Whether it was registering new voters, election outreach, mobilizing the vote, and electing progressive candidates, women as well as men and white as well as Black and Latino, the country as a whole, not to mention the South, will never be the same.

For longer than we care to think, white racist domination of the South has not only been a drag on the fight for Black equality there, but also a brake on democratic, egalitarian, and working class progress in the rest of the country.

But thanks to the heroic efforts of the African American people, and African American women in particular, in the South in this election that brake on the country’s as well as the South’s democratic and progressive development has been greatly weakened.Whether it was registering new voters, election outreach, mobilizing the vote, and electing progressive candidates, women as well as men and white as well as Black and Latino, the country as a whole, not to mention the South, will never be the same.

7. The fascist danger has eased for sure. Trump’s popular standing has taken a big hit. Even in the Republican Party his voice doesn’t carry the same force as it did. Moreover the MAGA movement is in disarray and reeling. But Trump remains in the White House and because of that he still wields, if he so chooses, enormous power. His control over the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the FBI and other institutional arms of repression make him anything but a paper tiger. It would, therefore, be unwise and dangerous to dismiss the fascist danger.

9. When I first joined the Communist Party I paid, along with my dues, an additional fee called Southern Solidarity. Its purpose was to set aside money for our work in the South. I’m not suggesting the Democrats do the same, but they would be wise to allocate extra monies for the party’s work in the South.

Such an extra allocation would pay off handsomely in a region of the country that has historically acted at once as a backwater of racism and political reaction and a drag on the progessive and democratic development of the country’s as a whole.

Think about the implications if the Democratic Party this election year had allocated extra funds for the political campaigns in Florida, MIssissippi, and across the South.

10. I hope DSA has more to say about the elections. Political formations of the left in my view should possess and employ a wide angled and dialectical lens to analyze political developments, especially when those developments add unexpected wrinkles and new possibilities to shape and reshape the political landscape as this election did.

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