Bernie Sanders makes an excellent point. Politics isn’t just about who you elect. People have to be willing to fight for what they believe in all the time, not just once every four or eight years.
One of the things that distresses me is that often liberals and progressives fight hard to win an election and then sit back and blame everything that goes wrong on the person they elected.
I have to admit that Republicans have learned this lesson better than Democrats. They fight at the state level, they fight for school boards. They get involved at all levels. Of course, some of this is because they typically have a huge money advantage, especially since the Citizens United decision. But Dems have a huge advantage in people.
Gays figured this out and totally turned around the fight for gay rights. They didn’t have to elect a majority of gay politicians to do this, they just had to change a majority of people’s attitude toward gays.
Progressives need to get involved at all levels of government and outside of government. If we do, we can achieve anything.
You want single-payer health care? We can do it. You want higher education that doesn’t bankrupt people? You just have to fight for it. Get involved.
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One advantage that Conservatives have over Liberals is that it is so much easier to fan fears and then argue for simplistic solutions than it is to educate people and offer real analysis of complex problems in a non-binary world.
Another advantage Conservatives have is that Liberals tend to be more accepting of people having different ideas. Conservatives can, until recently, more easily circle their wagons whereas working coalitions of truly diverse interests can be like hearding cats.
Third, ignorance rarely benefits liberal causes. Bigotry does not advance liberal causes. Racism does not advance liberal causes. Xenophobia and nationalism do not advance liberal causes.
But the solution, as you stated is ‘Progressives need to get involved in all levels of government and outside of government.’ We tend to be less interested in the day to day working of local institutions. Sometimes liberal acceptance of our differences can be too quiet and like LGBTQ communities, we need to step proudly out of our closets.
Ugh, but, being involved the time is so HARD! #UghSeriously