The Democrats Have an Opportunity to Change the Decrepit Status Quo

The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads. 

After Joe Biden’s nomination crisis cast a pall over the country and the political process leaving supporters, citizens, and opponents of authoritarianism confused, frightened, and seemingly abandoned, Vice President Kamala Harris now stands as the de facto nominee and leader-in-waiting for the Democratic Party. The party’s ceaseless hemming and hawing lead to this moment and exposed a deep, deep rot that has been festering for decades now.

The Democratic Party has generally failed in its duty to represent its constituents and to confront the growing crises in this country. It failed in 2016 to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president, it has capitulated in the rise of neoliberal globalism and all of its oppressions and indignities, and it has repeatedly shown a troubling gap between espoused principles and actual values, as the atrocities in Gaza demonstrate each and every day.

I cannot tell you what will happen in November. The aftermath of the Biden crisis, and the ascent of Harris, could go any number of directions. It is my hope, as this unfurls, that we will see a robust reinvigoration of the Democratic Party that will oppose Donald Trump and the Republican Party with the same energy the GOP brings to dismantling the liberal order. I cannot be certain that that will be the case, but what I do know, however, is that this saga made it abundantly clear that the Democrats are in need of some serious introspection and soul-searching.

We have been failed by this generation of Democrats. We have been told that our values and our priorities and our own fates are negotiable, disposable, and secondary to the electoral fate of the party and its members. In the wake of that offense, we have watched our coalitions torn asunder. It has left many of us seemingly isolated and with an inescapable feeling that we are powerless.

For years, voters have engaged in restless punditry. We have picked candidates and positions and even our own realities all through the lens of a timid, electoral strategy. All along, we have ignored that the vast majority of this country, in some cases upwards of 70% of the population, desire and yearn for an ambitious political project that tilts the system away from the powerful, but the Democratic Party has merely gestured at this while refusing to fight in good faith. All the while we have looked for saviors and messiahs and heroes, someone, anyone, to do the hard work for us.

Now is the time to recognize where all of that has brought us.

Politics is not just ticker-tape celebration. It is not just dancing in the streets. It is not just the ability to give good speeches. It is a struggle. It is coalition building. It is getting our hands dirty, taking risks and risking great disappointment in the pursuit of a better world. This moment is frightening and unsettling, but it can also be constructive.

We are living in a new paradigm and hesitancy will only usher in a future of blood and toil. We must determine our actual principles and separate them from these exhausting and meaningless performative gestures that permeate every level of our politics. We must all ask ourselves, what is it I am prepared to fight for? And, at long last, we must ask ourselves if the Democratic Party is equal to the task.

It is not a surprise that this moment of cultural and political upheaval led to a crisis within the Democratic Party. Any rudimentary analysis of the last century must, at the very least, come to the conclusion that the Democrats have played a role in leading us to this precipice. Throughout history, moments like these reveal the true character of the actors involved. What we see now is a political system that has represented the neurotic fear of the white middle class and the wishes of a donor class more interested in lining their own pockets than fronting an actual political project that might change the status quo.

There is a learned helplessness that holds us back, a shrugging resignation that this is the party we have always had and will always have. That is unacceptable now. As the 2024 election grows more and more chaotic and distressing, it is time we use our fear to good use and pressure our leaders to create meaningful change. For too long our fear has held us back. Forced unnecessary compromises to America’s pundit class. Dulled our sense of imagination and hope. If we are to find something good and true in the future, it will depend on our ability to leave behind “good enough” candidates like Joe Biden and demand better representation. In navigating 2020 with extreme caution, and believing that Biden alone could defeat Donald Trump, the Democratic Party created this very scenario without much in the way of a plan for the next election right around the corner.

The Right has run circles around the Democrats for the last half-century. The long plan to corrupt the Supreme Court and judiciary writ large took decades and unbelievable sums of money. The poisoning of America’s media ecosystem and deconstruction of reality itself was a job that took planning and determined execution by a cadre of true believers. The machinery that Trump stands upon is not his own, but a juggernaut cultivated and honed by an army of well-resourced donors with patience, vision, and grim determination.

This is a chilling moment, and seeing the Democratic Party’s dysfunction burst forth into the fresh air is distressing, but there very well may be a hopeful time in the future where we look back on this whole damn mess and wonder how we ever lived like this. The only way to get there is to join together and push the Democrats forward with all our might.