It was late-fall of 2015, and the end of an era. Our latest troubles as the world’s most enduring democracy were finally behind us, and endless possibilities lit up the road ahead.
I’d argue it was the most unappreciated and significant moment in modern American politics.
The Barack Obama Administration was in full wind-down mode after seven of the most influential years of governance in our nation’s history. The Great Recession was yesterday’s terrible news, and the criminal War in Iraq had been reduced to another ugly red, white, and blue stain that we’ll never be able to scrub out of America’s fading fabric.
Obama had delivered peace and prosperity, after George W. Bush’s eight years of war and economic collapse.
As the 2016 election started coming into view, there was a real feeling in the air that maybe, just maybe, a blissfully bored America was ready for something new — or at the very least, a tuneup of some of the important social issues that Obama had built into America’s engine.
Thanks in large part to the Supreme Court’s wretched Citizens United decision, and a Republican Party that was quietly taking over all our courts, it was apparent that there was gobs of money everywhere except where it should be: in the hands of the American people. Our deep-pocketed politicians, their bloated political parties, and all those damned consolidated banks and corporations had stolen too much cash and power, and needed to be slapped back but quick.
It was finally time to do something to level the playing field and even the score. It was finally time for an adjustment and a new way to conduct America’s business.
During this sliver of time just nine, short years ago, everything seemed possible. America wasn’t so much divided by parties as it was class. Too few had too much.
The time was right to return power to we, the people.
Maybe it was naivety, or maybe it really was legitimate hope, but my only overriding wish heading into the 2016 presidential election was that it featured a race with fresh faces and political ideas, and anybody BUT another Bush or Clinton.
I know, I know …
I supported Bernie Sanders at the time, and will go to my grave believing he would have beaten Trump. There was an energy to his campaign that was driven by people who had traditionally been cast aside by the two major political parties, and were finally ready to reclaim their time.
Suddenly they had a voice, and fresh ideas for America’s way forward. Was it smoke and mirrors? Maybe, but you couldn’t ignore the hope in the air, and at least the idea of new possibilities.
Out with the old, in with the new ...
When Sanders won big here in Wisconsin in the 2016 primary I thought we might be onto something. He was drawing huge crowds, and it was fun and exciting while it lasted.
Look, I am not here to re-litigate that awful election, I’m really not, people. I proudly voted for Hillary Clinton, and something inside me died forever when she lost to the terrible man on that unbearably cold November night.
The point of this walk down memory lane, is that I believe the majority of this country is very much still where we were preceding the blast in 2016. That moment never really went away, it just got buried under the rubble of the ongoing political storms we have found ourselves smack in the middle of ever since.
I also happen to believe we are better equipped for the fight we find ourselves in right now than we were back then, but more on that in a moment ...
Right now, thanks in large part to the billionaires and oligarchs we were warned about nine years ago, we are somehow into another Trump presidency. This time, though, the monster has truly been unleashed, and with the backing of fascists all over the globe, and a Republican Party of traitors, he aims to finish us off for good.
At the rate he and his boss, Elon Musk, are going, America will be an unrecognizable mess by this summer.
With that as a backdrop, we have never needed fighters on the Left more than we do now, yet somehow the Democratic Party seems to be fighting from the slop of some ditch, instead of from the high ground on the frontlines of the war for our survival.
It is appalling, and I for one have had enough of this cowardly s---.
Where are the leaders in the Democratic Party?
Why am I being assaulted by fundraising messages, when the people who want all this damn money have no damn plans to put down this attack?
It has gotten so bad that veteran Democratic “strategist” James Carville actually went out with a piece in The New York Times this week advocating that the party which has made him rich should do … are you ready for it? … absolutely nothing right now to combat the Republicans’ attack on everything good in America.
Here’s where I jump in real quick to admit that I mostly can’t stand Carville, or for that matter, most of these squishy political operatives, who always get paid no matter who wins. I generally had to wash my hands, and clean out my ears after talking to these people when I was a newspaperman.
Just so much bulls--- …
Carville got exactly ONE thing right 33 years ago — “it’s the economy, stupid” — and has been dining handsomely off it ever since. I had almost come to respect his decades-long grift, but it should be over for good after the slop he pitched in that damn NYT column.
There’s so much idiocy in it, it is hard to pinpoint where it completely hit rock bottom, but the thing that really lit me up was this bit taking aim at Democrats’ approach to stopping Trump and his subservient Republicans in 2018.
Get this:
“(Doing nothing right now) is a wiser approach than we pursued in the first Trump administration, when Democrats tried and failed at the art of resistance politics. We voiced outrage on social issue after social issue. We spun ourselves up in a tizzy over an investigation into Russia. We fought Mr. Trump at every corner, on every issue imaginable and muddied up our message in an unwinnable war. We were saved only by his lousy governing and a lot of effort on our side finding good candidates to run for the House and Senate in 2018. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is retreat on the immediate battlefield — and advance in another direction.”
You can keep re-reading that insulting crap until it makes sense, or you can stop listening to this complete idiot and the people like him in the Democratic Party, who still believe it is 1992.
By this fool’s telling, what we (The Resistance) did in 2018 was ineffective.
If rolling to massive victories in the House, giving Nancy Pelosi the Speaker’s job, winning myriad local, statewide races, and racking up key governor races across the country was a failure, I’d hate to hear this idiot’s definition of winning.
Worse yet for know-it-alls like Carville, Democrats reclaimed the White House and the U.S. Senate just two years later.
Oh, and that “tizzy” over Russia? Well, it turns we were exactly right about that, too.
On Friday alone, Trump and his sickly Vice President JD Vance officially surrendered to Putin as they tried to publicly embarrass Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever witnessed.
Carville, and the people advocating for Democrats to do nothing right now can line up and kiss my ass.
We need fighters, not quitters.
To quote Zelenskyy, "We need ammunition, not a ride …"
We need to be messaging our collective asses off about the damage that billionaires like Musk and traitors like Trump are doing to this country at the behest of murdering dictators like Putin.
This message is ready-made and should be on full blast and repeat mode.
We are a country that is quickly receding, not ascending. We are weak, not strong. Prices are rising, not falling. We are bowing to dictators, instead of flattening them.
Give this a thought: If Putin had been officially elected President of the United States instead of Trump, would he be doing anything differently than what we are seeing right now?
How damn hard is this to understand?
We are very close to losing it all, so we better get our s--- together quick.
The good news is — hard as it is to see — is that thanks to that 2018 resistance effort that Carville hates so much, we are in better shape than we were in 2016 to fight this war. We have political infrastructure in place that we didn't have back then.
How many new people have you connected with across the globe since 2016 who care about the same things you do?
What we don’t have is enough political leaders who are stepping up to meet the moment, and for the life of me I just don’t get it.
So maybe it’s time for the people to lead. After all, that is the real idea of America.
And if the people lead, then maybe or so-called leaders will follow.
This was all in front of us in 2016, and I swear to you it is again.
So who’s with me?
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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.