Tag Archives: HOPE

What Keeps Me Up Nights

I sure hope I make it to November–not because I’m old (although I am), but because I spend my days obsessively following politics–both national and local– and vacillating between hope and despair. Indiana is scary enough, but as I noted yesterday, the national election will pose an existential challenge: America will either go forward or far, far back.

The source of my angst about the Presidential election was recently summarized in one of Robert Hubbell’s daily Substack newsletters. As he wrote:

The election will be decided by hundreds of millions of Americans taking democracy seriously by voting in tens of thousands of elections at a moment in history when one party wants to deny women full citizenship and personhood, deny Black Americans the right to vote, deny LGBTQ Americans their dignity and equality, deny children safe schools, deny all Americans a future free of man-made climate catastrophes, deny workers of a living wage, and deny the peaceful transfer of power every four years.

When I look at the threat posed by that party–once (in a very different world) my own party–I fear for the futures of my grandchildren and the others of their generation. I get bitter when I think about a reversal of the social progress made by activists of my own and previous generations who worked hard to bring the American “body politic” closer to our founding aspirations of liberty and equality. 

But most of all, I mourn the death of my long-held belief that the great majority of my fellow Americans are sensible, good-hearted and fair-minded. Until very recently–actually, 2016–although I knew that there were angry, disturbed and hate-filled people “out there”–I estimated their percentage of the population at something between 10%-15%. I have been rudely disabused of that estimate, given the grim recognition that millions of my fellow-citizens continue to support a man who is defiantly ignorant, hateful and very obviously deeply mentally-ill–presumably, because he gives them permission to revel in and voice their own bigotries and grievances.

And then there’s the Electoral College, which scholars estimate gives Republicans a 3% advantage….

But then I get hopeful. (I have emotional whiplash..)

The Harris/Walz ticket is so normal, and the enthusiasm they’ve generated is so encouraging. Not only do the Democrats have better candidates, former Republicans–including very conservative ones like Liz Cheney– are coming out of the woodwork daily to endorse them. They’ve raised much more money, which–in addition to powering their campaign–is another sign of support and enthusiasm. They have a widespread “ground game” with far more field offices than the Republicans. New registrations are up, especially among groups that tilt Democratic, calling the “likely voter” screens employed by pollsters into question. 

In the wake of 2016, there has also been an explosion of grass-roots organizing. According to a 2019 report from the American Community Project, those post-2016 grassroots groups — sometimes labeled “Resistance” groups — have become an electoral force to be reckoned with.

Reporters and academics have established certain baseline facts: The new groups are disproportionately composed of middle-aged to retirement-age college-educated women.

They are especially prominent in America’s “suburbs.”

Their hands-on campaigning formed part of the “Blue Wave” that flipped suburban seats to the Democrats in November 2018.

Since 2019, those groups have continued to grow and multiply, in significant part thanks to Dobbs, the Supreme Court’s reversal of a constitutional right to reproductive liberty which continues to motivate voters, especially but not exclusively women voters. 

I can’t shake my belief that if Americans of good will and good sense turn out to vote, Democrats will not only win, but win big, that November could really be a “Blue Wave” election, a turning point that could revive my previous faith in the American public. 

MAGA is, after all, a reaction to the broad cultural changes in this country–changes that include widespread acceptance of the growing equality of women, LGBTQ+ Americans and people of color. Large numbers of families now include same-sex couples and/or religious and racial intermarriages. Fewer Americans report memberships in fundamentalist Churches. Workplaces are increasingly diverse, and Americans from a variety of backgrounds now work together and get to know each other. All of those cultural changes have lessened fears of the “Other” that were once more widespread.

I remained convinced that MAGA Republicanism is a panicked reaction to those cultural changes by people who feel threatened by them. Social change is destabilizing, especially for people who lack the personal or communal resources to adapt–but surely, that doesn’t describe a majority of Americans.

In November, we’ll see which of these contending analyses is correct, and we’ll know what kind of world my grandchildren will inhabit.

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The New Civic Engagement

I know I do a lot of criticizing and complaining on this blog. But I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that there are emerging signs of improvement, too.

A lack of civic knowledge and engagement is at the heart of so much that is wrong in America. It often seems that the only people who are engaged are the malcontents and bigots–the people so angry and so threatened by social change I can almost hear them screaming “stop the world, I want to push you off.”

It’s less noticeable (they aren’t organizing armed insurrections, after all) but thoughtful, civic-minded people are also engaging, and in very productive ways. Let me share two uplifting examples.

The first is a book sent to me by a reader from Encinitas, California, titled Potholes, Parks and Politics. Several years ago, Lisa Shaffer moved to Encinitas, which is a mid-sized city near Santa Barbara. She was disturbed by the incivility and “good old boy” ethos of the then city council, and she ran for and won a seat on that body when one became open. She and another Council member, Teresa Arballo Barth, subsequently decided to write a guidebook for citizens who wanted to get something done locally–but didn’t want to have to run for public office to get that something done.

Shaffer and Barth have done a fantastic job. They have anchored their guidebook in the importance of three things: civility, clarity and communication. They explain why and how to properly define the problem–it isn’t always what it seems. They also stress the importance of identifying who actually has the authority to solve a particular problem. (Sometimes, as Indianapolis folks know all too well, local government lacks that authority.)They lay out the process for contacting those authorities, making one’s case, and achieving a result, and they do it with easy to understand examples and definitions. They provide a “toolbox,” explain how local government works, define arcane terminology, provide lists of resources–and do it all in less than 100 pages, in an incredibly readable book.

It can be ordered through Lisa’s webpage, and I enthusiastically endorse it.

The second example is closer to home, and it warms the hearts of all Hoosiers who looked longingly at what Stacey Abrams and her collaborators achieved in Georgia. It is called–appropriately–HOPE. You can access its website here.

HOPE stands for “Hoosiers Organized People Energized.”

The numbers tell the story: Indiana has two million unregistered Hoosiers. That number includes 316,000 Black, Latino, Asian-American and Indigenous citizens. It doesn’t include the 270,000 young people who will be eligible to vote for the first time in 2022.

HOPE is a 501c3 organization formed to find and register them–to expand Indiana’s electorate and increase the state’s embarrassingly low  turnout. HOPE has a partnership with vote.org, giving it expanded capabilities to verify and register Hoosiers. The organization will also work to streamline the registration process and create effective ways to ensure that previously ignored Hoosiers have a voice. The organizers have done their homework–they’ve consulted with people in several states–not just Georgia– that have effectively expanded their electorates, and they are ready to apply those measures in Indiana.

The organization has also recruited an impressive list of advisers. (I am honored to be one of them, but there is always room for more–and, of course, always a need for funding.) (Hint, hint.)You can sign up and/or donate at the website.

Expanded turnout will create a more balanced General Assembly, and enable us to send fewer embarrassing Neanderthals to Washington. I have written before that even with the Indiana GOP’s extreme gerrymandering, there would be far fewer “safe” districts if more voters cast ballots. The districts created by our gerrymandering map-makers depend upon information reflecting previous turnout. If we can turn enough non-voters into voters, we can change the results in several of them.

America is clearly at an inflection point. We have multiple problems, many of them seemingly intractable. We can either throw in the towel, give the country over to the crazy Q people and Trumpers and Christian Nationalists–or we can get involved. We can ensure that under-represented people are registered and able to vote, and we can give citizens the information and tools they need to make not just local but also state and national government responsive.

It is enormously comforting to know that these efforts are proliferating. America may be down, but we aren’t out. Yet.

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