Not the sharpest party in the drawer
I have a confession to make. I’m a registered Democrat. I know. It’s been this way since a brief dalliance with the Greens back when they took themselves seriously — 2002 was a hell of a year here in Maine! Anyway, I’m not a Dem fanboy or anything. I’m not even a team player, really. I just don’t want to be killed by Republicans.
Now, I don’t know how this election is going to play out, but self-destruction will probably be a continuing national theme. So, if we have another election, I have some advice for my fellow Dems and our leadership that should make things easier next time.
Texts
Stop texting me. Really. Yes, I know some of these are scams, but our party has raised over $1.5 billion this campaign season and some of that was made by selling our personal contact information. Build some goodwill and put a stop to this shit. My phone is exploding with “This is Kamala…” and “Tim Walz here…,” usually accompanied by a headshot in case I can’t quite place their names. And sometimes the texts come from the same number! Am I supposed to believe two of the most powerful people in the world are taking a moment during the busiest campaign of their lives to ask me for $10? And that they share a phone?
Also, what is with the “CRUSH” and “DESTROY” language? Do you know how many times a text has told me I can “HUMILIATE TRUMP” by sending them $5? I’m not trying to get all Puritan Mainer here, but I thought only the other side talked that way. Also, what a weird lie! Trump is somehow going to find out I gave Kamala a dollar and then shrivel in shame? Him? Figure this shit out, Dem leadership.
Clichés
I swear to god, I will lose my motherfucking mind if one more dipshit tells me, “If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t try so hard to keep you from doing it.”
First of all, that phrase displays such a fundamental misunderstanding of who “they” are that anyone who says it should be forced to take every single history class. My father lived through a time when “they” killed us for just trying to enter a white bathroom. Seventy years ago, white people in this country wouldn’t let Black people eat vanilla ice cream. There is a long, cruel history of “they” trying very fucking hard to keep us from doing things that couldn’t possibly matter in the slightest, except in that they robbed us of our dignity.
The next time you feel the urge to sum up a centuries-long struggle with a cute little self-soothing aphorism, try looking up how your vote actually works. You’ll find that the census, voter maps, the structure of the House and Senate, the Electoral College, etc., all skew hard right for the sake of white supremacy and that Democrat votes — especially the Black ones — are diluted, displaced and/or dismissed every step along the way.
Voting is not enough
Voting is nowhere near enough and it’s fucked up that only one of the two parties understands this. It’s even more fucked up that it’s the wrong party! They’re out here banning books and protesting tampons in bathrooms and what are we doing? Bragging about record oil production, overfunding police and how much Dick Cheney loves us! Just a few years ago, we were all FIRE UP THE PUSSY HATS, WE’RE HITTIN’ THE STREETS, THE BORDER, THE AIRPORTS! Remember all those existential crises that sparked global uprisings? What are we doing about them now, aside from making them all much, much worse? I’d settle for protests outside of Mar-a-Lago, but I guess we stay home and do nothing until November — unless it’s scolding people who actually are protesting. That’s cool too, I guess.
•••
The difficult truth is that our party is swerving right with such speed and recklessness that you’d think we were about to pass an off-ramp. And we don’t care. According to a recent study by the Sister District Project, 32 percent of Republicans don’t vote down-ballot — which seems enormous until you read that the same is true for 80 percent of Dems. And one of our most frequently excuses for that was ignorance of the candidate/issue.
We’re not the smarter party. And since 80 percent of us don’t seem to understand what a democracy is, we’re unlikely to save it. Group problems require group solutions, but you don’t have to wait for everyone else to make your community safer and better. Get a first aid certification. Take a naloxone training course. The University of Maine offers shelter-building classes. Whatever happens next, we’re all going to need help. Be able to offer some.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com.
