Liberals to Left of Me and Moderates to the Right.

I joined the Democratic party in 1983 when I was first eligible to vote.  While I flirted with the Liberal party in New York for a bit I was always in support of most Democrats.  (A couple of times I went off the board because of protest votes).  For the most part I saw the Republican party as not the party of the people.  In all those years little has changed, except now they have embraced the conspiracy wing full on and many who call themselves Republicans live on an Earth Two, where alternative facts include the idea that our Covid pandemic is over, the Courts decide elections and President Trump has been good for the nation.  

But today, as the dust settles from what was the most bananas election cycle we see a Democratic party that is yelling at each other.  Moderates/Conservative Democrats were defeated or nearly so in some districts having been painted with the brush of the social democrats, in particular Representatives Osacio-Cortez (AOC) and Omar.  They are made at the rhetoric of Medicare for All and Green New Deal.  Progressives are saying that they came over to a candidate for President that they didn't like and deserve a seat at the table, even suggesting they will fight President Biden unless certain people are in the cabinet.  Several people are calling for the party to reach out to the 70 million Trump voters to understand their concerns and address them.  And Black women, who drove this election in many ways are waiting for the acknowledgement from many more people in the media who continue to follow their fetish of the Trump voter in the suburbs who appear to have flipped.  Look for CNN's New Day to have panels on this for years. 

Here is the thing, our party has always been diverse and have had people like AOC and Joe Manchin and everything in-between.  We need to listen to all voices and find a way to bring everyone to the table.  

For one thing, while there are clearly issues with the far left Democrats' ideas for much of middle America, they seem to know how to message.  We as a party can no longer allow the pundits on Fox News and OAN to define our positions.  In fact, we should create a team that goes on news programs, much like Pete Buttigieg has on Fox, to give our message.  The Sunday shows have been dominated by GOPers and the cable channels have tons of Republicans who comfortably lie because they make a good foil for hosts like Jake Tapper.  But when the people we need to reach don't trust the media they believe the lies.  

We need to remember that for the GOP the campaign never stops.  Watch this week, leaders of the GOP are all over television talking about 2024, while at the same time promoting conspiracies that the President actually won this election.  Ignoring the fact that the way this election has played out, though taking a longer time than expected because of Covid and mail in votes, the same way every other election has done in the last 100 years.  Calls are made based on statistics.  Rarely wrong and if so only in a singular state.  But the Trump campaign has even produced a false image of the Washington Times with a Headline PRESIDENT GORE that the paper (which is a right wing paper by the way) said never happened.  Yet someone told me his friend has a copy.  While I hate the idea, we need to be on campaign footing all the time.  Perhaps the Vice-President-elect should call a press conference and using her Attorney General skills debunk the nonsense fully.  Then the DNC should create a regular rapid response team to continue throughout the transition, at least, to offset the lies.  

We do not need to be nice to the  Lincoln Project.  Yes they were Anti-Trump and ran some powerful ads during the campaign.  But let's remember who they are.  They are right wing people who will attack President-elect Biden as soon as he starts to work on something that falls out of their ideological box.  The enemy of my enemy can still be my enemy.  Think Europe in 1946.  While there are calls for a Lincolnesque cabinet with Republicans and no progressives.  That is just not okay, we can send Steve Schmidt a cake and invite him to the inauguration we don't have to put him or John Kasich in the executive branch.

The current political climate will not allow many Senators who might be good for cabinet posts to be appointed.  Republican governors would replace them with Republicans and tip the balance of power.  So discussion of Warren, Sanders, Manchin, and Brown are non-starters.  Our bench in the party is both deep and diverse and I am certain that there can be a mix of ideas without embracing the fringes.  

But it is clear, there is a change happening in our party.  Your people who are more comfortable embracing ideas and policies that some see as too socialist are coming out to vote, have heroes to look up to, and will be the voice of the party in a few short years.  In the mean time the money needed to get people elected at every level still resides in the older Democrats whose similar visions in the 70s and 80s were doused be 12 years of Reagan/Bush and the rise of Southern Democrats who brought us Bill Clinton (a moderate in many ways) and helped a young Senator from Illinois become President thinking he was the progressive answer and turned out not so much.  So the battle inside the party continues.  

I think that a President Biden will find a way to knit the party together enough to wear out in public but not enough for G-rated photo shoot.  But we have to try.  We need to stop talking about reaching out to the Trump supporter and find out who in our party we disagree with and look for common ground there. Even if we take the Senate in January, and I am not sure we can, there will still be in-fighting and votes not cast for things that bother some members of Congress.  Hell, the right wing noise machine is already calling for Joe Manchin to switch parties.  Let's find a way to be a party that can disagree and fight for the common goal, to bring our country back, to take care of the vulnerable, to defeat the pandemic and rebuild the economic structure that makes us the engine of the world economy.  Then, when we have taken care of our own house, we can work with the neighbors.