Watergate, We Have a Problem

By Sam Ajah

Watergate, we have a problem:

Democrats are in serious trouble. With less than 7 months until the midterm elections, Democrats are fighting for their lives on Capitol Hill, as well as down on the local and state level, and they seem to have nothing to offer prospective voters in the midterms. This isn’t a new problem, but quite simply, a titanic quagmire which Democrats have created for themselves that has put the party into the ultimate nightmare scenario. With Dems retiring left and right, taking crushing losses on home territory, and increasing gridlock from Biden down to your local council person, Dems are walking into the Midterms empty handed and dangerously exposed. 

You must be asking yourself, “Sam, how is this Democrats’ fault? It’s the GOP obstruction!” Well, I hate to break it to you, but we have been creating this problem for ourselves for decades, and unless we immediately do something about these problems, you might as well invite the insurrectionists back to the Capitol by mailing them copies of every single door in the Capitol instead of free at home covid tests. “What are these problems?” you must be asking yourself, and here’s my thoughts: party infighting, corporate interests and dark money PACs, ignoring voters, and pure arrogance. Since I don’t want to talk your ear off, quite simply, these issues can be mainly traced back to Moderate Democrats (Democrats in name only, in my opinion).  

Progressives and leftists aren’t stopping Democrats from winning, moderates are. This might be my most controversial take in this essay, but I think it’s a valid take. Over the last decade, especially since 2016, there’s been a growing discourse between “moderate” Democrats and progressive and leftist Democrats. There’s this notion amongst the Democratic establishment, older Democrats, and moderate Democrats that vocally and publicly embracing popular public policy platforms such as “Medicare for All” (Universal Healthcare) is a bad idea, and dare I say, cancerous to the Democrats. It’s an interesting reaction coming from the party of the New Deal and Great Society (we’ll talk about these programs later) to reject the concept of using the government to do good for society. This change in behavior is rather recent. 

Tangent time! By the time Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, his election signaled the epitome of the Southern Strategy (also known as the party switch), a GOP political-electoral strategy that used pre-existing racial tension in the South coupled with extreme white backlash in opposition of the civil rights era to realign White Southerners to switch from voting for Democrats to voting for Republicans. Democrats needed a way to stay competitive in elections, so they adopted neoliberalism as the party platform as a counter-strike to Republicans's adoption of far right-wing neoconservatism. 

To get back on track, the rise of Reaganism and neoconservatism in the early 70s throughout the latter part of the twentieth century made Dems take a more conservative route in hopes of appealing to a more conservative audience. It's my belief that becoming more conservative Democrats in exchange for the possibility of cording voters left many longtime Democratic voters high and dry as well as exposed and unprotected from the harsh trivialities of our capitalistic Society. 

Take blue collar workers for example. The most notable trend from Obama's election in 2008 to Trump's election in 2016 was a shift in voter bases, especially with blue collar workers. For a long time working-class Americans were the backbone of the American economy and society and helped to drive the progress and prosperity that allowed the United States to amass much of its wealth. What did these workers get for  building the county on their backs? Oh, they got next to nothing from the very people (Democrats) that claim to be acting in their best interest. Trump spoke to those blue collar workers much better than Hillary Clinton. To be frank, the DNC and party leaders made a horrible decision to back her, because she is the hyperbolic embodiment of the “liberal Elite"  that conservative Talking Heads continually mock Democrats for.  To add insult to injury, the party was not willing to pursue issues that most of their voters were concerned about, such as expanding the right to vote, economic relief for the working class, and more generally a change in the status quo. Instead of that, for their decades of support for the Democratic party, they were rewarded with a  candidate that seemed extremely impersonal and dare I say disgusted by the thought of interacting with working-class Americans.  

I know 2016 is a sore subject for a lot of Democrats, but it offers a lot of warning signs for the party, and I fear that we are repeating the same mistake that we've been making for decades now. People like Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin aren't interested in representing the actual needs of their people. They're more interested in doing the bidding of the Republicans and being bribed by dark money groups and corrupt corporate lobbyists, and then proceeding to go on television to stare-down the American public and say that they're  a “Democrat" despite  acting like a goddamn Republican 90% of the time. What's more upsetting is that the constituencies they represent have everything to gain from passing sweeping legislation like the Build Back Better Act (in its original format),  the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, the Equality Act, and so many other pieces of groundbreaking legislation that now have next to no chance of ever passing and being signed into law because the two of them believe in doing the bidding of Republicans and corporate corrupt Elites rather than doing what they know is right. I believe that this sentiment describes Kyrsten Sinema the greatest. I find it incredibly interesting that a once self-proclaimed “Prada socialist" is now the superweapon exclusively used by corporate interest and Republicans alike to sink common-sense legislation that would drastically improve the life of everyday Americans, especially the working-class and marginalized communities. Hearing her say that she supports legislation like the Equality Act, but then grandstanding about why we need to continue to defend the filibuster is the most insulting and disappointing thing for her to do, not only to her constituents but also to queer, mainly bisexual folks like myself, folks who saw her election to the Senate as a good thing because that meant we were going to get some representation in the chamber that historically has been slow to any sort of change. 

Sinema was elected when I was in high school. I was an angsty closted bisexual teenager, but I was excited to see a bisexual person, like me, going into a chamber of the Congress to make change happen. Four years later, I couldn't be more disappointed and angry with Kyrsten Sinema. Her tenure in Congress has been nothing but a disgrace to the Democrats, the queer community and most importantly  the citizens of the great state of Arizona. 

I’m going to hop off of my soapbox and leave you with some food for thought. How are Democrats supposed to succeed and do well with voters and supporters alike if they have such a hard time attracting people to turn out to vote for them as well as organize with them when they have given them next to nothing in return? This brings me to black people like myself. When Democrats won the Senate runoff in Georgia as well as the electoral votes, white moderate Democrats like Joe Biden praised black people, specifically black women, for turning out and voting blue. And yet still today, nothing has been done by the new Administration nor Democratic-controlled  Capitol Hill to even begin to repay black women and marginalized communities at large for giving Democrats the extra step to win their races. To them, POC  like me are useful and expendable props for every election cycle. They know without the help of marginalized communities  they will be fighting for their lives just to keep their seats. Despite this, they  still refuse to even act like they care about the most marginalized constituents, whether that be paycheck to paycheck working class family in Tennessee, a family with a child with complex and expensive special needs that has put them into crushing medical debt, or someone being the first in their family to go to university but struggling to find ways to pay for it on top of being racially profiled and singled out for their identity. If Democrats really want to win the midterms, then they're going to have to get very serious about how they treat their voters and constituents, as well as the groups of people that have built them stable and level roads for them to walk on. We saw what I just spoke about happen in Virginia, a democratic superfortress in the south that was quickly turned into a conservative garrison for the same reasons I described. People are sick and tired of waiting for fruitless promises and agreements that won't let them anything in return. Democrats, especially older, white, and/or wealthier  Dems, need to think about how they can  use their privilege and resources to help out the people they represent at any cost, even if that means losing their job. That is the job of a politician, to serve the People who gave them the privilege of representing them. I fear that Democrats are going to ignore the same warning signs that have been going off for decades.