Listen Up Democrats Here Is Your Message

In case you haven’t realized what it is you do best, here it is in a nutshell, Democrats: You defend democracy and all that goes to support it, plain and simple. So stop stumbling around Dems with mixed and fragmented messaging. Repeat after me. We defend democracy and all the institutions and ideals that support and expand it.

I mean, isn’t that the opposite of what you hate most about Trump? He scorns our friends and allies and kisses up to vicious enemies of democracy both foreign and domestic as he wallows in corruption. So don’t be shy. Say it. Our platform is to be a relentless defender of a government “for and by the people.” Sure Lincoln, an early Republican, said those words, but he would be appalled at what later Republicans have done to them.

Never stop saying it. We Democrats have the courage to invest in our citizens — devising and defending the public good of Social Security, Medicare and Medicare and building up our national and local infrastructures. Our opponents don’t care about any of this. They are always voting against the public good and suing to undo the public good on behalf of their greedy donors who only want what’s good for them, while their political shills dog whistling the dark side of human nature for votes.

Yes, indeed, when our power broker opponents win, my fellow Americans, democracy and you lose.

No one I have ever come across understands the essence of democracy better than Umair Hauge who writes here on Medium, or articulates the values of democracy better, with sincere passion, than that former Republican political operative Steve Schmidt. If the Democrats have any sense left they ought to grab hold of these two gentlemen and beg them to be the architects of their messaging — a relentlessly consistent missive of hope and determination to build a better nation for the benefit of all its citizens.

The following is a small sample of Umair Haque’s writing on democracy. I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him in this way.

If democracy can’t solve the social problems which affect people most, then people will turn to authoritarianism and fascism. So the nourishment democracy needs is to always be reminded that if it is not creating more prosperity, people will soon enough give up on democracy — and revert back to the tribalisms that have prevailed, time and again, throughout history. They will quite happily let kleptocrats steal from the public purse, and fascists beat minorities on the streets — as long as their lives appear to be improving, if they feel a sense of optimism and hope, replacing a sense of crushing dread and fear. Prosperity is the handmaiden of democracy — because without it, we ask too much of people: to treat their neighbours as equals and peers, when their own lives are falling apart.

Prosperity is the price of democracy. It is the sole means by which people will consent to strangers they once considered their enemies, slaves, and servants, being their equals.

The fatally foolish idea of modern American political economy misunderstood this principle badly. They thought democracy that was like the ball in the valley — it would always be pushed back into place. Because it was self-correcting, people would never give up on democracy, no matter how they were abused or mistreated, no matter how poor they grew, no matter how meaningless and empty their lives became. The central mistake was that punishment and suffering are good for people. They are not. They breed bitterness, resentment, and rage, which soon enough turn people away from democracy. “Those people used to be our servants and slaves! But they are not our equals — they never were! Let us put them beneath us again, and we will be powerful, and maybe even rich, once more!”

Sorry to say that grammatically this is not Umair’s best work, but insight wise it’s a gem of writing.

The last line of course underscores the phony Trump gambit to exploit some of our citizen’s frustrations as under the table he adds to their woes.