Didn’t Even See It Coming . . .
I've always been a little behind the curve when spotting trends, particularly political ones. As a 17-year old high school senior in 1968 at a Catholic seminary, I went all-in for Richard Nixon. I had a LARGE "Nixon's the One" poster plastered on my dorm room wall. I'm not sure what appealed to me about the guy who had not yet declared that he was "not a crook." Maybe it was that the times, they were a changin', but I was stuck in a 1950s world. I certainly hadn't yet experienced the shifting mores of middle America. (I was in a Catholic seminary, for God's sake!) But Nixon's law and order message must have appealed to me since I was a guy whose family was coming unglued due to alcoholism (Mom) and too much authoritarian macho (Dad). I wanted peace and stability and that funny talking guy from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey, just didn't seem like he was going to provide it. Little did I know that Nixon's brand of authoritarianism mixed with his playing fast and loose with the law was going to tear our country apart unlike anything we had known until then. [Four years later, I would be on the McGovern bandwagon and we all know how that turned out, so, wrong again!]
Yes, I had this poster on my wall in high school ....
I couldn't vote in 1968, but in that fateful election, the country lost the opportunity to have a truly Progressive President at its helm. Hubert Humphrey had championed racial equality and working class economic empowerment (through unions) that would have brought the country into a new era of social awareness and acceptance of "otherness." Instead, we got Nixon, whose presidency and cabinet picks (and even his VP choice!) would bring mass demonstrations and generational divisions that would fester for years.
Humphrey should have been the choice of progressives in 1968.
Cultural cues have also sometimes eluded me. When most people were tuning in and turning on to Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, I was rocking out to Motown, Aretha, and James Brown. It wasn't until I hit a really rough patch in my mid-20s--after I had left the seminary and was trying to find my way in the wider world--that I was able to relate to the poetry and the disenchantment that Dylan had tapped into. I'm always a little slow to the party.
The times were changing a little too fast for me ...
That's why I'm so bereft about our national suicide—as Neil Gabbler called it in his billmoyers.com piece, Farewell, America—in electing the Big Man Donald Trump over my candidate of choice, Hillary Clinton. I suppose it's like the Nixon/Humphrey showdown. We picked the guy who was going to take us back, not the guy (or gal) who was going to move us forward. But why didn't I see it coming?
I was, after all, lucky enough to be on hand during the Democratic Convention this summer when Hillary received her crown. That was supposed to be it. The election was just a formality. Everyone loved her, didn't they? Everyone in Hillaryland, anyway. And how could that blowhard Trump ever get in? Who even believed he was serious? Wasn't he just doing this to burnish his brand?
But I could have been more adept at reading the tea leaves. That first day at the convention should have been a wake-up call. When the Bernie delegates booed at every mention of Hillary's name; when the Democracy Spring protesters talked about corporate greed and wanting to disrupt the status quo, I should have listened more carefully. I did wonder how it would all turn out, with 40 percent of the delegates feeling so disenchanted with the presumed nominee. But I just told myself that they'd get on board once the convention was over and the choice was clear. How could they be so foolish as to throw away their vote on a third-party candidate, or worse, stay home and not vote at all when so much was at stake?
Protests continued even DURING Hillary’s speech to the DNC.
I did worry about the enthusiasm gap. Even on Day 2, when the moaners and groaner were still out in force even though the Clinton camp had done all they could to heal the rift in the party in the wake of the Wasserman Schultz debacle. [E-mails released by Wikileaks revealed that as head of the DNC, Schultz had favored Clinton over Sanders at key moments during the primaries.] But I missed the bigger story, the fact that Clinton was a flawed candidate, that the constant drip of Wikileaks would continue to undermine her already flagging credibility, that the right wing’s ginned up stories about Benghazi and her poor technology choices—amplified by constant media coverage—would continue to haunt her and stop any forward momentum that her impressive credentials and wonderful policy positions, under normal circumstances, should have propelled her to victory.
We were all in Hillaryland. We were willing to suspend disbelief and thought that we would coast into the White House with a white gauzy pantsuit breeze at our backs. But it didn't happen. Somehow we forgot a key portion of the electorate--the white guys--and even the white gals jumped ship for the big talking carnival barker. Incredible, I know. And I, like many pundits and blowhard TV analysts, didn't see it coming.
Bill Clinton - working man’s President.
Bill Clinton apparently did. According to a Politico post-mortem, the former president had advised Hillary's campaign to try and find a message that would be more inclusive and resonate with the white working class, but “was dismissed with a hand wave from the senior members of the team.” Who's crying now? We all are.
I'm not exactly sure what white America has against the current situation. White collar workers are doing just fine. Wall Street continues to make a killing. Government workers have lots to do. But so many of these folks went for Trump.
And, yes, the blue collar workers are hurting. I get that. Even though the DEMS brought the country's economy back from the brink, we didn't get the credit for it because the recovery didn't extend far enough. Not enough stimulus, Paul Krugman would admonish. Should have been $2 trillion, not $750 billion. Who knew? That was during Obama’s attempted honeymoon period with those who would become his mortal adversaries. He was trying to play nice. They were out to destroy him. Sadly, their obstructionism seems to have worked. They wouldn’t hear of anything higher than the $750 billion and later wouldn’t allow Obama’s jobs bill to go through—the very bill that would have provided help to the blue collar workers! But somehow the obstructionists get to take the victory lap for having choked the American working class. Go figure. Nasty obstructionism worked. Another trend I didn’t see coming
Who’s laughing now? Not me ....
It’s going to be a very long four years. Yes, the infrastructure bill will be good for rebuilding America’s bridges and highways. (Watch Trump GET the $2 billion Obama couldn’t due to the false claim of “fiscal restraint.”) Things will begin to look shiny and new, just like Trump Tower. But our country will be no less divided. In fact, the divisions will cause a faster fraying of the cultural fabric of America. We will become increasingly polarized. And economically, the haves will retreat to their gilded cages while the have-nots are left to fend for themselves.
I may not be able to spot trends, but this seems like something entirely new. We may be witnessing the end of our democracy as we have known it, at least during my lifetime, which spans a quarter of the lifetime of the USA. It feels like we are in for a very bad time. But I won’t be able to say “I told you so” because I couldn’t have imagined we’d get to this point. I didn’t even see it coming.
