The Tea Party, Heroin, and Fall 2022 Elections
The Tea Party, Heroin, and Fall 2022 Elections
Jack Trammell, Ph.D.
One of the most frightening days in my young teaching career was when I stared out at thirty restless, sometimes angry faces and realized: âIf these students, wanted to, they could all act together and just standup and leave, and go wherever they wanted in the school, and there would be nothing that I could do about.â As I continued to look out at them, I wondered what kind of trouble I would get in for doing something like that. Something compulsive rose up inside of me and I said, âI know Iâm a new teacher, and you donât like things so far, and actually if you wanted to, thereâs nothing stopping you all from acting together, getting up, and walking out of here. I couldnât write you all up. I couldnât stop you.â I expected them to do it, and there was some new fidgeting.
But they didnât. They just looked slightly more annoyed than before. They sat there, throwing trash, whispering to each other, putting heads down on the desk, etc. They either didnât care enough to all get up and walk out, didnât want to, orâand this is what I think is the keyâthey had no clue about the power of acting together toward a common purpose which could disarm an entire, elaborate bureaucratic system. They had no inkling of the collective power they could wield should they so choose. If all 1400 of them arranged a walk-out to the outdoor park at 11 am, there would be nothing 100 teachers and a lone police officer could do to stop them.
Nothing quite that dramatic ever happened (so far) in my teaching career. But now as a sociologist, I look back on it in amazement. Our systems of power function precisely because people have absolutely zero idea about how powerful they collectively are.
That brings me to the politics of the present. The Tea Party twenty years ago was the first political group in the new century to understand the power of collective action in our politics. Although itâs easy to make fun of their yellow signs (Iâll do more in a separate blog on thoseâŚ), and some of their more extreme ideas (like birds being tiny drones spying on people), I actually learned the hard way in my 2014 campaign for Congress about the spoiler power a rock-solid 20% actually wields. Metaphorically, the Tea Party DID decide to get up (all of them) and walk out of classâand no one did anything about it.
It took people a while to figure out why their power was so out of proportion to their actual numerical strength.Â
Democrats are in a losing battle. They are the party of diversity, the party of acceptance, the party of ideas that are broad and often intellectual (liberal in the classic sense)âbut that means when someone says âletâs stand up and walk out of the classroom,â they all look at each other in confusion. Some cautiously get up; others donât; a few try to walk out and the principal shows up at the door and says âsit back downâ and they do. Some students protest and say âlet the others walk out.â But the whole thing degenerates quickly and the next thing you know all the âgoodâ students are seated and learning again.
The lesson Ds: your 50% means nothing when you donât act collectively.
Now the original Tea Party has been gobbled up by MAGA (and some Tea Party purists are drowned out in their unhappiness about that) and the granite block is now about 35% to 40%. They represent the largest, least fragmented political block in America by a long stretch. Tea Party purists are hoist by their own petard because they know the power is in the solidarity, and not often enough the power of the ideas, so they are trapped. A little âDonât say gayâ here and a little âControl a womanâs bodyâ there and most Tea Partiers swallow their libertarian visions of minimal government interference, without a glass of water, and choke it down to trade it off for the heroin they have grown addicted toâsolidarity.
If Democrats lose in 2022, it wonât be because their ideas arenât good. Even the Tea Party has some ideas that are good (in 2014 I wanted to eliminate the federal Department of Educationâthey liked that); it wonât be because the majority of Americans donât agree with their ideasâthey do, in fact. If they lose, it will be because they havenât learned the very simple lesson the Tea Party grew famous forâsolidarity. If everybody gets up and walks out, there is nothing the rookie teacher can do.
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Jack Trammell is Full Professor and Chair of Sociology, Criminal Justice and Human Services at Mount Saint Maryâs University (MD). He ran for Eric Cantorâs seat in 2014, and has written more than two dozen books about politics and history. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at [email protected]
