I have been plagued lately by a recurring dream made more troubling by the fact I don’t seem to be asleep when it overtakes me.
It began a while ago when I saw a cover of Rolling Stone with Clinton and Sanders on it next to the headline: “Hillary vs. Bernie: American politics at its best.” It was then I slipped into a dream state (or maybe through a crack in the space-time continuum) and found myself in an America where those two did not vie for the nomination of one party, but were, rather, the two candidates opposing each other for the presidency.
Can you imagine it? A country where a centrist, corporatist, hawkish liberal and a populist, Democratic socialist fought it out for the future of America?
Could it ever be? Could we ever have a political system in which our elected officials fought over who could most effectively modernize our rotting infrastructure, revolutionize our education system, purify our drinking water, reform our tax system, humanize our criminal justice system, pacify our endless war and terror and drugs, reduce our prison population and prepare us for the floods, droughts and food catastrophes racing towards us in our warmed-up planet?
Unfortunately not — not anywhere in the world (except virtually all of the European Union, Canada, Australia …. uh, you get the point). Instead, the dominant political party in this country will continue to drag America down, drown it, waterboard it over fiddling-while-Rome-burns issues like, “Is climate change and the entire scientific method a hoax or just an affront to God?”
The GOP and its nihilistic hordes — from the Tea Party to the Palins, Kochs and now the Trump-heads — have been on a bender for 40 years and like all self-destructive drunks they are incapable of saving themselves and destroy all that is around them.
Or perhaps, if you wish to be more kind, you might metaphor the GOP as a drowning man too panicked to save himself, nor to allow anyone to do it for him.
This is why all lifeguards know that the first thing you do with a panicked, drowning swimmer is punch them in the face and knock ’em out. There is no other way to save them.
And we are not far from that place. The question is, do we have a lifeguard strong enough to save us? Not yet we haven’t, but there might be one in the making.
If HRC gets the nomination and wins the election she will be not much more than a “veto president” who will keep the nihilists in the Congress from doing their worst to drown this country rather than see it emerge as a unified 21st century nation-state.
Thus the real battle is not for the presidency or even the Congress, but for the state legislatures and governorships that the GOP has captured over the last six years. (And the GOP knows this much more than the Dems do.)
No matter what you think of Obama (unless you think he is Kenyan-born Muslim, socialist, alien, zombie-vampire) his presidency, if not the man, has been a disaster for the Democratic Party.
Since the Tea Party arose like Frankenstein’s monster in 2010, the GOP has captured an additional 69 seats in the House of Representative and another 13 in the Senate. But worst of all — for the country and anyone with more sense than God gave a stone — the GOP has won 910 state legislative seats around the country, turned 30 state legislatures solidly red, and won 11 additional governorships.
This is why the GOP has a lock on this country, and yet all the while it is the minority party on major issues. The vast majority of Americans support a higher federal minimum wage, increased background checks for gun buyers and massive investment in our infrastructure. The GOP is even out of step on climate change, as those who worry about it is at an all-time high and those who don’t an all-time low. Even on taxes almost two-thirds of Americans believe the rich pay too little.
But so what? Our political system has been so gerrymandered that the people’s will is of less importance than the Confederate battle flag or ensuring every kindergarten teacher is armed.
And that is why over the next four to eight years the most important fight in the country will not be waged by President Clinton at the federal level — she will be mostly confined to putting out fires started by the Tea Party/GOP-controlled House.
The single most important fight will be at the state and even local levels to take back the far right’s gains in legislatures and governorships.
If the Democratic Party does not do this, the federal-level gerrymandering that comes about after the 2020 census will guarantee a GOP lock on the House of Representatives and all that means for our body politic — a body that has swum too far from shore, and now cannot get back.
And so we have to ask: Who amongst the candidates today can lead that fight — that movement — to save the drowning swimmer who is foundering?
The answer is Bernie Sanders.
And as of Wednesday morning, he is available to take his populist fight to the country, if no longer to the White House. Putting him, and maybe even Elizabeth Warren, too, in charge of a Take Back the Country One State at a Time campaign would be the single best outcome to the electrifying movement he has created and the millions he has energized.
Let America feel that Bern!
Joe Gannon is a novelist and teacher who lives in Northampton. His column appears monthly.