Elections are About the Future

The Fight Will Not End in November

Democrats must remember that winning the election in November is not the end of the fight for a better society and a planet we can live on. On Super Tuesday, we came out in favor of Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders because most of us believed that he was the who had the best chance of ridding our country of the monster who now occupies the Oval Office.  Maybe, we are right. However, in the fight to defeat our current president, we should not forget the reason why he has to go.


He has to go not just because he is repugnant to us but because he prevents us from solving the most important problems of our time. Moreover, he is not doing that alone. The whole Republican Party is preventing us from moving forward. We will be unable to do what needs to be done as long as the Republicans control our federal government.

We Have a Moral Responsibility to Act

The Republicans are a barrier to progress because they deny our moral responsibility to work together to solve our shared problems. They believe that collective action is always bad because it infringes on the rights of individuals, but we Americans are not merely a scatter of individuals. We are a community, and we know that we must work together to solve our shared problems. No scatter of individuals each working alone will save our planet for our children and grandchildren or provide healthcare for everyone.


We must work together to deal with our many social, economic and environmental problems because we have a moral responsibility to provide a safe, sustainable an equitable world for ourselves and for our children.  Our government is the means by which we act as a community, but today, our government is controlled by people who deny we really have a moral responsibility to act as a community. We cannot move forward until we take back our government.


This election gives us an opportunity to take back our government, but that will be valuable only if it enables us to solve the problems that we face, and from that point of view, Joe Biden is far from an ideal candidate. If he is elected, he may too easily abandon progressive ideas in order to obtain bipartisan support for whatever proposals he puts forward. He is good at “getting things done,” but passing a bill that accomplishes too little is not a victory.

We Need to Organize Around Issues

We must ask ourselves what we should demand of him in November and beyond? What must he promise to work for? For example, what should we demand of him on health care reform? He will not support Medicare for All, but maybe, we can get Healthcare for All. Some version of an expansion of the Affordable Care Act could accomplish that, and perhaps that is what we should insist on.  We cannot look for ideological purity, but perhaps, we can make life better for all Americans. We must ask ourselves similar questions about the other issues we face? Do we demand free post-secondary education, or would we be satisfied if it were cheap enough to be affordable? How much of the Green New Deal do we really require? Of course, we start by demanding the whole enchilada, but we know that we probably won’t get it. So, what can we accept? Also, what are our priorities? If we could get Healthcare for All but not the Green New Deal, what would we do?


One of the keys to success in any negotiation is knowing in advance what would make a deal a good one for us. What is our minimum requirement for a deal? When would we walk away from a deal?

We need to think clearly, and to do that, we need to organize around issues. In every local, Democratic Party, there should be groups working out positions on issues, and we should communicate our positions to our state and national parties. Our positions can be the basis for keeping the pressure on our new president and his allies in Congress to fight for a better society and a livable planet.

The Election is About the Future

We can make progress toward becoming the society that we should be. The election in November is about moving forward. It is about us and our community. We must work hard to replace our current president because we have a vision of a better future. We should work for that vision.


That means that we must keep the pressure on our party and our candidates to work for real solutions to the problems that we face. That will not be easy.  If Biden wins in November, he will be hampered by his tendency to compromise his principles for political expediency. However, we can help him to avoid doing that by keeping the pressure on him for change.  Polls have shown consistently that most Americans support reasonable solutions to our problems. So, we can steer our leaders in the right direction if we keep the pressure on them.


Organize around issues! Keep the faith!