I feel a nauseous optimism about the presidential election.
I chose the word nauseous over cautious because my stomach is churning at the very possibility Trump could get a second term. But I don’t believe that will happen. The progressive forces in America are overtaking the regressive.
I’m not paying attention to polls. It’s way too early to worry about them. Most of the public hasn’t even focused on the upcoming election.
Biden gave a powerful State of the Union address – feisty, bold, energetic and upbeat. He was combative – taking on Trump with gusto, even besting Republican hecklers like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m convinced he’s equipped to win re-election.
The broad American public is starting to see just how weird Maga Republicans really are. Republicans comprise only 28% of voting Americans. More than 40% of voters consider themselves independent, unaffiliated with either party. Most of these independents don’t want the unhinged running the government.
During the State of the Union, Americans saw Republicans heckle and boo Biden and then sit on their hands when Biden declared that “No child should go hungry in this country.” Hello?
And the official Republican response to Biden’s speech by the Alabama senator Katie Britt was, to say the least, bizarre. Delivered from her kitchen, her rebuttal vacillated from wholesome to horrific.
The centerpiece of her attack on Biden’s border policies was a story about a 12-year-old Mexican girl who was sexually trafficked and raped multiple times a day at the hands of cartels before escaping. But the girl was not, in fact, trafficked across the US border; she never sought asylum in America; and her terrifying experience occurred when George W Bush was in the White House.
Britt’s oddball performance baffled even fellow rightwingers. “What the hell am I watching right now?” a Trump adviser asked Rolling Stone. “One of our biggest disasters ever,” a Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.
The Republican party is so out of touch with American values that it’s putting up outspoken bigots for major offices.
Case in point: Mark Robinson, who won the Republican nomination for governor of North Carolina last Tuesday night, has hurled hateful remarks at everyone from Michelle Obama to the survivors of the Parkland school shooting. He’s called homosexuality and transgenderism “filth” and formerly said he wants to outlaw all abortions. He’s also ridiculed the #MeToo movement, women generally and the climate crisis.
Oh, and he has a history of Holocaust denialism and antisemitic remarks. He’s suggested that 9/11 was an “inside job”, that Hollywood and the music industry are run by Satan, and that the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros orchestrated the Boko Haram kidnappings of schoolgirls in 2014. (Robinson denies he is antisemitic, and has said that some of his claims were “poorly phrased”.)
Robinson is hardly the only rather out-there Republican nominee, but he typifies the grotesque values of Maga leaders, including those of the Republican party’s likely presidential candidate.
Of course, the reason these bigots and haters are fighting so hard to defeat us is they know progressives are the future of America.
Neither their filibusters, nor their gerrymanders, nor their attempts at voter suppression can stop our rise – nor can their absurd “great replacement theory” or their supreme court majority.
I’ve been at this game for almost three-quarters of a century. It’s a long game, and America still has a long way to go. But apart from Trump fanatics, the nation is in many ways better and stronger now than it has ever been – more inclusive, tolerant, diverse, accepting, dynamic. And it will be far better and stronger years from now, because we are rising.
Sure, we must do better at organizing, mobilizing and energizing. We need elected lawmakers, along with judges and supreme court justices, who reflect our beliefs and values. The Democratic party must be bolder at countering the power of big corporations and big money, and more aggressive in recruiting and supporting a new generation of progressive leaders in electoral politics.
All of us must become a pro-democracy movement – with all the passion and tenacity that movements require.
Even so, I see a new progressive era dawning in America and I don’t believe Trump Republicans can hold back the tide.
For one thing, I see the strongest support for unions since the 1960s. Last year, at least 457,000 workers participated in a record 315 strikes in the US – and won most with contracts providing higher wages and better benefits.
Over the past 18 months, graduate student-teachers and research assistants at Berkeley, MIT and Caltech have voted overwhelmingly to unionize. The United Auto Workers has scored signal victories for autoworkers, as has the Teamsters for UPS workers. Hell, even Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team has voted to unionize.
Microsoft just agreed not to oppose unionization efforts. Starbucks – which has spent the last two and a half years employing union-busting attorneys and refusing to bargain with any of the roughly 400 outlets that have voted to go union – has just agreed to do the same.
Here’s the bottom line: the majority of Americans view today’s record-breaking inequalities of income and wealth as dangerous. They believe government has no business forcing women to give birth or telling consenting adults how to conduct the most intimate aspects of their lives.
They want to limit access to guns. They see the climate crisis as an existential threat to the nation and the world. They want to act against systemic racism. They don’t want innocent civilians killed, whether on our streets or in Gaza. They don’t want to give Putin a free hand. They want to protect American democracy from authoritarianism.
The giant millennial generation – a larger cohort than the boomers – is the most progressive cohort in recent history. They’ve faced an inequitable economic system, a runaway climate crisis, and the herculean costs of trying to have a family – including everything from unaffordable childcare to wildly unaffordable housing. They’re demanding a more equitable and sustainable society because they desperately need one.
Young women have become significantly more progressive over the past decade (even if young men have remained largely unchanged). They’re more likely than ever to support LGBTQ+ rights, gay or lesbian couples as parents, men staying home with children and women serving in the military. And more likely to loathe Donald Trump and any politician who emulates him.
Over the next two decades, young women will be moving into positions of greater power and leadership. They now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates.
Meanwhile, the United States is projected to become a majority-minority nation within around two decades.
This is not to say that just because someone is a person of color means that they believe in all the progressive values I mention above, of course. Yet overall, people of color are deeply concerned about the nation’s widening inequalities. They’re committed to social justice. They want to act against systemic racism, and they want to protect American democracy.
Unsurprisingly, these trends have ignited a backlash – especially among Americans who are older, whiter, straighter, without college degrees, and male. These Americans have become susceptible to an authoritarian strongman peddling conspiracy theories and stoking hatred.
Trump Republicans want us to be discouraged. They want us to despair. That’s part of their strategy. They figure that if we’re pessimistic enough, we won’t even fight – and they’ll win everything.
But I believe their backlash is doomed. The Republican party has become a regressive cesspool, headed by increasingly unmoored people who are utterly out of touch with the dominant and emerging values of America. And most Americans are catching on.
I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. We’re in the fight of our lives. It will demand a great deal of our energy, our time, and our courage. But this fight is critical and noble. It will set the course for America and the world for decades. And it is winnable.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
