We Deserve This
We rarely enjoy history.
That sounds weird, but it's the truth. Whenever a historical event unfolds, there is often a sense of anxiety and trepidation that precedes it—the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and so many countless others. While we were aware that these events were likely to succeed, there still was a nagging, persistent voice in our heads expressing doubt. In many ways, it is a part of our psyche; human beings are programmed to be cautious in our approach. It is a trait that has kept us alive for millennia and is a trait today that keeps billions of us from becoming the latest iteration of Darwin Award winners. To be cautious is, in other words, simply a part of who we are.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in politics. While those in the field always believe that our candidate will win, there is always a nagging, persistent voice in our heads questioning our every decision. Did we identify enough supporters? Is our messaging resonating with the right people? Did we select the right graphic for our mailers? Do we have enough volunteers for this final push? Are the polls overestimating our support, underestimating our opponent, or a combination of the two? Am I doing what I should be doing in these final two weeks or should I be doing more?
Many of us were simply shell-shocked in 2016. For those of us on the ground in Florida, we truly believed we had flipped the state blue. After all, we had hit all of our campaign goals, the biggest of which was the addition of over 500,000 newly registered Democratic-leaning voters to the voting rolls. We didn't see a single Trump campaign office or volunteer in the state's fourth-most populous county. Even if we lost the state, we knew we had the Blue Wall that would help propel Hillary Clinton to the White House. When we saw her wearing suffragette white accepting the Democratic nomination, we knew she was destined for greatness. It wasn't until the last week of the campaign that we learned that her election night celebration was scheduled to be at the Javits Convention Center under a massive glass ceiling. The symbolism of having the first woman president give her victory speech in that exact setting wasn't lost on any of us.
Since 2016, Democrats have been on the defensive. So much of it has been a reaction to an election we felt destined to win. In 2018, we were hopeful but not confident of a blue wave. In 2020 during a global pandemic, we believed but weren't certain that Joe Biden would be able to flip enough states to win back the White House. In 2022 we thought but couldn't prove that the alleged "red wave" would never materialize and Democrats would do better than expected in the midterm elections. While we were right on all three counts, we still had a hard time trusting our gut and our instincts when it came to this sort of thing.
What we didn't realize is that this was by design. Those feelings of doubt and insecurity play perfectly into our opponents' hands. The media has continuously feasted on these feelings by normalizing and sanewashing Trump throughout this election cycle. Pro-Trump polls were highlighted and pro-Harris polls were ignored. Obvious patterns were downplayed like the fact that pro-choice legislation is undefeated on the ballot in both red and blue states since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The massive fundraising gap, always a clear sign of a party's strength in an election year, was barely mentioned at all. Positive economic news which helps the political party in power was virtually absent from legacy media news coverage throughout the fall. Republicans have nothing to run on and yet the fact that the election is seemingly a toss-up is a testament to the titanic failure of our media to accurately describe the current state of our country in the year 2024. At a time when we should be hopeful, the media is doing its damnedest to rob us of our hope to better help them sell their own advertisements.
Don't let them. Be vigilant but hopeful. Enjoy this moment. Because this is truly a historic event in the making. Kamala Devi Harris, a woman of color and a child of immigrants, is 15 days away from becoming President of the United States. She will be the one to shatter that final glass ceiling. Hakeem Sekou Jeffries will be the first person of color to be the majority leader of the United States House of Representatives. We will enshrine abortion rights into multiple state constitutions. We will abolish extreme candidates like Kari Lake, Mark Robinson, and Eric Hovde. The Donald Trump and JD Vance popular and electoral vote loss will be so significant that it will set the GOP back a decade or more. The American people, collectively, will rise up and do the right thing.
This is how we have to think. Take nothing for granted. But Republicans be damned if they will again try and steal our joy these final 15 days. They robbed us of our moment in 2016. We fought back in 2020. But now, we have one more chance to make history. And yes, we will still have those persistent, nagging voices about whether or not we've done enough. Those never go away. But let's all push them to the back of our thoughts and instead think about all the good we're seeing. This is our election to lose. We know the GOP tricks. We know the media's motivations. We know that we are entering the home stretch in a position of strength rather than a position of weakness. It is all gas and no breaks, which seems like a scary place to be. But if we know that this is how history is made and that it is our side on the verge of history, it can be an exhilarating ride.
One that deserves to be enjoyed.
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