Women’s March, Philadelphia, 2018. Photo by Rob Call, via Flickr, (CC BY 2.0).
We need a different kind of wave
Yes, the “Blue Wave” was spectacular — but consider this: About 75 House seats were won by only a few points.* Close elections are normal. Three key contests, in Florida and Georgia, were so close their outcome was in doubt days after the election. For that matter, presidential elections have been decided by a similarly thin margin — the 2000 election, for example, required partisan Supreme Court intervention. So blue waves even in 2020 and after will predictably deliver a precarious hold on government.
A Blue Wave isn’t enough. No doubt much of the political class is happy enough with any majority that delivers control of the levers of government, but people want more. Progressives, liberals, conservatives, whether in the middle or the extremes of the spectrum, want fundamental change. We can’t have that even with a wave twice as high.
What history tells us about waves
For those changes, we need not just 5 or 10 percent margins, but overwhelming election victories. To see what it takes, look at the two elections marking the great transformative changes of the last century, 1936 and 1964. The first saw the creation of our social safety net, with Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability supports, minimum wage, and union rights. The second saw a rush of democratization with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the 24th Amendment, as well as Medicare, and the anti-poverty program. The election victories necessary for these changes took more than “waves.” In 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt became president with 61% of the popular vote, 98% of the electoral vote, the Democrats receiving over 3/4 of the House and 80% of the Senate seats. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 became president with 61% of the popular vote, 90% of the electoral vote, 68% of the House seats and 68% of the Senate seats.
Progressives needed not waves, but electoral landslides. Yet the vote counts are a misleading focus: In both the 1930s and 1960s, those landslide votes were the expression of massive social movement mobilizations, with millions of people taking direct action and creating leadership and organization in the streets and workplaces. And in both periods these mobilizations came with transformative cultural change, each a further realization of democracy “for the people.” In each period, militant mass movements won political change but also shaped a new cultural consensus — in the 1930s, that it was government’s job to guarantee economic security (one of Roosevelt’s “four freedoms”); in the 1960s, that it was government’s job to guarantee equality.
Normal media framing — but the election was not normal
The news media have typically focused on the “horse race” — the vote count, the work of the candidates, their parties, their strategists and donors, what the exit polls tell us about voter demographics and what 2020 may look like. This is the normal political talk about the normal political process.
But this election was not normal. Not only was the midterm turnout historic, the largest since 1914.* This “Blue Wave” came after wave upon wave of massive and disruptive protests, protests which reshaped public discourse and changed the way millions think and talk and act. Compare public discourse now and ten years ago — the changes are astonishing. When the conversation changes in the mainstream public sphere, it’s a sign of shifts in outlook and values. The conversation — and the political agenda — have changed about gay and transgender rights, inequality and “the one percent,” health care as a right, criminal justice racism and institutional racism generally, sexual harassment and assault, immigrant rights, gun control — all reflecting powerful social movement activism. The political polarization is lamented because it is so frightening and destabilizing; but it can also be seen as profoundly progressive cultural change confronted by a reactionary backlash.
They came to march, and went on to run
The midterm turnout is a direct result of a complex dynamic in which powerful movements took part. Take as one example the Women’s Marches. The first Women’s March also had a historic turnout. In Chicago, so many people clogged the streets that it was a “march”in which no one could march. The demonstration was noted for its call for women to enter politics, and news media reported on many women who came to march and then went on to run for office. Now in the 112 women in Congress — significantly including the first Native American women, the first Muslim women, the youngest women — we see new activism and new leadership, new representatives at federal and local levels. Many of the people who raised them into office shared an understanding that the whole political system had to be challenged — and that we needed masses of people to be involved year-round, not just coming out on election day.
The new record: 92 women won House elections, 10 won in the Senate. Women’s March, New York, 2018. Photo by John W. Iwanski. Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
But beyond elections, how many women — and men — were inspired by the many marches and driven by the Republican outrages to become activists also in community organizations, schools, union drives? How many people do we know who have come to talk and think politics as a part of their daily life?
It was these years of protest, by individuals acting alone and people creating and finding networks of solidarity, that led to the midterm’s enormous mobilization of voters.
Glass half full or half empty?
For progressives and the left, the wave is clearly much more than half full — not just the numbers of seats won, but also the number of votes, the seats flipped, the narrow margins for losses in red states, and the number of women, people of color, gays, lesbians, trans people who won office. And most of all, the grass-roots organizing and turnout. The main takeaway for progressives is that Trump now has effective Congressional opposition — but also that the vehicle for the opposition is the Democratic Party.
While the Blue Wave may have had a decisive progressive component, it was a Democratic wave, more than a progressive wave. The Democratic Party does have progressives in Congress — the Times identifies 25 progressives out of the Democratic 65 “new freshmen in Congress” (though we don’t know what the Times considers “progressive”), and the Congressional Progressive Caucus already listed 77 members in the current Congress. But this is also the Party that made a point of recruiting candidates who had served in the military and the CIA — a shrewd play in the red states, but not a good sign if you think Democrats need to cut the defense budget, oppose warmaking and end Democrats’ normal support for coups and dictators. Progressives have to support the Democratic Party, but need to remember it is the centrist party whose true brand is half-measures. The party’s betrayals, strategic failures, elitist leadership, centrist and right-of-center candidates over decades are far more responsible than Russian hackers for Trump’s victory, the Republican control of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and most state and local governments.
Watch out, old Republican dudes — these women are not centrist Democrats! Prophetic red-figure vase from Cumae, c. 345 BCE, attributed to Caeruleus Fluctus Atrox. (Or maybe it’s a Life magazine cover, 1913.) The sign: We Want Our Rights! Library of Congress, via Oregon Secretary of State.
We are not just doing politics, we are doing culture
Most of the talk about the Blue Wave is focused on winning majorities and winning elections. The problem with this is that Democrats, or even progressives, can win majorities and still lose the country.
We don’t know how far voter suppression and gerrymandering can go to entrench minority Republican governments, especially when supported by an extreme right-wing Supreme Court. But even right-wing courts are vulnerable to popular protest. When the New Deal was answered by the Supreme Court roadblock to change in 1937, the labor and progressive movements were at their disruptive height. The court shifted under the pressure from below, and the laws like those struck down in 1935 withstood legal challenge.
This is one of the many lessons from history about why we need more than massive participation in an election campaign. The institutional political process simply can’t exert enough pressure on an entrenched anti-democratic minority. But the historic protest movements that became transformational were not just powerful political movements acting on political institutions. They were also symbiotic with cultural changes that can move forward despite reactionary control of government.
Under George W. Bush, the Republicans controlled the Senate, the House, and had a Supreme Court Majority — and yet right-wing government and the homophobic Republican campaign in 2004 could not stop the cultural changes that led to marriage equality. Decades of movement activism and the activism of ordinary people coming out to friends and family changed the conversation, and ten years later polling showed majorities supporting marriage equality.
Two years of the Trump regime have impelled the cultural shift on race and gender dramatically forward. The cultural shift shows that people are not just voting Democratic and taking to direct action in the streets. Decisive minorities are making progressive thinking, talk and action a part of their daily lives. We are learning to do politics in this broader sense of the word – we are not just doing politics, we are doing culture. Let’s also reframe our political talk about the midterms and the 2020 election so we’re talking about politics in this broader sense, including what people are doing daily to change the culture as well as the government.
—Paul Elitzik
*The number 75 is based on the NY Times data. The Times labeled 16 districts as narrow Democratic victories, 29 as narrow Republican victories, and 30 as tossups. These are not the final numbers based on the actual votes — I couldn’t find a website giving an easy look at those numbers.
**Turnout rate was 49.4, the highest since the 50.4% rate in 1914. News reports based on incomplete vote tallies marked 1966 as higher, but in 1966 the rate was slightly lower, 48.7%.
Photo by Nate Burgos Chicago 1.21.18, Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
