The Best Way to Stop Trump Is at the Local Level - by Joy-Ann Reid
Of course we think first about Congress. But Democratic governors, mayors, and state legislatures are the ones now with the real power to stop Trumpism.
JOY-ANN REID
12.03.16 12:01 AM ET
Republicans, led by House Speaker Paul Ryan and the incoming president (as signaled by his Billionaire’s Club Cabinet picks), are set to unleash long-stored plans to gut and privatize Medicare, repeal 20 million Americans’ health insurance through Obamacare, flush what’s left of the Voting Rights Act and push for the privatization of public schools. That means congressional Democrats now have clear marching orders: beat back the coming GOP push to repeal of the 20th century. But there’s something else Democrats ought to be focused on as they prepare for the long, dark years ahead. It involves trading in a bit of the beloved Hamilton for a dash more of the less morally appealing Thomas Jefferson and embracing what the Yale scholar Heather Gerken has called “progressive federalism.”
For decades, conservatives have argued against the heavy hand of Washington on the states; embracing the idea of each state as a kind of mini-country, only loosely overseen by the federal government. Liberals have argued the opposite—that without a strong central governing hand, the states would devolve into a disaggregated mess whereAmericans’ rights, opportunities and even their health and life expectancy vary wildly from New York to Mississippi, with the results heavily freighted by race.
But after the disaster election of 2016, in which the majority (2.5 million more votes for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump and counting) will not get the president they chose, and will instead be stuck with an erratic, narcissistic, Twitter-beef-starting Russian handmaiden in the White House and a Dickensian novel full of plutocrats running his administration; with potentially disastrous results for voting rights, healthcare, public schools and more; it may be time for Democrats to embrace their inner federalist.
We are not, in some fundamental ways, a single country. The map of that vast red swatch of states and rural counties that voted for Trump, and the blue coastal edges and scattered urban centers where Clinton won, are a pictograph of mutual contempt. The sharp differences between the way city dwellers and rural, suburban and exurban residents vote, think and live cannot be papered over by federal laws, federal rules or, clearly, by a president. (Even within blue or red states and cities, sharp differences in voting preferences split the country down a glaring racial and educational divide.)
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/03/the-best-way-to-stop-trump-is-at-the-local-level.html