Joy Reid: Finally, the Real Majority Pushes Back Against the Bitter Third

[iluvtennis]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/finally-the-real-majority-pushes-back-against-the-bitter-third



Trump’s presidency isn’t over, but Wednesday morning we woke up for the first time able to imagine what life after Trump will look like. Hallelujah.


JOY-ANN REID
11.10.17 5:00 AM ET

It was a week in which the American majority held its breath, bracing for yet another gut punch, in which a country that became virtually unrecognizable to so many on Nov. 9, 2016, revealed its utter capitulation to the bitter third again. Instead, Ed Gillespie, who shamefully morphed from ordinary, New Jersey Republican to brown-baiting neo-Confederate cosplayer, lost and lost big in the Virginia governor’s race.

A wave of women, immigrants, candidates of color, and trans candidates swept into office from coast to coast, in an utter repudiation of Trumpism’s ugly intolerance. On an off-year Election Day that typically attracts fewer voters of color, it was those very voters, particularly black women, who carried Democrats and pro-health care, pro living-wage ballot initiatives over the top. Trump apologists in the right-wing media feverishly tried to spin the night as a lesson to Republicans to cling harder to Dear Leader, but the exit polls made it clear that he might as well be made of asbestos.

It turns out that Trumpism is many things: a cult, per religious scholar Reza Aslan, and perhaps even a doomsday cult; an excuse for those who demand that the long dead past come calling on them, rather than proactively moving toward the future, and a window into an ugly part of the American soul. For the Republican Party, Trumpism is like a slow-acting poison. It may not kill the party today, but just as its wiser adherents, some of whom have left the party, warned a year ago, it is condemning the Grand Old Party to at best a schism, and at worst an existential grave.

Tuesday’s election allowed millions in the American majority to finally take a deep, cleansing breath after a year of fear and loathing, watching the rampant corruption of our government and the degradation of our culture by the vulgar president and his Putinite coterie. It allowed the world to see that our country has not gone entirely mad.

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[gratuitous]

1. Push and keep pushing

There are forces working very hard to discourage citizens, make them think their votes are worthless, that there is no difference between the parties. Everyone who stays home enhances the power of the votes of those who make it to the polls. Republicans know they're in a minority, and they have used every trick in the book (and invented a few that aren't in any book) to depress voter turnout, cage votes, and render the idea of the will of the people meaningless.

Democrats need to do what they did November 7, and they need to keep working to reach those voters who turned out to vote for their candidates. Push the platform and keep pushing. Make government work better for more people, and more people will participate.

[iluvtennis]

2. Agreed. (well said)