Post Election 2020: Moving Forward
By: Josh Mckelvie
Tags: Elections, Climate Change, Politics, Climate, Election 2020

It has now been two weeks since election day, though to most of us it has probably seemed more like two years. Time already has a whole new conception in 2020, and this election cycle has been a perfect microcosmic representation of how the pandemic has altered our conception of reality. Election night turned into election week, as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were processed and counted. Across the country, Americans obsessively refreshed their devices hour after hour, day after day, desperate for a conclusion to the weightiest election of our lifetimes. Finally, after five grueling days, the race was called for former Vice President Joe Biden.

That outcome still represented only the beginning, as scores of Trump supporters took to the streets and social media to decry the outcome and hurl baseless accusations of electoral fraud. Trump himself has been the ringleader of this circus, using his infamous Twitter feed to relentlessly spread dubious stories that, to him and his supporters, call the validity of the election into question. Flurries of lawsuits have been filed, most of which have been just as quickly tossed out. Recounts have been demanded, but any dispassionate analysis of the numbers indicates that they will have no impact on the final outcome. Barring some kind of extraordinary and certainly unconstitutional move by Trump and his remaining cronies, a very real and very frightening possibility, Joe Biden will be our next president.

For those of us who accept reality, and who are more than ready for the end of the reality TV presidency, visions of aggressive action on climate change and police brutality may be dancing in our heads. But if we can accept the reality of the electoral outcome, we must also accept the reality that a new dawn of progressive enlightenment is unlikely to occur. Washington, and the country at large, remain bitterly divided. Control of Congress hinges on two Senate runoffs in Georgia, a state that has long been comfortably red that Biden just barely flipped by less than half a percentage point. Even if both of those races flip blue, an unlikely outcome indeed, Democrats will enjoy only the slimmest of majorities, and a single moderate defection on a key issue will torpedo a bill. The Democratic majority in the house has been trimmed as well, adding further uncertainty.

Are we doomed, then, to four more years of moderate centrist rule? A return to normalcy and the status quo, but nothing more? If so, the climate crisis will continue to worsen, regardless of whether Biden reenters the U.S. into the Paris Climate Accords. People of color will continue to die needlessly at the hands of undertrained, overzealous police. And those at the top will continue to hoard wealth and resources, leaving the majority of the country to fight over the scraps. These are existential issues, ones that can no longer be kicked down the road for another day and another administration. We simply must find a way to coalesce around these causes, all of which enjoy broad popular support.

How do progressives entice moderates to their side on these issues, let alone those on the other side of the aisle? The answer may be in the messaging. We have already seen how adeptly and eagerly those on the right have coopted inherently positive political slogans such as #BlackLivesMatter and spun them to define something vile and evil to their base, to say nothing of their practice of tagging liberals with wholly inaccurate labels that manage to stick (Hello, socialism). With this in mind, why are we willingly offering them such low hanging fruit as #DefundthePolice? Taken at face value, it is easy to assume the slogan is advocating the complete defunding of police departments, which would obviously result in their abolition. Therefore, progressives are offering up a vision, on a silver platter, of the very brand of lawless chaos that conservatives claim all liberals represent. The meat of the proposal behind #DefundthePolice is, of course, much more detailed and nuanced. What is really being advocated is police reform, an aspect of which would certainly be a frank assessment of police department budgets and reallocation of those resources in ways that best assist the communities they serve. No serious advocate of police reform is calling for the dissolution of any police force. But this reality gets lost in our current media environment that rewards and prioritizes the briefest, snappiest message. Why wasn’t #ReformthePolice the chosen viral message? Perhaps it didn’t carry as much shock value, but it would have been a much better messaging vehicle for the issue.

Similarly, progressives who push for broad and decisive action on climate change need to find a way to speak directly to Americans in rural areas who are employed by fossil fuel companies and other polluters, industries that are directly in the crosshairs of the climate movement. This is a familiar and easy boogeyman for conservatives to deploy, and they gleefully conjure images of refineries shutting down, leaving large swaths of their constituencies out of work and destroying the economy. This messaging completely ignores the reality that renewable energy technology has made great progress, and a shift away from fossil fuels, if done right, would lead to economic growth, not decline. Republicans do this to advocate for their true constituents, big fossil fuel donors, which makes it all the more imperative for liberals to find the proper messaging to reach these people who do not realize they are being duped.

Improved messaging on vital issues could also hope to unite a deeply divided Democratic party. In the wake of the election, where Biden triumphed but many down ballot Democrats did not, infighting broke out within the ranks of the party, with moderates blaming progressives and their messaging for damaging the prospects of down ballot candidates. Progressives dug in their heels, insisting the issue was not with the policies or messaging, but on missteps with those candidate’s campaigns. Again, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. Poorly run or ill-prepared campaigns certainly had an effect. (Look no further than Kevin Van Ausdal, the first-time candidate who ran opposite Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia’s 14th Congressional district. He was woefully unprepared for what he should have known would be a bitter and taxing campaign, and he dropped out before the election, allowing her to run unopposed and dooming the rest of us to having a Q-Anon supporting lunatic in Congress). But progressives are helping no one by refusing to acknowledge that moderates in swing districts cannot afford to vocally back liberal policies without crucifying themselves at the ballot box.

It goes without saying that the fight for progress must continue unabated. But how we frame and describe the issues for which we battle is just as important as the substance of the policy we hope to enact. We have to try harder to put ourselves in the shoes of those who disagree with us, to try to understand how they think and how they can be opposed to what seem like common sense issues. There is no other way, with our nation as divided as it is, that progress of any sort can be made.