Time is ticking for Democrats to cut the crap.
I want to support Biden… I really really do.
He’s not a megalomaniac. He’s not a pu$$y grabber. He’s not even that cocky.
He gave such an epic inauguration speech. I reread it twice trying to pick one section to quote for this article, and it was impossible — it was that good.
I believed he would be significantly better; in many ways he has been.
He and his advisors do not make it easy.
Let me say clearly, this State of the Union was meh. Admittedly, it was my anniversary so most of it I read later that evening. Even so, I was not moved. In contrast to his January 2021 speech, the SOTU was depressing–rhetoric of war, made worse by the middle-road that followed.
As Walter Shapiro noted in The New Republic, Biden’s was like many State of the Unions before it — forgettable.
His vision for America was as sad in its banality as it was in its lack of bravery. He covered what he needed to, in order to appease his base.
“Despite pressure from reproductive rights groups to explicitly say the word “abortion,” [he] stuck to the kind of language he’s most often used in the past, referring instead to a “woman’s right to choose,” which he described as “under attack as never before.” — Sarah McCammon, NPR
I was not appeased. Avoiding the word “abortion” to calm voters who believe Christian piety is more important than body autonomy, is honestly boring and weak.
Equally weak: dancing around the impacts of our over-consumption and drawn out dependency on fossil fuels. Why not bring up the just-released IPCC climate report and its bombshells?
“…billions of people around the world are already suffering the impacts of climate change, but that reducing greenhouse gas emissions rapidly would save lives and reduce human suffering.
Instead of highlighting those high stakes, Biden focused on the potential savings for American citizens, laying out a plan to ‘cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.’” — Camila Domonoske, NPR
(Sidebar: Climate change and Civil Rights — to anyone paying attention — are what truly matters. My support of Biden will remain to prevent any fascist, evangelical take over that would make it 100x worse.)
Why discuss climate or energy in terms of savings? Besides it being the moral imperative, if the business case for sustainability or diversity worked, we would not be in this mess. If moderates or conservatives understood investing now to for the future, we would have universal healthcare, too. Dare to dream.
…
Biden’s centrist positions, topped off with his inability to actually say The Thing (abortion or the urgent climate crisis) was not shocking. Nothing Biden said was as quotable as his inauguration speech.
There wasn’t a ton of drama either. There was booing — several missed opportunities for Biden to take a stand — but he was coherent. Boebert and was her usual bananas self but, Pelosi didn’t tear up his speech, or clap back. Instead, for the first time ever, there were two women behind the President. I can celebrate that and still want more from our leaders.
Most of what bothered me was said by omission.
Expressing support for Ukraine without talking about Afghanistan, Syria, and places in the Global South that have experienced far worse.
Not calling out the blatant anti-Black racism in the media reporting on the war in Ukraine and its surround nations. And the racism itself.
Zero mention as to why we bombed Yemen last week?!
Climate progress greenwashing. (We’re fighting wars over oil — evading real talk about gas prices— instead of fully stopping petroleum usage.)
And yet, this wasn’t what troubled me most — not this past Tuesday anyway.
I have learned to not expect much, but I did not expect this.
I did not see — which Shapiro summed up perfectly — the knife in the back of his most influential voters.
“In one of the most overtly political moments in the speech, Biden unequivocally distanced himself from a slogan that has damaged the Democrats in poll after poll. Speaking about crime, the president said, “The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.”
We were promised progress.
For millenials and Gen Xers who have a clue, and for the 94% of Black women who voted for Biden, only one word comes to mind: betrayal.
I know his job is incredibly hard and a series of choices. Right now he’s the person protecting the entire planet from nukes and that cannot be easy. It can’t be easy when someone mocks your dead son as you talk about brave vets.
And still, after Stacy Abrams worked to literally make his presidency happen, and even AOC and Bernie and Warren got on board, I was underwhelmed by his courage to take a stand for BLM. I was angry he failed to acknowledge White Supremacy and extremism in the U.S., and I was not alone.
There are debts to be paid in addition to the damn college debt. He perpetuated the notion of “race” as a bad word, rather than saying racism is bad. He owed his voters a lot more.
I tried to look on the bright side during the SOTU. In 1 year, Biden restored the Civil Rights department, the EPA, protected our Parks, put in Child tax credits (that sadly expired), extended financial support, vaccinated a majority of Americans, and is fighting for women’s equality and speaking up for trans kids. America is no longer the butt of a joke. At least it wasn’t the orange toilet, self-proclaimed pu$$y grabber, ex-President speaking, right?
Sadly, the only silver lining seems to be the little bit of hair clinging to Biden’s damn head, much like he’s clinging to the idea that we’ll find a middle ground on racism, economic inequality, or saving The Earth.
There is right and wrong, and I am sick of pretending otherwise.
…
We cannot be moderate about human rights violations, period.
Did you know in 2021 police killed over 1134 American citizens? Police killed Americans on all but 15 days last year. Black people are nearly 3x more likely to be killed than white. In Australia, police killed 2.
Did you see the Sheriffs on horseback whipping human beings seeking asylum at the border?
When fascists are banning books, forbidding schools to teach about Slavery, and legislatures are saying to cover “both sides” when teaching about the Holocaust, and The President only denounces Putin — Houston, we have a problem.
Actually, we do have a problem in Houston, Dallas, and every other Texas city. We cannot “both sides” Trans kids safety, keeping families together, treating asylum seekers with dignity, or protecting reproductive rights. There is no moderate position on gun rights when school grounds are battlefields.
Our democracy is as fragile as any white leader being told they are racist. Our reproductive health decisions lie in the hands of evangelical christians, 2 sexual predators, and more white men. I am so over this moderate and “must be bipartisan” B.S. when our civil rights continue to shrink.
Even though we were the original architects of the Declaration of Human Rights, like all other international rules, they don’t always apply to us. The true manifestation of American exceptionalism is our ability to say “Here is the right thing to do…except, we won’t being do that.”
Ending the capital punishment and providing Universal Healthcare (both ideas backed by 170 UN nations) are important for everyone except us.
We as a nation will never heal if we don’t own up to our power and privilege, and our abuse of both. (This is unlikely to happen, but again, I dare to dream.)
…
There is no middle in our economy.
The middle class has already disappeared. The top .01 and .001% hold the same wealth as the bottom 50%. The top 11% own 89% of U.S. stocks. “The Market” is not “The Economy.” The Market only represents about a tenth of our nation.
The rebound is NOT universal. The economic downturn and “recovery” has not hit us all equally. No matter what Biden said to gloss over inflation, he missed the part that it’s at least 2–3x what a standard of living raise would be (if you still have a job).
We know the truth about who makes up the real economy, and they look nothing like Biden, or Reagan.
Whose jobs were hit hardest and whose businesses closed their doors, despite “the best economy since Reagan”? Who got the majority of PPP funding, and got away with it, despite having $275 Billion combined wealth? Who is still out of work? Who’s interviewed 750 times and is still unemployed. Who is afraid to bill for the hours they worked, lest they lose their job for being too expensive? Who is still navigating pandemic parenting?
Who makes up the backbone of the economy, or so we are told? Essential workers, care givers, and small businesses (basically women.) Our rebound has not happened…yet.
The Economy remains in shambles for us, but it’s booming for them. We are gaslit by economists like the supposedly liberal Paul Krugman who says we’re in a funk or it’s a bummer. How can adults with “real income” not see how great the market is doing? The only thing Krugman and I agree on is that “a substantial part of the electorate has economic perceptions quite far from reality.”
Why should we keep hearing them out? 5500 years of patriarchy is long enough for me, thanks, especially when the approach is this banal.
“While Biden’s address didn’t hold together as a speech (and, in fairness, few State of the Unions do), it did offer a crash course in how Democratic consultants plan to defend the party’s narrow congressional majorities. “Made in America” clearly polls well among swing voters in Midwestern battleground states since Biden pledged to “buy American,” to preside over the “revitalization of American manufacturing” and to “support American jobs.”
The winning idea is “‘merica”? You have got to be freaking kidding me?!
I wonder how much the government paid McKinsey consultants for this brilliant strategy. Our tax dollars actually paid for this crap?!
We either end patriarchal white supremacists capitalism or it ends us. We have to speak out every day against racism, sexism, misogyny, and exploitation. And yes, that includes guys too.
…
Forget the Big 3, or you can forget the midterms.
Stop fighting for the “narrow majority” and start fighting for ALL Americans, including the Trans, queer, disabled, Black, Brown, Latino, Asian, indigenous, immigrant, Muslim, Jewish, and the millions of parents and people with disabilities without a social safety net.
We need radical, brave leadership, and, I do not mean “brave” white men fighting over oil to protect their country from a totalitarian tool.
We need the brave American women who deal with systemic racism and stood in line to get this white guy elected anyway.
We need the courage seen in women and non-binary people living in a country with a 250 year old patriarchal constitution.
The strength of sexual assault survivors; the forced-resilience of those experiencing poverty and 3 to 1 the rates of men; American women who deal with higher infant mortality than all other wealthy nations; those who take the mom penalty and the pink tax, but start a business anyway; the fortitude of anyone who deals with daily microaggressions or workplace harassment.
It’s time for America to put on it’s big girl pants. As Biden so eloquently told Trump in a 2019 debate, “Grow up man.”
We cannot afford to support the whims of white men and their desires in their pockets or pants another minute.
Unless we are truly throwing in the towel on the planet, forget what’s always been done. We have to get radical. How we live and work must shift dramatically. Race and gender cannot be ignored.
We need consultants who were not born into the prep school to UPenn pipeline. We need those who see plainly the direct links from systemic inequality and global conflicts to the economy and climate.
The Powers That Be need to pay us, listen, and act, in that order.
Democratic leaders, you do not have time to mess around. You need to hire new communications consultants to help with messaging before it’s too late. It’s time for the CDC to hire a new communications and brand strategists, too.
Want liberals to turn out for the midterms? The moderate B.S. we heard at the SOTU will NOT fly for Gen-Z, or even Gen-Xers with a pulse.
You need smart, diverse, humans who prioritize building a world for the Collective, not the .01%. It’s time for collective consultants to lead. Listen to our knowledge and advice on the economy. We are the ones who define the “Future of Work.”
What are you waiting for? Start here.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
—
Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
