The Top of the Ticket

Amidst all the hand-wringing and tribulation about who will represent Democrats at the top of the ticket against Trump in 2020, we haven't had enough consensus on one fact: we don't agree. Or, rather, we haven't thought long and hard enough about the implications of lack of agreement. We do not choose one path here, we have to integrate the two. If Bernie gets the nod, he will need to incorporate some moderation into his platform. If Biden gets it, he needs to broaden his vision and step up as a leader.

Moreover, in all of the Democrats' collective loathing of Trump and Trumpism, we have lost sight of a central fact. Whatever illegitimate may have gone into Trump's election, be it Russian interference, Cambridge Analytica, Comey's announcement... the reason 63 million (less than 66 million, for sure) people -- many of them "devout Christians", whatever that means -- voted for a man who would brag of grabbing women by the pussy is that they hate the Democratic elite and don't feel they have benefited from our policies.

However much we believe in our core values, we have lost sight of this failure. We have not processed it or thought through ways to bridge the gap, and our blindness is the biggest risk not just to success at the ballot box, but our ability to effect the policy aims we ostensibly espouse: to protect the planet, to broaden economic opportunity for everyone, and to protect the court system from generational capture by conservatives.