A New Kind of Candidate
Is America in 2019 hopelessly polarized? Our divisions stronger than our ties? You could hardly be blamed for thinking so—it’s been the dominant narrative for years. But it’s wrong. The truth is: Americans share a strong consensus on a great many of the most import issues of our time. Gimlet is running for president with a pledge to make these areas of broad agreement the basis of his policy platform, vowing to fight for and deliver What America Wants.
Ultimately that’s for the courts to decide. In the meantime, Gimlet solemnly pledges that if for any reason he is unsuccessful in securing the Democratic nomination for president, he will unhesitatingly endorse and campaign on behalf of whichever remaining candidate has fully adopted his What America Wants platform or has adopted the greatest number of its policies.
In short: no. While Gimlet believes a good representative of the people should prioritize acting on policies with the broadest public support, he also believes a politician must be strongly principled. If there are cases where a majority of voters support a policy that he cannot act on in good conscience, Gimlet pledges to be forthcoming about his objections. Likewise, where there is not yet majority support for an issue of great importance, Gimlet pledges to make his case to the people in hopes that public opinion will shift enough for it to become another part of What America Wants.
So What Does America Want?
With the constant onslaught of terrible news out of Washington these days, it’s understandable to sometimes feel exhausted, defeated, even hopeless. In times like these it’s crucially important to keep perspective by reminding ourselves that the majority of Americans are upstanding, morally decent human beings doing the best they can by their family, friends, community, nation, and world at large.
Their concerns likely mirror your own: They want to protect American democracy from foreign attacks and domestic corruption. They want equality and opportunity for all citizens enshrined and protected by law. They want everyone to have quality healthcare coverage that doesn’t bankrupt them. They want livable wages, better benefits, and more bargaining power for all workers. They want the ultra rich and mega-corporations to pay their fair share of taxes with no loopholes. They want peaceful alliances rather than endless unjust wars. They want action on climate change to avoid foisting catastrophes on today’s children and generations to come. They know our criminal justice system is systematically flawed and needs overhaul.
What’s more, the majority of Americans have demonstrated their ability to become better people with over time, day by day, year to year, and generation after generation. We are witness to an ever growing list of past wrongs and antiquated injustices being consigned to the dustbin of history as we continually improve ourselves and further progress what it means to be a kind and just civilized society that appreciates that we are all in this together.
What Does America NOT Want?
Something else that’s important to keep in mind in these dark times is that America has never wanted Donald Trump to be our president. Not only did the majority of Americans reject Trump on election day of 2016, the majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of his presidency at every point since he took office.
Only the failure of the Electoral College as a safeguard allowed Trump to lose the popular vote yet still occupy the White House. In describing why it was included in the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that Electoral College’s purpose is that “the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications,” and to prevent someone with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” from becoming president. Few words could have better predicted the lifelong con-man acting as our commander-in-chief.
So we now find ourselves living under a tyranny of the minority. Trump and his Republican allies care not a whit about what the majority of Americans want. Day in and day out they push an ideologically-driven extremist right wing agenda, attacking healthcare coverage, giving huge tax breaks to the ultra-rich, breaking up families and putting immigrant children in concentration camps, denying the existence of climate change, stripping minorities of their basic rights while praising white supremacists and pandering to the worst of evangelical Christians by granting them special rights to discriminate.
The Republican party is in a long death spiral. For many years now they have had to depend on the constant barrage of propaganda through Fox News and the angry old white men on talk radio demonizing Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, universal healthcare, immigrants, asylum seekers, women and minorities seeking equality of rights, and even going so far as to smear and harass the survivors of school shootings and the parents of the children murdered at Sand Hook elementary school. Their desperate tactics give them away: gerrymandering voting districts and massive voter suppression campaigns targeting minorities are not the priorities of a party confident it has the backing of the American people. Neither is publicly calling on a hostile foreign power to wage cyber warfare against your political opponents, for that matter.
A new day is dawning in America. But wresting back control from a domineering party that doesn’t play by the rules and will do whatever it can to keep suppressing the will of the American people isn’t going to be easy. We know that the Russians are actively trying to keep Trump in power because (collusion or not) he does their bidding by weakening America and eroding our democracy and our alliances. What we need now is for every last eligible American to register to vote, and in 2020 send Trump, the GOP, and Russia the most unmistakable message we can as a people: this is not who we are, this is not what we want, we’re better than this, and we want our country back.