In September I wrote about Kenan Memorial Stadium at UNC Chapel Hill and its namesake, William Rand Kenan Sr., who murdered scores of blacks in the 1898 Wilmington Massacre.
This week I hosted NPR's sports show, "Only a Game," and produced a story about it. The results of yesterday's midterm election defy hot takes and easy narratives. On one level -- in terms of just how overwhelmingly voters, in raw numbers, voted Democratic and/or anti-Republican -- it was a Democratic wave of historic proportions. The sort of wave which puts to lie the common Republican and media talking point that America is "a center-right nation." No, in terms of the sentiment of the people of this country as of November 6, 2018, it is certainly not. That sentiment was clearly blunted in terms of results, however. Given that massive lean towards Democrats in overall vote totals, fair elections would have given them far more than a majority of a couple of dozen House seats. Indeed, in the past, a lean like we saw last night typically has given the majority party twice as much if not more of a gain in the House. That that's all Democrats got is clear evidence that Republicans' craven agenda of gerrymandering has benefitted them greatly. But while that's disappointing -- and while a few specific, notable races did not go in Democrats' favor -- there is no way whatsoever to honestly spin last night's results as good for Republicans or bad for Democrats. To do so requires one to lose sight of how political tides turn in a lasting way in this country, just how badly things have gotten over the past several years and just how much work it takes, and was always going to take, to effect real change. Anti-democratic forces and illiberalism did not spring up, fully formed, with Donald Trump's election in November 2016. As I have written many, many times in this space, we have experienced years and years of these corrosive trends. Just as Republicans' program of court-packing, tax cuts, deregulation and disinvestment in our nation's future has taken decades to bear the rotten fruit it is now bearing, so too has the erosion of campaign finance laws, the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and the enactment of widespread gerrymandering. Republicans began making it their explicit agenda to deconstruct civil society, to benefit and protect the powerful and to cast the vulnerable aside in the 1960s, accelerated these efforts in the 1980s and accelerated them even more in the years since the 1994 Contract with America election. They likewise made it their agenda to rig elections many, many years ago. That agenda was not going to be stopped in a single midterm election. That agenda was, however, chipped at in real and substantive ways last night:
It took years for Republicans to bugger up this country and a handful of big time superhero candidates were not going to fly in and fix things in a single night. Do not lose sight of the fact, however, that a lot of street level superheroes are starting to get results. In the past two years a hell of a lot of people have done the work to start the process of fixing things. They have knocked on doors, registered voters, and have persuaded millions that there is a better course than the course our nation has been on for so long. That work paid off in many, many positive ways last night, even if it did not do so in 100% optimum ways. It's easy to break things. It's way harder to fix them. You do so by putting your head down and doing that work. Continuing that work. You make some progress in 2018 and you make more progress in 2020. You win some elections. You take stock, get back to work and then you win some more in 2022, 2024 and beyond. The work is never done. But if the work is done right it can pay off, slowly, over time. It began to pay off a little last night. |
Hi.I'm Craig. I'm a writer. I work for NBC Sports. This is where I write stuff that doesn't really go there. Read more about me here. Or, if you'd like, drop me a line. Categories
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