JFK, Stacy Abrams, And 60 Million People

And what it all means

Here’s what I really wanted to do today: It’s a sunny-ish 51 degrees where I live here in Southwest Colorado. I want to head out on my bike. We have miles of scenic roads that feel safe to bike on. Or maybe a hike into the red rock canyons of the Colorado National Monument. But what life seems to be about right now is the election and what the results mean. There is work to be done because what happened on Tuesday is important to America in so many ways.

My Newsletter yesterday that was actually written by my good friend Dan Rather – well, ok…Dan has no idea who I am, but I know who he is and he’d probably like me if he ever met me. He’s 93, so he better hurry up - has garnered a ton of attention and folks have been forwarding it all over the place. I’m bringing that up for a couple of reasons. The article, written in 2017, is about empathy and how America’s concept of empathy has changed and diminished in Rather’s life time. Empathy…sympathy…I had to look up the difference. Sympathy is feeling another’s pain through their eyes. Kinda more an observation. Empathy is internalizing their situation and feeling it through your own eyes and heart. This seems like a good time to be aware of empathy.

I’ve refused to read any of the hundreds of analyses of the election and what it all means and blah blah blah and how the outcome is all the fault of the Democrats. It’s not that I don’t care. I do. I care a ton. But in just one morning as I’ve cruised over the ledes (the ‘headlines’ for articles) in the NYT, WSJ, and WaPo, here’s a sample of what was on display this morning: Who are we? We’re about to find out… Trying to protect Biden, Democrats sacrificed their credibility… Democrats three biggest mistakes… What Biden did that infuriated people… She thinks Republicans won in part because of cultural issues like “guns, God and gays.”… Pelosi suggests there should have been an open primary after Biden dropped out… Why Democrats stalled in Blue Wall suburbs…How Baron Trump connected his father to the Manosphere of Bro’s… and How Harris won at TikTok but lost the election. I care about what it all means and what work now needs to be done. I just don’t care what the talking heads have to say. Yeah, let’s blame the Democrats for four more years of a racist administration. Let’s just ignore 18 years of lies. Few of the heads seem to have a handle on much of anything. And I refuse to be cowed or depressed.

I’ve read or heard more than one person exclaim that the Democrats focused too much on identity issues. But the MAGA party is the party that developed entire campaigns around God, guns, gayness, transgender rights, Arnold Palmer’s penis size – which comes across as slightly gay to me, and bathroom issues. I read almost zero about any of that coming from the left. And when I heard or read it as a complaint, it was always followed up with an implication that the left was trying to move things along too quickly. Maybe. But as a Black man, 405 years of fighting for equality doesn’t seem to be “moving too fast”. My guess is women and other marginalized groups feel similarly as I do and that the pace of change is anything but “too fast.”

Trump ran a multi-year campaign based on racism starting in 2006 - when he started his campaign to delegitimize America’s first serious Black presidential contender by claiming he wasn’t born in the United States. A campaign based on hate, fear, cruelty, and “You’re getting screwed.” And then he swept the polls. My guess is he won based on what he ran on for eighteen years.

I noticed that pre-election, many talking heads news people went out on the street and asked people what they thought the Harris or Trump or Biden administration could do for them. Them…like it was personal. Like the new president of the United States was going to send then a check or give then a grant to buy a home.

For a while I had some unidentified discomfort with that question. And then it hit me. It just seemed a question that was based on, “It’s all about me.” I was reminded of the question John Kennedy challenged the American people with in 1961. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In 2024 Kennedy’s challenging question has morphed to, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you.” That change in attitude and sacrifice and patriotism and open, even, gleeful acceptance of intolerance…that may not be who America is. But it’s sure as heck who 71 million of us are in 2024.

Sometimes it’s worth listening to true patriots, people who actually do the work, not the false patriots who just blab and berate… people who have been in the fight for a long time. People like Stacy Abrams.

“I’ve been thinking today about the fact that my siblings and I and my cousins, we were the first to be born into the Abrams family with the right to vote. I’m 50, and I’m one of the older ones, and yet that is a marker in our history. My nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom is 18, live in the first generation since reconstruction to lose civil rights. I measure those two things because I grew up in the south I love my home. I love my region of the country, and yet from most of my adult life, I’ve been working to make my home state, my adopted state, and my country, love me as much as I love them. It hasn’t always worked. And I looked to elections, those times we have to come together and ask for more of each other and our government as a way to anchor me in the work that I do, as a way to push us to be better than we were the day before.

And sometimes it does works. Sometimes we get these giant leaps forward, the leaps that made the Voting Rights Act of 1965 possible. That made, Roe V Wade possible because we elected people who appointed people who could saw us as humans. 

But it doesn’t always work and sometimes elections like the one we had November 5, those elections come around and we forget the progress that we’ve made, and we only remember the pain. I remember 2016. I remember inauguration 2017. I remember the last time we found ourselves facing this set of dynamics we sparked a resistance.

It was a decision that was grounded in not knowing what was to come. We just knew what we’d been told, and we saw what we could see, and we pushed back. We railed against it all and as more and more evidence piled up, we organized, and we persisted, and in so many ways it worked.

In fact, for a brief moment, we united against racism and sexism; homophobia, and ableism; and those who would do any of us ill. We came together, and then it started to fall apart again, or so it seems, because November 5th happened, and they’re back, and they’ve written Project 2025. They’ve used infective and insult and promises that tell us what they will do, and now, we know what to expect.

Unlike 2016, we know what could happen, because we have a Supreme Court that says we’re going to not hold them accountable. Because we have a US Senate that has been suborned and supported and has refused accountability. Because we have a president elect who has told us what he intends to do. And now we know that millions agree with the harm he has promised. But we also have to remember that millions did not agree, and they spoke up.

But I want to focus on the 60 million that didn’t believe their views mattered enough to show up at the polls. We need to be curious about why they didn’t come. We need to be worried about what worries them. We need to lean in at this moment and think about the 60 million, not the 71 but the 60 because unlike 2016, we cannot think that it is enough to just resist, that it is sufficient to persist. Just excepting what we have isn’t enough and so this time, we must insist. We must insist on a government and leaders that respect us and our needs, and that doesn’t just mean the president and our federal government. I’m talking about the zoning committees that are forcing higher rents because they refused to adjust. The school boards where your children or your neighbors’ kids are being denied books and the truth. I'm talking about insisting on speaking up when we see wrong. When we need more. No more polite acceptance or making excuses for prejudice.

We have to demand better of ourselves and our leaders system fighting for our rights, even if we think we’re going to lose, because the record will show that we tried; that we filed lawsuits and lodged complaints and put TikTok’s out there, if we still have TikTok. That we had social media solutions that we shared, and we made history report on our efforts. We must insist.

We must insist on being more important than anyone’s wallet with wishful thinking that it is not that bad, because those who would sanction bigotry to justify profit or their own comfort should be held accountable. And we must insist. We must insist on holding power, even if it makes us uncomfortable, and even if tell us it is not ours to hold. We must insist in believing in our own power, and the good change that we have accomplished and the change that will continue to manifest, because we exist between elections.

We must exist between these moments. We exist between the harms and we are responsible for making the good and making change. We must insist. And so every week I will insist that we assemble the pieces so we can come together to build the world we deserve by being curious, by solving problems, by doing good, even when it hurts, even when it’s hard. Even when it makes us uncomfortable because he must insist. Because we are right.

Together,

Stacy”