The Left Desperately Needs Loyalty And Unity Now Than Ever Before
The current situation does not bode well for a Democrat takeover in 2020. It is time to learn necessary lessons from the right.
It’s February 2019 and we already have an impressive list of democrats running for President in 2020. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Buttigieg. Other potential high profile candidates include Joe Biden, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Amy Klobuchar.
Without a doubt, that is a mind blowing lineup! It demonstrates the strength of these men and women to stand up for what they believe in and fight to bring our democracy back to where it belongs.
But, there is one crucial problem.
Our impressive list of democratic Presidential candidates is destined to split mindshare rather than winning mindshare for democratic ideals and equality across our country.
Let’s think about this. We are a country that pioneered the idea of open borders, world peace, and a pay-it-forward culture. Here in 2019, we are discussing women’s rights, abortions, gun rights, walls, and huge military spending when in fact, we should have traded military spending for Healthcare and education and be on a path to much bigger things by now.
But we’re not. A substantial portion of America is “Bible-believing” to the extent of destruction of women’s rights and bodies. A substantial portion of America fears other races to the point of supporting guns at the cost of fearing their own childrens’ lives as they send them to school.
The fact that a good portion of the 1% of America leans conservative is not surprising. Capitalism has done this group of people well and they have learned that the way they stay in the 1% is by continuing to support policies that will allow them to stay there.
But it always baffled me that so many women, people of color, and middle class people vote Republican, despite the outcome being so decimating and devastating for them. Until it didn’t.
Conservatives and moderates have one thing in common — loyalty. Loyalty to their core beliefs. Or to a future where capitalism favors them. Or to a future where their fears don’t come alive.
A pro-life conservative is loyal to pro-life policies to the point where they will elect a sexual offender and rapist to the office.
A gun-rights conservative is loyal to protecting their gun rights to the point where they will elect a traitor with the highest levels of treason to the office.
A fiscal conservative is loyal to lenient fiscal policies (for the rich) to the point where they will elect an ultimately selfish swindler to the office. In reality, they jeopardize their foreseeable future in the hopes of having favorable fiscal policies when they finally “make it”.
The left needs, more than anything else, the unwavering loyalty to the mission of redeeming the country from the clutches of an authoritarian regime that will set us back by half a century or more if left unchecked.
While it is talked about to a reasonable extent, we have not yet figured out the path to that mission and most importantly, how to stay loyal to it. How to not lose the forest for the trees.
By definition, the left celebrates diversity. Diversity in color, race, gender, views, actions, religion, sexual orientation, and just about anything.
The very notion of liberal diversity makes it very difficult to unify so strongly towards a mission that we even sacrifice a few things along the way. Unity in diversity is our only path to success and we’re not there yet.
The path to that unified mission is NOT in having a dozen amazingly qualified candidates each one of whom are infinitely more qualified to be leading this country than our current President.
The path to putting America on the road to a free world again is in amazingly strong people putting their weight behind a small handful of candidates and taking on the mission of painstakingly educating the heart of the country.
Instead, when I see us setting up for divided and contested primaries, my heart sinks. By the time the primaries are over, it will be way too late to educate the core of the country. To throw light into issues that matter without personal candidacy motivations.
We will get there not by dividing attention, but by careful strategies geared towards grassroots outreach, unparalleled unity, and devoted loyalty to the mission.
It saddens me that we’re probably not going to get there in 2020. Democrats may even win by making some genius moves between now and then. But, our current paths do not hold the promise of being able to put our country’s mindshare on the right path for the future.
