Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by Luis J. Rodriguez on Substack. If you would like to subscribe to his Substack please click here.
The midterms elections have dramatically demonstrated what most voters want for a new and vibrant political and economic landscape: How to live and work healthily and strongly without paying through our noses. The US is a “great” country to live in… if you can afford it!
Affordability became a mantra. While the election wasn’t a total mandate, it was a shift we must carefully and strategically nurture as we go forward. We must now create the foundation for everyone to benefit from the wealth we all contribute to making (although it’s held in a small number of hands).
Wealth is created socially but most of it is held privately. Even if this wasn’t the exact thing people voted against on the ballot, this summarizes the sentiment most of the electorate was feeling. We need to cooperate but not for a few. Let’s cooperate for everyone’s sake!
The mid-term elections appear mostly as a “Blue” victory. But that’s superficial. We need to keep clarifying the underlying motive forces at play.
Regardless of party, now is the time for free universal healthcare; for free quality education throughout a person’s lifetime; for decent housing to all who need it; for the end of corporate power and control in politics and the economy; and for peace at home and in the world.
This is what everyone needs regardless of what they think or believe. Even for the most spiritual among us, material conditions actually matter (and it’s best if our thoughts and beliefs align to what matters).
The so-called Blue tsunami was also against the billionaires and their AI data centers. This was a vote against the murderous masked ICE gestapo. This was against money for the White House ballroom and a Trump arch while people’s SNAP and Medicaid benefits are cut. This was against war against Iran and such acts as the killing of children in a girl’s school. This was against a genocide in Gaza while Israel holds the largest non-corporate lobby in Congress. This was against Elon Musk spending close to half-a-billion dollars for Republican candidates (all the candidates he supported in Texas lost).
We must now be organized to decisively fill the huge gaps for working class people and those who’ve been pushed into the margins of despair. The message is that all this is good for everyone, not just liberals or social democrats. Everyone, including MAGA people.
We need to change the whole framework.
The concept of Blue and Red states is a made-up game. We fight each other on ideological grounds while the most powerful and wealthy get more power and wealth. Like natural disasters, economic disasters don’t just affect Blue or Red voters. In the economy it doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican or Independent. MAGA people get hurt by the crisis as well as the staunchest Leftist, and most people in-between.
Social Democrats gained ground in this election because they addressed people’s pocketbooks, housing needs, health care, and their hunger for peace and security. All the rest is a distraction.
This is about the next stage of growth for the country. We either have shared wellbeing, or we go back on the pendulum swing between Red and Blue, Democrat and Republican, Right and Left. This only gets us confused and off balanced where we can’t get any footing for our true and lasting interests.
We’re caught up in a “war” with each other, while the richest 1 percent stay on top. They’re like the gambling house that always wins while the rest of us, regardless of how we bet, keep losing.
It’s time to stop making this about “wokeness” or the cultural wars the right-wing love to throw around. It’s time to stop making Queer and Trans people, or migrants and Muslims, our enemies. Or to get swallowed up about Trump, a one-man wrecking ball. Trump purposely makes himself the damn focus; we don’t have to buy into this. This was also a vote against his spineless enablers on his staff, the Supreme Court, and in Congress.
When madness runs the show, the real sanity is at the periphery, where the rest of us are at.
Of course, we should deal with the lies and corruption the Trump Administration has perpetrated. All this was also on voters’ minds. But mostly we must answer this long-standing concern: Can we finally make sure everyone is adequately secure and able to live with dignity?
As for the conscious revolutionary Left, it’s time to stop being strident or arrogant, to stop acting as if we are above the fray or on the sidelines. It’s time to get “down and dirty” again, among the people, in the trenches, to speak to their intelligence and emotions. To find the language that embraces, not distances. To reach out not on dogma but on facts. Good old fashion organizing, educating, and building. Use tech tools if they help, but I’m still analogue, “old school” as they say. Nothing like pounding the streets.
More truth (science and data), more beauty (art, poetry, music, dance, etc.), and more decency (for Christ’s sake, as James Talarico would say).
However, if we don’t change the “battleground,” this is what we may expect:
• The leading section of the Democratic Party will betray the voters;
• The fascists won’t go away–they’ll become more erratic, chaotic, and dangerous;
• The corporate class will keep enriching themselves and controlling our lives at the same time (the tech bros in particular: AI is mostly for profit, and much of it directed at wars and surveillance).
• The next round will see the pendulum swing the other way, and get even worse than before.
The opportunity is there to go further and deeper. Not on ideology but on the actual conditions that affect our quality of life. We are living under dire circumstances. We need to change those circumstances, but this also requires dreaming big. And then delivering big
No more small minds and petty bickering on relatively insubstantial things like race, gender, or fears. All the promises to the voters who stood up, everywhere but especially in my birth state of Texas, must be realized.
