November 8, 2018--A Note To Some of My Liberal Friends

I have been hearing from a number of friends that they are disappointed with the results of the midterm election.

That though Democrats regained control of the House and all that that will allow, Stacey Abrams lost the governor's race in Georgia and in Florida not only did Andrew Gillum not win the governorship but also incumbent Democrat senator Bill Nelson failed to be reelected  But to many of my friends, equally disappointing, Beto O'Rourke in Texas failed to unseat Ted Cruz.

Certainly it would have been wonderful if they had come through and thus I share their disappointment. But it concerns me that as a result some friends are disappointed with the overall results.

"I'm spoiled," one friend said, "I'm greedy and want to win everything."

I get it but is the best way to think about the results? 

It would have been exhilarating if they had won, but electoral politics is not about generating exhilaration. It is about electing people who share our values, have the ability to set needed agendas, win, and then (the hard part) are skillful enough to carry them out.

When I heard about this unhappiness I attempted to push back, saying we have to keep our eyes on the prize. In this case the prize is not only diminishing Trump (this week's election has already begun to do that) but to thwart the worst of his plans and (even more important) reduce his 2020 reelection chances.

And now with Jeff Sessions fired and who knows what else Trump will do in a panic to save himself, Democrats controlling the House is even more of an imperative and very good news.

I argue to my friends that politics is the art of the possible, not the perfect, and to be effective one needs to be able to compromise, set longterm goals, be strategic-minded, persist, and accept the reality that almost everything we contribute to accomplishing not only takes too much time to achieve but, even when we do, will never be fully satisfying. It is often frustrating. It's the grinding nature of the process.

My late friend Flash put it this way. He used to say when we saw this tendency among the people with whom we were working (most were progressives), "Though understandable and based on good intentions, when seeking to bring about change it is imperative to avoid the tendency to be satisfied only with the perfect solution. Unfortunately, since we never can achieve that we run the risk of winding up frustrated and ultimately powerless. Feeling pure may make us feel good about ourselves," he would add, "but if we are seeking to make as much a positive difference as possible, being satisfied only with the ideal we run the danger of rendering ourselves ineffectual."

In some circumstances this could feel as if he was calling for compromising in advance (it can have elements of that) but I continue to think at its heart it is true.

Thus, with all the disappointments, Tuesday's election may turn out to be historic. 

Trump had us on the road to an American version of autocracy. If he (yes he) had maintained control of the House, one more essential check built into our constitutional system would have been blunted and an even more emboldened Trump would have felt empowered to chip away at an accelerated pace at the protections thankfully hardwired into our constitutional system.

That we voted successfully to resist this is the headline from Tuesday, not that Beto and the others lost. In fact, looked at it another way he and they might be thought of as actually having won. 

Frequently, in a process that takes years to culminate, blazing trails and coming close is not only essential--it is often the most difficult part--but also can include elements of exhilaration.

The implications and complexity of this are worth more thought.