We Bought Into a Moment . . .

We bought into a moment.

That's what the late David Carr of the New York Times famously wrote in 2011 about the moment that the press called the 2008 presidential election for Barack Obama.  We thought, while celebrating the news, that a freer, fairer, more progressive era had come to America with the election of the first black President.  

Then, one month into Obama's Presidency, Rick Santelli of CNBC spoiled everything with his call for a Chicago Tea Party from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in an obvious temper tantrum over efforts in Washington to save the nation from the aftermath of the financial crisis. A bunch of rabid bigots, looking for excuse to unload their racism against Obama, took that as an opportunity to found the right-wing Tea Party movement.  By the time Carr had written that we had bought into a moment, the moment was long gone.  The hope for a second New Deal was dashed by independents refusing to support it, the Republicans had decimated the Democratic House majority in the 2010 midterms, they took control of numerous states, and the Democratic agenda - which included paid maternity leave, codifying Roe v. Wade, building high-speed passenger rail - was in tatters.

But at least we got the Affordable Care Act passed!

Big f**king deal.

As the 2010s began, supply-side economics - which liberals has once thought was finally consigned to the dustbin of history - was reinstated, and the incredible organizing movement that got Obama elected in the first place fell apart.  And except for Bernie Sanders - who, needless to say, never became President - no one has been able to rebuild it.  (The less said about the random and incoherent Occupy Wall Street movement, the better.) And by the way, Obama continued the so-called War on Terror, which resolved nothing.   

It seems that all those of us who want a better America and are willing to work for it have always bought into a moment over and over and over, when we think we finally have the leader of the movement we need to make this country a freer and fairer place.  But politics, naivete, and a general misunderstanding of how things work in These States and how strong suspicions are of "nice things" such as public medical insurance or strict firearms regulation always retard progress. I bought into the moment of Bill Clinton's election to the Presidency in 1992 as a turning point for the country that suggested that better days were ahead.  Instead, we got Newt Gingrich.  Sometimes outside forces rotted in American vices - like violence - disillusioned those who bought into the moment of Robert Kennedy's unity speech in the aftermath of, ironically, Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968, only for him to be cut down by an assassin's bullet two months after.  How about when Americans bought into the moments of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, only to see them undermined and gutted many years later?    

Many of us bought into another moment when Barack Obama passed to the torch to Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention . . . the first black U.S, President passing the torch to the woman who would become the first female U.S. President. 

And remember how resplendent Hillary Clinton looked in her white pantsuit, symbolizing the suffragette movement of a hundred years earlier, signaling a new era of diversity, equity and inclusion? 

People who backed Bernie Sanders and those of us who were in with Martin O'Malley from the day he announced his 2016 presidential bid (talk about buying into a moment) knew better.  We knew that Hillary was everything Obama was not - egotistical, entitled, politically insular, and personally smug.  There was no way she could win the Presidency without acknowledging the dissatisfaction with the whole American system and trying to reach out to voters in the American heartland.  And, she didn't.

On Election Night 2016, Hillbots holding a "victory" party in the Javits Convention Center in New York City were hoping to symbolically shatter the ceiling of the glass building and bought into a moment that never came.  And Hillary, after conceding to her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, called President Obama and tearfully declared, "I am so, so sorry."

Yeah, you can stuff your sorries in a sack, Madam! 😬

So instead of Hillary, we got a racist and misogynistic presidential administration that favored using military force to crack down on civil rights demonstrators and urban crime waves, as well as appointing federal judges and Supreme Court justices that spurred the end of Roe v. Wade.  And even with that administration out of office, further erosions on freedom - including book bans, anti-black education curricula, and  a rise in anti-Semitism, have persisted.  And, we might not only get that administration back, we might get it back for good.  Or for bad.  Or for worse. 

I'm only voting for Joe Biden or two reasons - because I think he's been a good President, and because I want to stop Donald J. Trump.  But I'm through with buying into moments.  America is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.  We are not Denmark.  Neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren nor anyone else can change that.  But if Trump gets back in, we can and will be Nazi Germany.   

Inauguration Day 2025 is one year from today.  Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.