Testing time for America

By Rick Holmes

Oct. 23, 2020

The day after the inauguration of Donald Trump, nearly a half-million people came to Washington to protest, dwarfing the crowd that had attended his swearing-in. It was called the Women’s March, and as many as five million participated in cities and towns across the country. Political scientists have deemed it the largest one-day protest in the nation’s history.

We’ve been marching ever since, and we aren’t done yet.

First came the Resistance, an overnight blooming of Facebook pages and networking events. In the months that followed, thousands of Americans thought about running for office for the first time, especially women, and especially women of color. They didn’t just march, they organized. Their efforts, along with a growing urgency about the state of the nation, produced the highest midterm voter turnout in 40 years: the blue wave of 2018.

The election of Trump was a triggering event, and his outrage-a-minute administration has kept the fires of opposition burning. But there’s been something else stirring in the American soul. It wasn’t until this last disastrous year, when the challenges we’ve faced far eclipsed the little man in the White House,  that it became clear that this is about more than Trump.

The coronavirus exposed Trump’s personal flaws – his self-centeredness, his lack of focus, his willful ignorance – and his failings as a manager. The Republicans’ response to the pandemic also exposed the flaws of conservative politics: its bias against science and suspicion of expertise; its hostility to government; its elevation of the individual over the community; its reluctance to provide direct help to people in economic distress. In a deadly pandemic, what’s needed is the kind of ambitious, effective government Republicans have spent generations bad-mouthing.

The virus has also exposed hard truths that go beyond partisan politics. Both the disease and its economic side effects hit Black and Latino Americans much harder than whites. It has worsened educational inequality, income inequality and health care inequality. It turns out our go-it-alone health care system is no match for a killer like COVID-19. Last year’s policy arguments seem suddenly outdated.

Then, a few months into the pandemic, George Floyd was killed and we took to the streets again.

In the midst of a global plague, Americans discovered a hunger for racial justice that would not be denied. The protests were everywhere – cities, suburbs and the smallest towns. They drew all ages, races and ethnicities, and even some Republicans.

Yes, the protests started with police brutality, because police have always been the point of racism’s spear. But the racial reckoning of 2020 is about much more than that. As spring turned to summer, symbols of America’s racist past began toppling from their pedestals. NASCAR and the state of Mississippi got rid of Confederate flags. Washington’s football team ditched its offensive name. Everywhere you looked, Americans have been rethinking their assumptions, relearning their history and demanding change.

The Rev. William J. Barber, a civil rights leader out of North Carolina, calls this moment America’s “third Reconstruction.” In the first Reconstruction, born of the abolition movement and Civil War, the government ended slavery and granted the rights of citizenship to freedmen. In the second Reconstruction, brought on by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the government rolled back Jim Crow and outlawed discrimination.

Like these, the third Reconstruction is grounded in moral truth and nonviolent action, Barber says. Like the earlier movements, this one is multi-racial. It demands justice, declares that Black Lives Matter and calls on the government to end structural racism and promote equality. It’s not just about race, either. It’s about community. It’s about whether Americans are to be defined by their commitments to each other instead of by their differences.

One of the few grace notes 2020 has given us was Rep. John Lewis’ last journey from Selma to Black Lives Matter Plaza. Before he died in July, this hero of the second Reconstruction gave his blessing to the third. Lewis called on us to “make good trouble, necessary trouble,” and reminded us that the highest cause, the one for which he almost died on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is the right to vote.

Which brings us to this historic election, one in which voting rights and voter suppression contend, in which democracy itself is on the line.

The first Reconstruction ended with the disputed election of 1876, which was settled through the “corrupt bargain” that withdrew federal troops from former Confederate states. The second Reconstruction arguably ended in 1968, with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and the election of Richard Nixon, whose southern strategy aligned the Republican Party with the preferences and prejudices of Southern whites.

Will the third Reconstruction end in a close electoral defeat, followed by more backlash and back-sliding? Or will America turn to a Democrat who, more than any nominee in memory, has put racial justice at the center of his campaign, and ratify our Reconstruction?

I don’t know what the next few weeks hold. Norms have been smashed, bonds frayed. Even a peaceful transition is no longer guaranteed. I suspect there will be outrage, litigation and maybe violence, at least at the edges. That’s what happens in extreme times, and this is as extreme a moment in American politics as we’ve ever seen.

This is America’s testing time. We may have to take to the street again to see that the will of the voters is carried out.

No predictions here, but my heart tells me America is ready for this test. A nation sick and tired of Trumpism is poised to deliver not just a repudiation of epic proportions for Trump and his enablers, but a ringing affirmation of a better America.

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair,” John Lewis said. “Be hopeful. Be optimistic. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.” Now go vote.

Rick Holmes can be reached at rick@rickholmes.net.