Welcome to the rebuilding years

After the post-mortems, how about thinking about what we birth from here?

Nov 06, 2024

It’s already happening.

Within hours of the presidential election being called for Donald Trump, the recriminations began, the I-told-you-sos surfaced, and out came analyses of what went wrong that just so happened to confirm everything the analyst already thought.

In the coming days, expect everyone with an ax to grind or consulting practice to sell to offer a slick PowerPoint of what went wrong. Expect to drown in post-mortems.

It will largely be a process of people showing how smart they are by grafting their priors onto the present. Of course, to an extent, such a process is healthy. You can’t move on without knowing what you are moving on from.

But may I be idealistic and naïve enough to suggest that we move quickly past the post-mortem phase, toward what I would call the “pre-vita,” pre-birth, phase?

The less interesting question right now is what one campaign did wrong. The more interesting question is what a pro-democracy opposition can use these years ahead to create.

Because these will be the rebuilding years. Sports teams have such years when they lose and lose badly. And there is a kind of freedom in the rebuilding year. You know it’s a rebuilding year, so there is a certain amount of space and time. You’re not expected to turn around and win the title, because you acknowledge that you’re broken. Your work is not winning, not at first. It is rebuilding to put yourself in a condition such that you might win again.

The typical, inevitable post-mortem phase will traffic in the usual, surface-level conclusions, most of which are just a rehashing of pre-existing battles. She should have tacked to the center. The problem is that she tacked to the center. She should have taken inflation more seriously. She should have had bolder policy ideas. It was Gaza. It was misogyny. And on and on and on.

But in the pre-vita work we ought to be embarking on, the questions we ask will be bigger and bolder: What kind of pro-democracy can actually compete with neo-fascist authoritarianism? Without any attachment to the current forms and expressions, what would the organizing infrastructure of such a movement look like? What would be the coalitional culture of such a movement, and how would disagreements be hashed out?

What would talent development in the movement look like? How would such a movement pursue bold policy while also meeting people where they are? How would it ensure a deep connection to everyday people and avoid being hijacked by elite priorities removed from most voters? How would such a movement be funded, knowing all the tradeoffs inherent in who you take money from and how it’s raised?

In age of populist upheaval, what would its relationship to the existing power structure be? How would it convey, and live, a seriousness about changing things while catering to the more status-quoist members of its anti-fascist front?

How would such a movement compete with the reptile-brain, emotional appeals typical of fascists? How would it show up in people’s lives outside of electoral cycles? How would such a movement escape the low trust levels that presently plague so many of our institutions?

How would such a movement be candid about American history and the country’s problems and unfinished business without reading to too many voters as unpatriotic? How could it pursue ahead-of-the-curve issues without coming across as unconcerned with meat-and-potatoes, right-now anxieties?

In an era of precipitous racial and demographic and gender change, how would such a movement defend the idea of freedom and justice for all, while devoting itself to helping people cope with changes that leave them feeling unsettled? How could such a movement compassionately and shrewdly take on the burden of psychological change management for white communities and men in particular, not in the name of coddling them but in the name of widening the appetite for future progress?

How can we articulate and pursue social progress in ways that make people discomfited by the changes feeling invited in rather than blamed?

How could a vigorous pro-democracy movement more candidly confront the genuine fear people have of chaos, disorder, the sense of entropy, whether in their cities or on their national frontiers? And how could meeting those fears where they are be married to real idealism about who belongs and who has rights?

What kind of media ecosystem could a new pro-democracy movement, rising from these ashes, build? How could the tired schism between “real journalists,” on one hand, and “influencers,” on the other, give way to a modern approach that combines independent voices as well as ideologically sympathetic meaning-making?

What should the power base of such a movement be? The working class and unions? Academia, nonprofits, and the philanthropic sector? How should tensions and conflicts of interest among these various factions of the movement be dealt with?

I could go on. But these are questions that go beyond whether they hired the right person in Philadelphia or whether that ad buy was too late. They are questions about what could and should be born. After the post-mortem, may it be time for the pre-vita.

Today many of us mourn. Tomorrow (metaphorically speaking) we get back to work.

Welcome to the rebuilding years.

The Ink, I hope, will be essential to the thinking and reimagining and reckoning and doing that all lie ahead. On this dark day, I want to thank you for being a part of what we are and what we do. And I promise you that this community is going to find every way possible to be there for you in the times that lie ahead and be there for this country and for what it can be still.