The times they are again a-changin’
G eorge Floyd's execution by the Minneapolis Police unleashed a torrent of outrage against a racial oppression that has been an American hallmark since the country's founding. Floyd's anguished cry for oxygen, tortured pleas for mercy, and final, heart-rending appeal to his deceased mother was an agonizing shriek of injustice that aroused the nation.
Protests have erupted in more than 2,000 communities, including many southeastern Connecticut towns. Americans, shell-shocked and cloistered by the pandemic and economic collapse, were moved to action after watching Floyd die.
Adding to the public misery is the hot mess of Donald Trump's presidency. Faced with multiple national emergencies, Trump has failed the leadership test spectacularly.
Once heralded, feared, and reviled as a fire-breathing Republican disrupter, Trump's ineptitude has exposed him as the weak and wheezing last gasp of his party's trickle-down, deregulate, 1950s-yearning era. Trump's image has morphed from menacing authoritarian to doddering anachronism, his days in leadership numbered.
Trump's attempts to “dominate” the protesters by resuscitating racially incendiary Nixonian “law and order” talking points no longer resonates.
Most Americans — younger and more tolerant, diverse, and progressive than Trump's dwindling base — reject those race-baiting tropes. With each passing day, Trump, and the Republican Party he leads, seem more out of step with the times.
America is in the throes of social and economic upheaval. Within that cauldron of chaos, the country is undergoing an ideological and generational sea change, an accelerated shift to a liberal agenda.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has extended his lead in the national polls over Trump by an average of 8.5 points since Floyd died May 25. Trump's approval ratings have fallen 10 points to 39% in Gallup polling.
In times of great turmoil, American voters tend to hand Democrats one-party control of the federal government. Since the Great Depression, when Democrats have gained control of both the White House and Congress, major progressive social advancements were enacted.
Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 election gave rise to the New Deal, a massive project that introduced Social Security and labor laws to advance workers' rights. The Works Progress Administration employed millions to construct public buildings and roads.
Lyndon Johnson became president in 1963 in a country rocked by John Kennedy's assassination, civil rights unrest, and an escalating Vietnam War. Johnson's Great Society resulted in Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
Barack Obama arrived in 2008 during the Great Recession. In his first two years, Obama and the Democratic Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act, Consumer Protection Act, and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
Joe Biden is not a charismatic, visionary leader in the Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Obama mold. Biden is a decent man and moderate consensus-builder. Biden, 77, presents himself as a transitional president who would return the country to a preTrump normalcy, stability, and global respectability.
But the times demand more. Biden leads an increasingly progressive, activist Democratic base that won't be satisfied with a return to the way things were in the pre-Trump America.
Americans, those protesting and those responding to opinion polls, are proclaiming a readiness to correct course regarding America's original sin of racial oppression. History is handing Biden an opportunity to go big with a broader social justice agenda. He appears emboldened by the momentum. The policy statements coming from his campaign increasingly point to a more ambitious progressive platform.
If the energy of the streets turns to votes at the polls, Democrats will be presented with an opportunity to enact broad, sweeping reforms to address social injustice, income inequality and national health care.
Since the Bill Clinton era the Democrats, and this editorial board, have often proposed a centrist agenda, only to learn that there was no willing partner, that Republicans, nationally at least, had no interest in compromise.
The country's lethal exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the exposure to loss of health care insurance millions of unemployed are experiencing, has increased the public's interest in expanding the Affordable Care Act.
To advance economic equality, it is time to retire four decades of fake economic claims that tax cuts for the rich and corporations pay for themselves and lift the masses. In fact, they grow deficits and enrich only the rich. Nothing would better balance income equality and restore the middle class than an overhaul of the tax code.
In an America that is changing ideologically and demographically, Republicans need to redefine what it means to be a conservative. They may find themselves in a long political wasteland until they do.