Fun Fact: The top Google search on election day in America was: “Did Joe Biden drop out of the race?”
When Rocky Balboa was at the top of his boxing game, he agreed to do a charity event with a wrestler named “Thunderlips,” played by Hulk Hogan. As the massive Thunderlips towered over the comparatively tiny Balboa, sneering and threatening to break him in two, Rocky tried to make nice and go over a few ground rules for putting on a good show.
And then the bell signaling the start of the bout sounded.
Rocky gave Thunderlips a few light punches to the chest, suggesting they move around and give the audience a good show. That’s when all hell broke loose. Thunderlips, in true wrestling fashion, began to throw Balboa around like a rag doll, even attempting to break his back with a punishing slam to the mat. Stunned, it took Rocky a moment to regain his feet, during which time Thunderlips assaulted everyone from the referee to people from the audience. That’s when Rocky realized he had to fight the wrestler on his own terms. Asking for help, he ripped off his boxing gloves and challenged Thunderlips to get back into the ring and resume the fight. No longer constrained by the gloves, Rocky gave Thunderlips quite a beating and eventually threw him out of the ring.
The crowd, which had been raucously booing Thunderlips, started cheering and chanting the familiar, “ROCKY! ROCKY! ROCKY!”
There is a lesson here for the Democratic Party to learn in the wake of the beating they took on Election Day.
First of all, it’s admirable to want to follow the norms of the civil society the Founders of our democracy envisioned. We have learned, and painfully at times, that many of the things we thought were laws or rules are really just gentlemen’s agreements and there are no real consequences for casting those agreements aside. Under the regime of Donald Trump and his MAGA terrorist organization, the Republican Party has surrendered any sense of decency they previously had and run off any traditionalists left in their caucus.
It’s fitting that none other than Hulk Hogan appeared at one of Trump’s rallies.
The Democratic challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris, ran a respectable, honorable campaign after serving four years under President Joe Biden, himself an ardent rule follower. No matter how low the MAGA crowd stooped, Harris and the Democrats attempted to stay on the high road. While the MAGAs were busy running a fear and smear campaign, Harris and her team ran a “joy” campaign, suggesting America is tired of the MAGA message of hate, fear and retribution. I loved that decision on the part of the Democrats, primarily because I, myself, and more than tired of the idiocy and incivility of the MAGA movement. I thought for sure the rest of America (minus the 30% who only get their news from FAUX News) would feel the same.
I was wrong.
Over the past 20 years or so, we have seen Republicans repeatedly seek to dismantle America’s democracy. Rather than trying to win over voters, they carefully identify and target those who typically vote against them and go to great lengths to keep us from voting. They use gerrymandering, sure, but also voter intimidation, voter purging and even weaponize voting locations to make it inconvenient or even dangerous for non-MAGA voters. In other words, they have given themselves over to the rich and powerful in their quest to gain and then stay in power permanently.
In my analogy, Republicans are Thunderlips and Democrats are Rocky. The difference is that Rocky realized it was time for the gloves to come off before the fight was over. Democrats, never too quick on these things, kept fighting by the rules and norms and got thrown right out of the ring.
I would like to say that I was surprised. I would like to say that I am not completely cynical and thought that running respectable, solution-oriented candidates who wanted to represent all voters and not just their own side was a winning strategy. Sadly, while I did hope that would be the case, I was not overly surprised when it wasn’t.
Now we get to endure two years of MAGA control of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. There will be no guardrails for their agenda as they look to do extreme things like deport millions of immigrants, rob women of their healthcare options, turn Palestine over to Israel and abandon the freedom fighters in Ukraine to our own worst global adversary and the carry out the nightmarish agenda (Project 2025) of establishing an autocracy where our democracy once stood.
Rocky has been thrown out of the ring, gloves still on, and he’s bleeding out on the arena floor.
Will Democrats understand the fight they’re in and stop wishing it was something else? Will they finally tear the gloves off and stand up for America’s democracy and stand against the spread of autocracy, both at home and abroad?
We can only hope…and, I’m sorry, but doubt.
I’ve been sitting back for some time watching the months-too-long election process play out. From time to time I’ve thought about writing something in this space about what I saw, but each time I realized I had already made the observations before in previous posts. So I sat back.
Well, now it’s time to tackle solutions, and going forward that’s what I plan to do in this space.
Considering that Election Day Google search, we might start with how you reach extremely low-information voters.
Stay tuned!
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 