2018 IN RETROSPECT: THREE REFLECTIONS

As this year hurtles toward its demise, we see value in reflecting while we contemplate the coming of 2019. Here, therefore, are our individual reflections on 2018.

 

Rob’s thoughts:

As many who know me understand, owing to having been a 
speech teacher, I often think in threes. Therefore, three  reflections on 2018:

•   Managing a career switch.  As I related in this space on June 22, 2018, I’m turning my professional focus from
  
  law practice to writing. I have fiction and nonfiction projects underway, I’m in a writing group, and my novelist daughter (www.BiancaSloane.com) serves as my coach and mentor. I believe I’m making progress, but the enormity of the task sometimes overwhelms me. More than once I’ve asked if this falls into the category of “seemed like a good idea at the time.” Still, tackling the challenge energizes me and I remind myself I shouldn’t belittle what I have accomplished.

•   The spiritual journey continues.  As I also wrote here this year (September 6), I’ve found a spiritual home
  in progressive Christianity as practiced in some Unitarian Universalist  churches and in the United Church of Christ. My life partner and I visited several wonderful churches this year during our travels, broadening our horizons and encouraging study about the faith I’ve adopted. Reflecting on those experiences with her, and looking toward additional spiritual exploration, I see this dimension of my life growing in importance.

•   Confidence in American institutions.  Many progressive
  
  friends lament the state of our politics, given our divisions Donald Trump's presidency.  In 2018, Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives and the country reclaimed the House of Representatives and the country began seeing the fruits of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s work. Both renewed my confidence ridding the nation of this cancer, whether through impeachment or merely voting him out in 2020, will become one of our finest hours.

   

Woodson’s reflections:   

In reflecting on 2018, I catalog my thoughts under “Family”, “Faith” and “Future.”

Family: Hope and I have always dreamed of our adult children becoming our best friends.

While that dream remains a work in progress, we believe we have achieved that. During 2018, we celebrated an art exhibit in New York by one child, a graduation from divinity school in Princeton, New Jersey by another, and I spent a “Walker Men’s Weekend” in Mississippi with two sons and two grandsons. These encounters provided safe spaces for sharing past pains and future hopes. We understand our children much better and they better understand us.

Faith: I remain grateful for our church, Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, where men and women of diverse racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds worship, walk, and work

together as one. This is my third year leading the church’s Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Diversity Circle. The Circle creates a safe place where people of diverse backgrounds, from within Mosaic and the larger community, can discuss race, religion, ethnicity, and culture. Through this Circle, I have become friends with people I wouldn’t have met under any other circumstance.

Future: President Trump’s assaults on our democratic institutions have increased my awareness of the importance

of these institutions and reminded me we should not take take them for granted.  The American press has encouraged me, as it has performed admirably in exercising its responsibility for protecting our democratic institutions and values. While I still believe our country is both a country of men and of laws, I recognize other countries, to a greater or lesser extent, are too. But our democratic form of government provides for the greatest flexibility in correcting misdirection of both men and laws, something I believe the recent mid-term elections demonstrate.

I look to the future enthusiastically!

Henry writes:

The kindness of the universe let me fully live again this year. A cloud of sadness prevailed at times in years just past, though I don’t wish to remember how many. Yes, there was faith, hope, prayer, and thankfulness. But, when your spouse, love, lover, friend, and companion faces life threatening illness, life itself changes. Though joys remain, shadows loom, creeping into every crevice of time not filled.

We talked, of course, of happy times and good fortune, past and present, but the future

hung like a dark cloud invading our space, inhibiting the relaxed breath of life. We continued doing familiar things, but endless trips to medical facilities, hours of surgery, significant, repeated recovery times, and procedures sealed us in a suffocating, living envelope intent on crushing our spirits. The thought of losing Pat was a venture into hopelessness, as those twins, belief and unbelief, occupied me.

It was a time we appreciated small things, enjoying the once

insignificant occurrences. The love of family and friends overwhelmed and helped rush us through our deepest descent into the most spirit crushing moments. This year brought all we hoped for, prayed for, all we struggled to envision. Now, on the other side of that dark, impenetrable cloud, we are blessed, thankful, and renewed. My joy is unlimited.   

          

NOT NAMING NAMES: AN IDEAL 2020 CANDIDATE

COUNTRY FIRST, PROGRESSIVE, SELFLESS CANDIDATES – ANY TAKERS? 

The 2020 Presidential campaign starts now. With the 2018 midterms over and Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives, one of the biggest political questions in the United States becomes who the Democrats should nominate for the mission of defeating President Donald Trump. The field will take shape in the weeks and months to come, with the better known candidate announcements likely around the first of January (one Congressman has already announced). We’ll start examining that field in time but, for now, we offer thoughts on what – not who—the Democratic candidate should look like.

The Musts

*Electability --- Adhering to the old adage about the impossibility of saving souls in an empty church, we recognize the 2020 Democratic candidate must (1) hold the states Hillary Clinton carried in 2016  (227 electoral votes) and (2) add the 46 electoral votes she didn’t get in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That doesn’t require that the candidate hail from that region, but he or she should appeal to the area’s working class voters and mobilize turnout among other potential Democratic voters in those states as Clinton didn’t.

                          

*Issue Discipline --- The 2020 Democratic nominee will, unless lighting strikes, run against Trump and the loud, often irrelevant controversies he stirs up, aimed at distracting the media and the electorate from the nation’s serious problems. His bogus complaints about a dangerous caravan of migrants –

PhotCred: RisingupwithSomali.com

many of them women and children barefoot or in sandals and tennis shoes – threatening an “invasion” of our southern border served as just such a distraction during the 2018 midterms. Democratic candidates didn’t take the bait, keeping their focus on health care.  As a result, Democrats picked up at least 39 seats in the House and kept the net loss in the Senate to two seats, despite having to defend three times as many than Republicans. Democrats also picked up seven governorships, including three in the aforementioned critical states in the upper Midwest. 

Keeping the Democratic coalition in place – This relates to electability, but the ideas are not identical. If Democrats are to win elections going forward and not cede to Republicans control of large swaths of the state and federal governments, they must nurture and expand the coalition that succeeded in 2018. That coalition produced an eight percent voting preference for Democrats over Republicans. Don’t forget Hillary Clinton, unpopular and disliked as she was, got 2.8 million more votes than Trump in 2016. This coming together of people of color, young people, and progressive whites twice elected Barack Obama President. The party and its 2020 nominee, therefore,

must continue minority group outreach, find ways of encouraging participation by millennials, and attract increasing numbers of suburban white women who helped lead the charge in 2018.  We know what this looks like. Even in losing campaigns, Stacy Abrams in Georgia, Andrew Gillum in Florida, and Beto O’Rourke in Texas  showed the Democratic future lies not in running as mushy centrists afraid of “white backlash,” but as committed progressives espousing aggressive policies on health care, criminal justice reform, and inclusiveness of ethnic and marginalized groups, including women, Muslims, and LGBTQs. 

*Women’s rights --- Brett Kavanaugh ‘s elevation to the United States Supreme Court may signal the coming demise of Roe v. Wade, meaning the battle over women’s reproductive rights ramps up, not ends. Democrats must nominate a candidate clearly committed in his or her support for those rights, and one standing as an unabashed opponent of sexual harassment and sexual assault who doesn’t assume women reporting male sexual misbehavior “made it up.”

Things to Hope for

In addition to the above list of attributes and policies a Democrat running for President in 2020 must have, we see other elements of a desirable profile that would ice the cake. 

*Some Charisma --- Extraordinary personalities come along in politics only occasionally. Jack Kennedy’s eloquence, Bill Clinton’s interpersonal skills, and Barack Obama’s unique gifts of vision and inspiration don’t grow on trees. Still, a Democratic winner in 2020 should connect with Americans in ways other than ideological compatibility and policy preference. She or he must inspire us to feel good about ourselves, the country, and our future.

                

*A Sense of History --- The Democratic Party owns a proud tradition of supporting the middle class and helping the disaffected improve their lives. The 2020 nominee should understand that history and embrace its legacy. The

New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society lifted many Americans into the bright sunshine of the American Dream. Even if some of the programs that undergirded those big ideas have fallen out of favor as programmatic approaches to problems, they are part of the country’s progressive past and their objectives, like ending poverty and improving educational opportunity, remain core values inherent in a just society. The 2020 challenge rests in adapting that legacy to today’s realities. In the final analysis, without the commitment to justice and equality that spawned those programs, what good is having the Presidency anyway? 

These are our thoughts.  Let us hear yours.