I have voted in every election since Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Most of them have been “the most consequential ever.” Progressives warned, “Fascism is on the rise.” Today it is easy to dismiss this claim. How many times can we hear that the fate of our democracy, with all its limitations, is hanging in the balance?
The difficult truth is that those warnings were right. Step by step, election by election, the U.S.A. has shifted to the right. In 1964, in the midst of emerging struggles for Black Liberation, Lyndon Johnson won 61.1% of the popular vote carrying 486 electoral votes. Goldwater won 38.5% with only 52 votes in the electoral college. This was a consequential election. It marked the decisive defeat of a strong conservative candidate. It also led to the formation of the “New Right,” dedicated to developing strategies of mass organizing to achieve political power. Those strategies were based on hate, fear, and a vision of a future replicating the pre-civil war south.
Right-wing leaders evolved a “Southern Strategy” aimed at attracting white voters feeling the loss of political power. Pandering to racist beliefs and mobilizing against expanding freedoms for women, organizers pulled together a coalition of white, evangelical, male and male identified, nationalistic Christians. In the aftermath of the Viet Nam war, they campaigned for aggressive military action to restore U.S. global power.
This movement culminated in the 2022 effort to produce Project 2025, under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation. The fundamental aim of the project is to reshape the United States into a white, Christian nation, willing to use military might to get anything it wants, from anywhere, anytime.
These last two years under the Trump regime we have witnessed its implementation. Basic institutions from the Post Office to the CDC have been dismantled. Congress and the Supreme Court have proven uninterested in providing fundamental protections to individuals and organizations. Thousands of people have been killed by bombs and bullets. Masked forces roam our streets, disappearing elders, mothers, and children with a casual cruelty that draws on the worst our histories. What we read, what we teach, what we learn, and what we are told is allowable to “think” have been narrowed to ideologies of white supremacy celebrating deeds for which we should all be ashamed.
We cannot turn toward a more human future by simply wining a few electoral spots in a midterm election. This can gain us some breathing space, but the questions we face have a long and violent history. They require us to think beyond who wins and who losses, to consider what kind of society we have become and the kind of people we want to be.
Since 1964 the number of people voting for right wing candidates has steadily grown. By 2024, Donald Trump amassed more than 77,000,000 votes, with 312 electoral seats. Goldwater had just a little under 30,000,000 votes. Even given population growth, the shift to the right is obvious. More importantly, the right-wing drift moved the center of US politics to the right, so that in many ways Richard Nixon as a Republican in 1972 was more left leaning than Bill Clinton was as a Democrat in 1992. For example, Nixon tried twice to implement an income tax program that would have provided a basic economic floor for all people. Over the years the imaginations and visions of progressive forces has become smaller.
The future depends much more now on what we do after these elections. How do we create new forms of political association and public cultures that move us toward more human centered ways of being? How do we develop lives that reflect care for each other and the world around us?
At the heart of these questions is a vision of a world that cherishes life and places people and the earth above profits. We need to not only organize ourselves for political power but to redefine what power is, how it is exercised, and for what purposes it is used. This transformation is possible. The victory of the people in Brazil reminds us that the world we have now is neither natural nor accidental. It has been created to protect the privileges and profits of the few. But another world is also emerging. It is arising in the day-to-day choices we make that lean toward love and the futures we long to share.