Two books
I recently read reminded me that, when it comes to playing the long game, conservatives
have it all over, well, let’s not call them liberals, since the conservatives
have managed to make that a pejorative term. Let’s just say left/center-left/center
or even -- dare I say it? – progressives. Whatever we call them, they better
get in that game.
Andrew C. McKevitt’s Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America details how over the past sixty years conservatives successfully fought against efforts to regulate the sale, ownership, and use of guns, with the Heller decision opening up the doors and gun advocates flooding through them ever since.
Cara
Fitzpatrick’s The
Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in
America shows how conservatives sought to divert funds from public
schools to private schools, even religious ones, for over seventy years. Conservatives recently “lost”
a Supreme Court ruling (St.
Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond) that would have
allowed the nation’s first religious charter school, but no one should think the
war is over or that advocates of public education are even holding their own,
much less winning. Voucher programs are in
place in most states and are on their way in most others.
And, of
course, conservatives spent forty years trying to overturn Roe v. Wade (see The Fall of Roe: The Rise
of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer), succeeding with Dobbs. That
was the long game played masterfully.
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| Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP |
Most Americans
support some form of gun control, public schools, and abortion rights, so the
conservatives’ long game required shrewd planning and unrelenting persistence. What
I don’t see -- what I’m worried is not happening -- are the long games on
issues that people who aren’t hard right conservatives care about. Maybe they’re
happening and are too subtle for me to be aware of, but I fear conservatives
are just better at the long game.
Here are
some of the key issues I mean:
Campaign
finance: It is appalling that the world’s
richest man – who is not even a U.S. citizen – can essentially buy a
Presidential election and several other races (along
with fellow billionaires). It’s appalling that Citizens
United held that corporations had the same rights as citizens to political donations
and allowed them to flood campaigns with money. It's appalling that there was over
$1b in “dark money” contributed in the 2024 election.
This is
not a way to run a democracy. In fact, it is a way to ensure we don’t have
a democracy. We need real, meaningful campaign finance reform that returns
power to the voters.
Voting
Rights: The 1960’s
saw some apparent victories in achieving voting rights, but sixty years later
those rights are under attack again – in more pernicious ways. The Supreme
Court is considering
a case that would “gut” the Voting Rights Act, and states
continue to chip away. Gerrymandering is
widespread, in both red and blue states. Our vote is being neutered.
Conservatives
talk about ID and other requirements, but let’s remind ourselves: in
many other countries, if you are a citizen, you’re eligible to vote. In
some countries, you are expected to vote. In the U.S., less
than 75% of eligible voters were registered to vote in 2024, and that was
for a hotly contested Presidential race. Citizens should have both a right and a duty
to vote. “States rights” to oversee elections don’t supersede our right to
vote.
Privacy: We say we value our privacy, but
we don’t act as though it actually is important. We’ve given it away to Big
Tech and other corporations, and that is only going to get worse. Roe was based
on an inferred right to privacy, and we saw how easily the Supreme Court swept
that away.
The
founders did not foresee Facebook, Google, surveillance cameras, or big data, and
so the Bill of Rights doesn’t mention a right to privacy. If there is one thing that conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between should be able to agree
on, it is that we deserve a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy.
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| Credit: Tor Project |
We cannot
have a democracy where the vast majority of our wealth goes to a tiny minority.
We cannot have a stable country that is clearly split into the have and
have-nots. Workers need to be paid a living wage -- one that doesn’t require them
to work multiple jobs, that gives their children the upbringing and
opportunities they should have, and that lets them have suitable housing.
Health
care: I am so sick
of conservatives saying people on Medicaid who don’t work don’t
deserve coverage. I’m disgusted that
ten
states, including two of our largest, never felt that their poor deserved
Medicaid expansion at all. I’m dismayed that it is considered a victory that,
due to ACA, we “only” have 30
million people without insurance (not to mention the tens of millions who
are underinsured).
People in
America should have a right to health care (just as they should have a right to
clean air and water, safe and sufficient food, and adequate housing). These
should not have to be “earned” or given on the whims of the legislators.
And don’t talk to me about “Medicare for All,” a meaningless phrase; if we ever
get universal coverage, it shouldn’t look, or be financed, anything like Medicare.
We can do much, much better.
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You may
have your own list of priorities. I could probably come up with a few more. But
that’s the thing about priorities: if too many things are a priority, then
nothing is. Those five are big, big
asks, but I’m hard pressed to see what I’d take away.
So, where’s
the long game for these? Not just looking ahead to the next election cycle or
the next Presidential race, but knowing what the end game is and plotting out the
gritty detail about how to get there, no matter how long it takes or what
setbacks are encountered.
There’s famous saying that applies here: the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is now. Let’s start planting.
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