What Victory Looks Like
A Meditation On Messaging
"How excited are you to bet West Ham?"
I got that text early on a Monday morning just under 3 weeks ago, from a friend of mine who had never knowingly watched a West Ham United game in his life. He couldn't name a single player on the team - or, well, couldn't name anyone but Declan Rice - but when he saw an afternoon West Ham tilt, he immediately texted me.
He texted me about it because I had done a rant of mine to him twice before - about how West Ham runs the soccer equivalent of the offence they run in The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. West Ham is extremely predictable - they get the ball to Rice, and then they pray to God Rice can manage to do something with it. Somehow, it works, at least enough to get them into contention for European competition next year. And, after twice ranting about this to this buddy - who, again, does not give a single fuck about English soccer, or West Ham, or any of it - I had ingrained the idea of West Ham and Declan Rice as a fairly central bit of the banter between us.
That one sentence has stuck with me because I always worried that I couldn't be myself - the quirky, eccentric, weird guy that I am. None of that is said to demean or hurt me - I'm a weird fucking dude. My three main loves are golf, curling, and politics. My Twitter feed can go from high minded political analysis to stanning (and, maybe if I get drunk enough this week, simping) a male curler in the span of minutes. I have strong opinions about Ron Kind over Mark Pocan (though both are great!) and Ben Chilwell over Marcos Alonso (uh, I'm less sanguine here). I write columns comparing Senate procedure to Calvinball, and I am a hipster West Ham fan. I'm a weird dude. And then, victory came. Not in a flashy, neon sign way, but in a quiet, casual one. I can be myself, I can be that weird guy I actually am - that, because of insecurities stemming from my homosexuality, I never believed I could let shine through. It was a victory.
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There are some people who will inevitably claim that because Democrats didn't get everything they wanted in a stimulus package, that that doesn't represent a victory for working people. I would like to take this opportunity to say bullshit. Victory is a complicated thing, made harder by expectations and reasonable disagreements about where lines are or aren't drawn. Is 6th place in the English Premier League a victory? If you're Liverpool, it's pathetic. If you're West Ham, it's amazing. Victories are hard to define, but so many people find themselves so eager to downplay victories.
The Democratic Party is about to pass a bill that will give a middle class family of 4 $10000, that will cut child poverty in half, and do a whole host of other good things. Is it enough? Of course not. But is it damn good? Of course. This bill is popular, it will help people, and it is an amazing testament to what a Democratic Senate got us that a Mitch McConnell led one never would have. Yes, I'm pissed at Sinema over the stunt, and yes, I'm mad that there aren't 50 votes for a $15 minimum wage. But this is the fight we get to now have because Democrats won.
We also get to have climate scientists able to get a hearing at the EPA instead of an oil and gas lobbyist. We get Merrick Garland as AG and not Jeff Sessions. We get a whole lot of other things that aren't on my radar that matter quite a bit, and we only get all that because we won. Push Biden and Democrats hard, but pushing for accountability and proper governance (what AOC, Sanders, and the rest of the left and left-aligned electeds are correctly doing) is different than flat out claiming that Democrats haven't done anything for anybody. That's just a lie.
The path to victory in 2022 runs through getting Democrats to turn out while Republicans don't, and if some people who claim to want progressive or left ends need flashing neon lights and absolutist victories, you'll be disappointed. It will never be that clean and that clear cut. You want that $15 Minimum Wage? Elect Fetterman, Kind, and Cheri Beasley, and then deprive the GOP of three votes we'll never get. Am I positive all three would vote the way I want on that, or any other issue? No. But I know they'll take a damn phone call from Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer, and Toomey, Johnson, and Burr won't.
That is what victory looks like in DC. It will never be as hard and as fast and as clear as what we want it to be. Neither is it in real life. I'm not just done feeling the effects of 13 years of knowing you're gay and never being able to truly relax, but I feel better today than I did a month ago, and a month ago felt better than the month before that. Victory is incremental, and unstable, and sometimes very fragile. But what it also is is liberating. Some progress is always good, and always worth celebrating, even if it's just a friend thinking of you when he sees there's a damn West Ham game on.