I’ve been thinking about the 1969/70 Kansas City Chiefs lately. If I had paid more attention in High School History, I might be thinking about the War if 1812 instead. But I didn’t and so it’s the Chiefs. Dawson and Culp. Washington and Lanier. Tyrer and Thomas. And Buck Buchanon to boot. The AFL’s Chiefs beat the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings to win Super Bowl IV on January 11, 1970. It has been overshadowed in history by the preceding Super Bowl, in which the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts. That was the famous Joe Namath guarantee game. After lopsided defeats in the first two NFL-AFL championship games, the upstart Jets shocked the world by actually winning this one.
But it may have gone down as a fluke if the Chiefs hadn’t followed it up. That “any given Sunday” thing has merit. The public could write off one victory as anomaly. The Colts may have been complacent. But two in row. That’s a trend.
It’s just like the War of 1812, isn’t it? I mean, sure, when the Brits were distracted, the upstart colonies caught them by surprise and took the (call it whatever you want – when I was in school we called it) Revolutionary War. But it wasn’t until we beat them again in that War of 1812 that we showed we were here to stay.
How much longer we actually do stay is very much in question right about now. That’s why, if you value the democratic process, there’s really only one date that matters anymore. Tuesday, November 6, 2018. It’s a little less than 700 days away. (I didn’t pay much attention in Math class either.) And it is the War of 1812. It is the 1969 Chiefs.
I have been engaging in friendly arguments with my more liberal friends over the past ten days over the entire “not my president” movement. You can say what you want about the current occupant of the White House. But if you say he is not your president, than you are living in alternative fact-land. He is the president. No amount of satire or protest will change that. No matter how many hopeful impeachment articles you share with your like-minded FaceBook friends. The current president is not going to be impeached any time soon. He is unpredictably reckless enough to the point that his eventual impeachment is possible, but it is unlikely, and it certainly won’t happen before he has done a great deal of lasting damage to our democratic principles.
The current president does not care about the protests. I know it’s amusing to make fun of his ego and his childishness. This article was originally going to be one of those satiric takedowns, full of insults and equally childish slurs. But even though I suspect it does piss him off when Samantha Bee rains pussy power all over him (OK that was an offhand reference to the infamous Soviet dossier, but I promise, no more of that) or when Seth Meyers uses logic to show hypocrisy in the current administration’s policies, the guy in the White House knows this fundamental truth. When you win, you have great power. And he will use it like a sledgehammer regardless of the jokes.
On November 6, 2018, Americans in all fifty states will go to the polls again and will vote again. Depending on vagaries of individual races, there will be in the neighborhood of 470 individual elections of national consequence. That’s the day we should get a much clearer picture of whether the election of 2016 was a fluke – the result of a confluence of factors including but not limited to …. misogyny, outside interference, failed liberal messaging, failed liberal policy, racism, classism, elitism, terrorism, and media failure. The fact is, most of these elements, at times dressed in a different façade, are present during most elections. Enough voters accepted the message of the current president to put him in the White House. That might be written off to personality brand politics, and that is scary in its own right. What is scarier for liberals is that despite gains in social issues, the country has been steadily moving to the right in a majority of states. The DNC has largely invested in the White House and has let State Houses slip away for years. Most of my friends and colleagues share the popular refrain that “this is not who we are.” But what if it is?
Is this who we are as a country? We all have our own views on this, shaped by our personal experiences. Are we generous or miserly? Concerned about our fellow man or concerned about our stock portfolios? Supportive of democracy, or supportive only of the democracies we like? Do we care about a free exchange of competing ideas, or do we care about ensuring that our own ideas win regardless of the cost. That is what we will be voting on in November, 2018. I wouldn’t for a second discourage protest and petitioning, but I would humbly suggest that Democrats in every state begin focusing like a laser on the 2018 midterms. Field the best candidates possible. Raise a boatload of money. Engage every corner of the constituency. Ruthlessly attack the slightest weakness in any Republican. In other words, do everything possible to win. If we don’t do that, 2018 will be the Kansas City Chiefs, 1969/70. It will be the year the upstart became the mainstream. The year the United States declared its true intentions. From 1812-1815, we did that. We said, “no, when we told you back in 1776 that we preferred democracy to monarchy, we were actually serious.” If we have indeed decided that oligarchy is what we prefer now, we will find out on November 6, 2018.