The thing about a wave is that it builds, it crests, it breaks – and then it recedes. To describe the victory of Democrats here in New Hampshire and across the nation as a “blue wave” is a poor choice of metaphor.
To be sure, there was a major shift in the way Granite Staters and other Americans voted two weeks ago, with double-digit losses for Republicans among many groups, not just suburban white women.
According to the New York Times, the percentage of white working-class women who changed from red to blue (13 percent) was as large as the shift among those with a college degree, even though 56 percent of the former remained in the Republican column, while 59 percent of the latter voted Democratic. And while there were sizeable shifts among white working class and rural male voters, Democrats continued to do poorly with those groups.
I agree with most analysts that these shifts from red to blue in the midst of a booming economy were the result of two factors: a reaction to Donald Trump and Trumpism (to his anti-immigrant bombast, bullying, chaotic leadership, relentless lying and pathetic egotism) and grassroots activism among citizens deeply worried about the fate of our democracy.
It was this activism that carried the day in New Hampshire, with groups of citizen volunteers, like Concord’s Kent Street Coalition, reaching out all over the state to engage voters and to counter the influence of “dark money” from the Koch brothers and their ilk.
It was also the emergence of fired-up Democratic candidates who worked their tails off and persuaded their conservative neighbors to give them a chance.
But “a chance” is about all Democrats can count on. Waves come and go, tides rise and fall. The best way to have those waters flow back the other way in two years is for Democrats to pat themselves on the back and believe that the political climate has changed for good, or to devote their energies only to highly politicized causes (as important as many of these causes are) and ignore the deep-seated anxiety of voters in the middle.
What Democrats need to do, above all, is to listen – to continue to reach out to independent and conservative-leaning fellow citizens who remain unsure where their loyalties lie. And to ask them one fundamental question: “What needs to change in order for you to believe that you, and your children and grandchildren will have a better future?”
Their responses might well include: “Regaining faith in a government that cares about people like us”; “Making sure that the things we have worked so hard for (our homes, our health care, our retirement) will not be sacrificed to pay the mounting national debt”; “Saving our environment”; “Reducing the level of violence in our land”; and “Giving all children an education that helps them gain a strong foothold on the American Dream.”
It is perhaps this last point that offers the greatest chance for Democrats to keep the wave from rolling back over them. But it is also the issue that holds the greatest potential for failure.
People want equality of opportunity, but middle- and lower-income people will not support higher taxes on anyone – not even on the rich – to pay for an education system that consistently favors the children who come from upper-income, highly educated families, and that leaves the children from working-class families on the losing end.
Our public education system has many strengths, including dedicated teachers, a commitment to children with special needs, impressive technology in the hands of our students, and promising new approaches to teaching and learning. But we have not seriously tackled – let alone solved – our biggest challenge: how to give children at every stage in life the skills and confidence to be successful and self-motivated learners.
Our school system continues to operate on the philosophy of meritocracy: Those who work hard and use their talents wisely succeed; those who do not tend to fall by the wayside, with dire effects on every aspect of their lives. But if “working hard” becomes little more than dutiful compliance with school mandates, and does not include student voice, student choice and student creativity, the resulting school climate remains toxic to nontraditional learners.
Meritocracy is an important but inadequate foundation for our children’s future. Yes, we do need to inspire young people to strive to do their best. But something needs to be added to bridge the mounting inequality of education level as our society moves from an industrial to an information economy. Providing equal funding for every child would be a vital step, but it alone will not solve the problem of too many children failing to emerge from our schools as empowered life-long learners.
Affluent and highly educated parents will always make sure that their children receive the best that our education system, whether public or private, can provide. It is the job of a responsible government to support measures that will give kids from lower income and working-class families a real chance of similar educational success.
We know something about what those measures are, but we don’t know enough. There are schools that do a much better job than most at personalizing learning and promoting confidence and self-reliance among children from diverse family backgrounds. Instead of learning from these most effective schools, we tend to see them as outliers, not role models, and come up with excuses why “it can’t happen in our community.”
We might begin at the very beginning: Vermont used to send educators to maternity wards with a carton of books for young children, letting their moms know that their local school system wants to help their kids become school ready. We could invest in high-quality early childhood facilities, like they do in Italy, where these centers are the pride of the town. And we could research the best ways of helping all children equalize the advantages in language skills that kids from better-educated parents bring with them into school.
But we can also listen, listen to these parents and especially to the children. Whatever our social position or educational background, every one of us is acutely aware of fairness and unfairness. Kids from kindergarten through high school will tell us who the winners and losers are, and they might even tell us what changes have to be made to make them winners, too.
So, if we’re wondering what to do to keep the “Movement” moving on, we could do a lot worse than listening to those outside our peer group. But we should be prepared for them to tell us things we don’t really want to hear.
(Robert L. Fried of Concord is a retired educator who is now a writer, gardener and tinkerer. He can be reached by email at rob.fried@gmail.com.)