Dear GOP:
I would like to extend my condolences about your recent electoral losses. Enormous amounts of time, energy, resource, and money were used trying to wrest the White House from President Obama and it certainly looks like it was dispiriting to have nothing to show for it. I won't recall the tally, others have done this.
So now, you have the task of sorting out what worked, what didn't, and what to do about it. It's only been a week since the election, so the issue is a little tender, and the post Mortems may seem off pitch. However, one theme is that people of color, women of all races, GLB people of all races, and some White men did not vote for your candidates. White men are no longer the majority, particularly when they break off and ally with other segments of society. How do you draw these other people to the party?
Immigration reform has been touted as the silver bullet to your problems. I would argue not so fast. My medicine is much slower and, well, perhaps for the people most entrenched in 1950 USA, bitter. But this will produce the longest lived connection to the majority of the US electorate. And you can no longer afford to be this disconnected from the electorate.
I will start with my story of forming opinions about political participation. I was twelve when Ronald Reagan took office. I remember the language about Black women as welfare mothers who buy Cadillacs with their food stamp money. My Black mother was (and still is) a Registered Nurse who gave up much for herself to make sure my sister and I were in the best private schools in Chicago because she was deeply concerned about the quality of the public school system. I remember the rhetoric about students who took out loans to live the high life and never finished college. I lived with a cousin who was trying to become a registered nurse herself and needed those loans to pay tuition so she could obtain her part of the American dream (immigrants really believe in it!). I remember the refusal of the Surgeon General to utter the word AIDS because no one wanted to say the word gay. A family friend nearly died 5 years ago of the word Reagan's administration refused to utter. A conductor I knew was likely one of the people who would never have the word AIDS written in his funeral program because of the stigma attached to the word, indeed, he died of "pneumonia."
Needless to say, the advice I'm about to offer you won't work with me because I have long been hostile to the GOP: the stories you made up about people in my everyday life drove policies that made our lives more difficult and did not reflect the reality you painted. Never mind that I was raised as an Evangelical Christian. You lost me. From my twelve year old eyes, it looked like you hated me.
But many are more forgiving, and I suspect you don't have much time to deal with them. So here's the bitter pill. Stop talking to people you know well. This includes Rubio, Jindal, etc. You need to talk to regular folk. You need to go to, wait for it, cities. Yep, big cities. You can't just talk to the affluent folk. You actually need to visit the places that scare you to death. To the barrios, to the ghettos. To regular middle and working class areas. To non-White places. To gay neighborhoods, to barber shops, to beauty shops, to Union meetings, to grocery stores, to non-White churches, to gay bars, to neighborhood pubs, and to schools. To liberal universities, public libraries, and bookstores. And then, when you get to these places, you need to talk to people. Not about your agenda. You need to talk to them about their actual lives. Yes.
You need to talk to us about what we do to get our kids to school and what works about that and what doesn't. You need to talk to kids about their lives and see what works for them and what they wish was different. You need to talk to people about their jobs. You need to know what they want to be different about their work situations. You need to speak with the unemployed. What happened? What have they tried to do? Do they need more help? Are things getting better for them? You need to speak with Latinos. What is their immigration story? Their particular one? Where do they work? Do they go to school? What are their hopes and dreams? Talk to Black people. What are their work histories? Do they have kids? Who do they support with their income? What is their health like? Talk to lesbians and gay men. How did they meet that special someone? Do they have kids? What are their kids like? What do they really do in bed? Do they have time to do it? Are they out? How are they within their families of origin and with their in-laws? There are so many other questions about so many other groups - Asians really do exist and have a point of view. Multiple points of view. What are they?
You will feel awkward and dorky. Don't gloss over this. You'll seem disingenuous if you do. You may just have to be in these spaces and stare at us. Really. Then you'll have to screw up the courage to speak to us. And I promise you'll say stupid things. And we'll look at you funny when you say them. Don't give up and go away! Why was what you said stupid? Don't argue with us. Follow our lead and be respectful to our communities. Some of us sprung from your loins (I was raised in a White evangelical Church, theoretically, I'm one of you), show us you care about what happened to us.
When you're done with this extensive listening project, you need to see if the stories of our lives are really that different from the lives of the angry White men you've been hanging out with. Are our hopes and dreams that much different from theirs? Do the policies you've advocated actually match what we've said about our lives? They may be a perfect match. If that's the case, carry on. If not, the soul searching will be even worse. Ultimately, are policies or people more important? The future of your party depends on the answer to that question. And you have my permission to tell Democrats that they should do the same thing now that Barack Hussein Obama is serving his second term. Just sayin'.
