The 2024 Election: Don’t Despair, Remain Engaged
Michelle Murray, Associate Professor of Political Studies and Chair of Bard's Social Studies Division
LR: If you could give one piece of advice to all Bardians right now, what would it be?
MM: Don’t despair. Despair is the emotion of oppression. It's really important, especially in a moment of setback, to continue to remain engaged, to be able to imagine the world we want and to bring ourselves to work for the world we want, in whatever ways make sense for us. That doesn't mean everyone needs to go to the streets and protest, but it means we need to sit in support of those who will be affected by this. Despair is the emotion of disengagement that injustice thrives on.
LR: What paths of action can students take to make their voices heard under this new presidency?
MM: I think a lot of it will depend on what this presidency looks like. We have some ideas, but we don’t know yet what exactly he’s going to do. What we need to do right now is to just sit and figure out what is going on, and what he’s going to do. We know that Project 2025 is an ideology that is most likely animating this administration, and we know what those points are. But we don’t know how it’s going to happen. We need to think carefully about what the context looks like, and then to think strategically about what kinds of actions make sense in that context. Starting local and investing in our community here, first and foremost, is really important. Supporting the people here who feel unsafe, and supporting the people around us in whatever form that takes. From the college’s perspective, that will come into clear view in the coming months as well. Under the Biden administration, we still have a window of time to think about what we can do during the next period.
LR: What are some ways that students who feel unsafe could protect themselves from these potential policies?
MM: First and foremost is talking to people at Bard. Our values are clear, the college will not stop standing up for its values. Again, investing in our community here, talking to the administration, talking to student support resources, talking to counseling services, I think it's really, really important that we support ourselves and each other during this time.
LR: What would you say to students who are thinking about leaving the country?
MM: I would say that America is worth fighting for. In my class yesterday, I played an essay that John Lewis wrote before he died that was published after his death. In it, he talks about the struggle of democracy and the struggle of building a future that we want to build. He fought his entire life for civil rights, and that work is hard, that work is not linear. There is something worth fighting for in terms of what we want our collective future to look like in this place. Those who came before us did it, and we have to do it too. I understand the feeling, I totally understand the feeling. But it's worth staying and fighting. I also think that these problems exist everywhere. Trump is not an American phenomenon, though he has his own particularly American characteristics; but the rise of illiberal democracies is happening everywhere across the world, all across Europe and Asia. It feels inescapable. As people who care about resisting illiberal forces, we should think about why this seems to be flourishing at this moment and what it means to build a broad-based coalition in the name of democracy.
LR: Why do you think these conservative, right-wing governments are coming to power in various parts of the world?
MM: I think there's some aspect of this which is economic dislocation, and the fact that the economy isn't working for a lot of people. In the US, for example, the economic data points to a strong economy, but if people don’t feel like there's a strong economy, then they don't feel satisfied. When you're dissatisfied, you're much more willing to embrace scapegoats and other kinds of things that seem to be an excuse for your own grievance and misery. Globalization and neoliberalism doesn't work for everybody, and over the past 30-40 years, we’ve eroded the social safety nets in all of these western democracies that used to catch people who would fall through the cracks. Now, that's becoming evermore insufficient in terms of making people's lives better.
I would say that in the case of the US, the demographics of the country are changing. White power and white supremacy is a piece of this and the erosion of the majority white country. Although that doesn't explain anything because there are plenty of nonwhite people who voted for Donald Trump. But I think there is something very attractive about the “fruits of white supremacy” across the world. If you look at all of the places where illiberal forces are taking hold, migrants are being scapegoated. There's a common narrative to these movements that require our attention.
LR: What do you think, if anything, is something Harris could have done to prevent this outcome?
MM: She was structurally in a very difficult position. She had to distance herself from Joe Biden, while being Joe Biden's vice president. She was not very good at doing that. She inherited the dissatisfaction with Biden’s administration and did not offer an alternative. She didn’t have a lot of time. Our campaigns now take years and she had a 100 days or so. I think she had trouble articulating what the alternative was. And finally, I think Democrats are really bad at building political coalitions. They take a lot of support from certain groups of people for granted. And I think what this wide-ranging loss shows us is that Democrats can't take that for granted anymore. You can't just expect people of certain demographics to show up and vote for you; we have to build a coalition and articulate a vision.
I also think the media landscape is different, and I think Harris ran a very traditional campaign in the sense that she raised a lot of money, she had a lot of celebrities, she went to a lot of places. But Donald Trump’s base lives in a media space that is different from that. There’s an entirely different world that is untouched by any of that other stuff. Democrats need to think about how to run an effective political campaign for president in the 21st century, given the media landscape that we exist in.
The Annandale Advocate would like to thank Michelle Murray for her time and thoughtful responses.
Post Date: 11-08-2024