Doing Nothing isn’t an Option

I’m writing this from a small camping compound in La Paz, Baja California Sur. There’s a large school playground/event area across the street and a LGBTQ celebration is going on there. Lots of music, pride flags, etc. It is noisy. A good time in Mexico is loud. It’s good to see kids celebrating who they are and being accepted for it.

One of the reasons that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had to rush home from the FIFA draw the other day was to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the 4th Transformation — the changes that the Morena Party has brought to Mexico. Her speech, delivered to 600,000 supporters in the Zocalo, was 2/3 talking about the accomplishments of the Morena Party, and 1/3 calling out conservative critics. She and her party constantly provide success metrics and celebrate them, and they also aren’t afraid to call the opposition liars.

I’ve been listening to the Soberanía (“sovereignty”) podcast produced by Mexico Solidarity media, and their last episode covered the Honduran election. The leftist party was polling ahead of the right-wing opposition, but Trump’s intervention — the pardon of former President and convicted drug dealer Juan Orlando Hernandez — at least in part swayed the vote to two right-wing parties. But that wasn’t the only factor in the election, according to on-the-ground reporting from Mexico Solidarity. Some of the young people they interviewed told the reporter that “at least Hernandez did something” when he was in power. The perception was that the administration of President Xiomara Castro didn’t do anything to make the lives of Hondurans better. Of course, part of the issue is the global inflation that hurts the fortunes of all incumbent political parties. And, let’s face it, there’s not a lot that governments can do to make that better (and certainly a lot to make it worse, as Trump has demonstrated.)

But there’s also public perception of government action or inaction. For better or worse, the lawless Trump administration has set the bar on action. If the Democrats regain power over the remnants of the country in 2028, we’re going to lose again if we follow the Biden playbook, even though Biden pushed through some great legislation in the first two years of his administration. Here are a few, by no means all, plays in the playbook:

• Lots of slow-to-implement changes. I’ll pick on one: rural Internet. This takes forever because of the public/private “partnerships” that lead to months and years of delay while Internet providers figure out how to get their beaks fully wet.

• Not bragging about every little benefit of our programs, constantly. Part of this issue was Biden’s problems being articulate later in his term. But the other part of it was a sort of “res ipsa loquitur” approach to our accomplishments, which means that a few press releases and a couple of speeches should suffice.

• Allowing Republicans to take credit for spending they didn’t vote for. This one is maddening. Every Democrat from Biden on down should have been holding these folks up to ridicule, because it’s ridiculous.

The remedy:

• Some quick wins in all legislation. Ditch public/private partnerships as much as possible and just use government money to directly contract for services.

• An active social media team that floods the zone with Democratic accomplishments.

• Hard edged opposition. These people are generally not going to cooperate with us legislatively — that’s last century thinking — so we need to keep pounding on them, relentlessly.

And, above all, way, way more time spent by the President as chief spokesperson, which is something Claudia demonstrates daily in her two-hour press conferences.

I feel like I write the same post over and over, but I see few signs that current Democratic leadership is even thinking about changing their old ways.

Now a travel anecdote: We were waiting in line to be seated at a local restaurant outside of the tourist area. We were the only gringos there. A family of 5, looked like mom/dad, grandma/gramps and a probably 10 year old girl were in line before us. When we tried to have a conversation with them, my wife said we knew little Spanish. The family proudly put that poor little girl on the spot, because she’s learning English in school She shyly exchanged a few words, and agreed with my wife that learning a language was hard. Two generations who never learned English in school, and a grade- or middle-schooler who is. Again, this country is going to be a powerhouse in a few years when all of these educated kids grow up.