With any speech from Trump, there are the usual bombastic claims that need to be addressed.

1. Undocumented immigrants cost the United States $113 billion a year.

Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants cost $113 billion a year. What Trump failed to mention in his address is that this number originates from an organization known as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, otherwise known as FAIR. This organization is known for using what could be considered a flawed methodology. For instance, they assume the cost of Medicare fraud, and yet knowingly admit that “only anecdotal information is available”. They also allocate more than half of their estimate to education and healthcare for children, neglecting that most are actually native-born U.S. citizens – not undocumented immigrants.

In reality, immigration drives economic growth, leading to new job creation and additional tax revenue. For every immigrant that migrates to the United States, 1.2 new jobs are created. Furthermore, Trump’s claim does not take into account the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants, totaling $11.64 billion nationally per year and over $33.4 million in Rhode Island.

2. Reinstating Secure Communities and 287(g) will help identify criminal aliens that we don’t know about.

Trump praised the two Department of Homeland Security programs, vowing to reinstate them as president in order to deport undocumented immigrants that have been charged with serious crimes and misdemeanors. Although Trump didn’t express his wish to deport all those living in the United States without legal status, his proposal to reinstate these two dragnet enforcement programs will lead to deportations of those who are not criminal aliens. For instance, Secure Communities has deported non-priority immigrants, who have, in many cases, committed no crime at all. In fact, 22.7% of the people deported by ICE and Secure Communities in 2013 had no criminal conviction. Only 12% were actually convicted of a serious criminal offense. And many others were caught by the Secure Communities dragnet for minor traffic offenses, such as driving without a license – according to data from the University of Syracuse.

Trump’s proposal has been tried by several states in the past – including Arizona, Georgia and Rhode Island. Earlier this year, H7408 was introduced in the Rhode Island General Assembly, masqueraded as an e-verify bill – hiding the fact that the legislation contained two provisions that would re-instate Secure Communities and the 287(g) program in Rhode Island.

3. The current administration policies on immigration are ‘weak and foolish’.

Trump’s speech echoed many of the same points as the Obama administration, and yet, calls those policies ‘weak and foolish’ – perhaps just as political theater.

The Obama administration has implemented a similar program to Secure Communities, known as the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). The intent of PEP is to identify undocumented immigrants who are suspected of committing serious crimes in order to make a determination as to whether to deport them. The administration has also deported more than the past 19 Presidents combined. Is Trump calling his own policies ‘weak and foolish’?

Trump also showcased victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, but neglected to mention that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are not criminals, but law-abiding workers that actually commit less crime than citizens, especially in regards to homicide.

In combination with the truly dangerous fantasy Trump presents,[2] most of my friends on the left declare that supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton is both historical necessity and a matter of political responsibility.[3]  I agree, but, as progressives, we need to appreciate how we get there and what her election means for the future.

Being progressive is not only about outcome. It’s also about process.  It’s about living in our daily life the politics we want to see writ large. But before I point out the challenges of progressive identification with HRC, I wish to acknowledge just fears.

If Trump is elected president, one of my gay friends told me, the marital unity he treasures most will be put at risk.  We will have as vice -president one of the most fundamentalist religious politicians in the nation whose embrace of extremist anti-LGBTQ politics and anti-choice politics is enough, by itself, to move progressives to mobilize against Trump.[4] The Supreme Court’s composition is too important to allow Republican Party extremists to control those nominations.

If Trump is elected president, the global security system will be put at risk. Already my friends on NATO’s eastern flank express profound worry about how Trump’s professed admiration for Putin and skepticism toward NATO put them at risk. Of course NATO’s embrace is hardly an obvious progressive position, but if you live in a place where Russian imperialism threatens, you must choose which superpower to welcome.

NATO may not be an obvious place where progressives unify, but we must unify in opposition to the ways in which Trump uses religious and racial differences to divide, and puts all the means of violence, including nuclear weapons, on the table.  I agree with those progressives who marked their opposition to President Obama’s drone wars and other ethically compromised means of war.

But Trump is worse.

We can go on, but to do so only reinforces a legitimate progressive objection.  Our vote is sacred and it is our choice. We want to live in a system more authentic, and less compromised. Katelyn Johnson, delegate for Bernie Sanders, said during an interview on MSNBC on July 27 that she wanted her vote to echo “the system I want to live under.” She doesn’t want to drink “the kool-aid of a system I want to dismantle.”  Progressives who fear Trump need to hear her, and so many others like her. We can’t allow our concern for outcomes to drown out the everyday practice that makes progressives different.

And what is that distinction?

We can’t base that distinction on particular substantive issues, even though it is the progressive’s inclination to debate which issue is fundamental. Is it a policy around the Trans Pacific Pipeline or closing GITMO?  Perhaps it’s about investing in public goods rather than privatizing them. Like other progressives, I have positions on these and more policy issues. But progressives can, and should, debate these matters based on informed readings of policy consequences and their motivations.

I think we come closer to recognizing that distinction when we look for authenticity. One reason Bernie Sanders mobilized so many people was because he has been consistent over decades in his opposition to the concentration of wealth and its deleterious effects on politics and everyday lives. One reason Joe Biden drew the applause for his speech that he did was because he emits, in everyday life and on stage, a sincerity that is not staged in the ways that so many other politicians look manufactured. While both Bernie and Biden are professional politicians, they are different from most.

Barack and Michelle Obama are in a class by themselves. Their speeches at this convention moved the house not only for their fine deliveries, but also because they could embody the progressive, and human, alternative that we wish our America could be.  If their daughters could play outside a White House built by slaves, we feel the progress that has been, that might be.

But here’s the problem.

Privileged progressives in our system like to feel good, and to believe that the place of the Obamas indicates that we live in a post-racial society. We do not. We can debate whether particular statistics mark progress or not, but we cannot diminish the profoundly racist underpinnings of the system in which we live, where violence against people of color, whether by police or through the proliferation of guns, whether through a prison industrial complex or in everyday aggressions and exclusions, define the enduring significance of the color line. When progressives celebrate Tim Kaine’s choice by referring to how well he speaks Spanish, and how he was a missionary in Honduras, many POC ask why not just recruit a Latinx person?

The answer for too many progressives is obvious. We must win, and to win, we must cut into the demographic that supports Trump, that white male working class electorate, perhaps religious, that might find Kaine’s working class roots and enduring Catholic commitments compelling. But that’s the problem for many progressives who recognize racism’s power. Outcome trumps process, and leads too many progressives to adopt that condescending position of knowing better than POC who declare these candidates to be more of the same old racist system, with glass ceiling broken or not.  And it gets worse.

I especially appreciate what my friend Justice Gaines shared on Facebook, with wisdom zir friend, Nikkie Ubinas, offered:

If Donald Trump wins, it’s not because not enough people of color chose not to vote for Hillary.

It’s because enough people voted for Donald Trump to make him a candidate. It’s because people elected Donald Trump. It’s because institutions, systems, and people created him. It’s because we have corrupt systems that don’t give a shit about people of color and poor people. It’s because Donald Trump is right in line with our American racist xenophobic and sexist history. It’s because Donald Trump is America’s enduring legacy.

Here’s the issue that so many of my progressive white friends miss, what I miss were I not to listen and learn from Justice and others.

In the panic about defeating Trump, progressives can practice reprehensible politics in everyday life, abandoning their commitment to authenticity, equality, and process on the altar of expediency and outcomes defined by those with privilege.

We ought celebrate breaking a glass ceiling, and I will do what I can to defeat Trump and elect Hillary Rodham Clinton. But that is not because I am with her. I remain committed to political revolution, and its chances are so much greater with Clinton/Kaine in office than Trump/Pence. I am continuing that political revolution when I work for Clinton/Kaine, but a vote does not fulfill my political responsibility as a progressive. That political responsibility means holding Clinton and Kaine accountable to the Democratic Party Platform those leading the political revolution at DNC moved.

When Bernie endorsed Hillary it was not the end of the political revolution. It was just a signal that it is time to refocus down ballot and on civil society, to mobilize and apply pressure to politicians too easily influenced by Wall Street and other lobbies with money. When Katelyn Johnson, Justice Gaines, Nikkie Ubinas, and others signal their distance from politics as usual, I will listen and respect their position for that is the foundation of the political revolution, not the election of a particular presidential candidate.

I also respect Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison much, and he said it right today on Morning Joe:

“Active citizens need to help politicians govern the country, and one way to do that is to let them know how you really feel…”

And it’s not just holding up placards and maybe even disrupting a speech. It’s about holding authorities accountable.  This DNC platform is different from all others preceding because it was made with the political revolution in mind. Again, Ellison said as much when he anticipated an election in which Clinton and Kaine win, but face active citizens who will demand that a new administration adhere to the platform’s principles.

Were I to identify the progressive distinction, it’s one in which we respect and recognize one another, being particularly attentive to the ways in which power and violence diminish some and privilege others. Progressives are not defined by the candidates they support, but by the work, in everyday life and in political campaigns and in enduring political struggles, to include everyone in the set of rights and responsibilities that democracy organizes.

Recognition, respect, and maybe even love moves the political revolution, and my identification as progressive.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-glass-ceiling_us_579827fee4b0d3568f85272e

[2] http://www.rifuture.org/ideology-in-the-time-of-trump.html

[3]  http://www.publicseminar.org/2016/07/why-i-support-hillary-clinton-for-president-a-letter-to-my-friends-on-the-left/

[4] Note here religious identification is not the issue. The Democratic VP nominee Tim Kaine is a devoted and practicing Catholic, but also supports women’s right to choose and the sanctity of love over homophobia. Rhode Island Bishop Tobin’s take on Kaine  https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/local/roman-catholic-bishop-in-rhode-island-criticizes-kaine/2016/07/25/378ad256-529e-11e6-b652-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html has prompted healthy debate within the RI Catholic community http://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20160726/thomas-m-hines-bishop-tobins-arrogant-view-of-tim-kaine

The Democratic Party is a coalition, and its leaders feel accountable to different elements of the coalition based on the power they have within the coalition itself and within the country. When Clinton (or Obama) does not feel beholden to the left, it’s not just about who they are as individual candidates or President(s, hopefully) — it’s also because our movements aren’t yet powerful enough to ensure that they listen and act. My point here is not to make excuses for elected officials who let us down, but instead to take ownership of these disappointments, as these are assessments of the relative strength of our movements and evidence that we haven’t yet done enough.

Throughout the primary, Bernie’s campaign helped to change this dynamic a little — demonstrating that not only is there broader support for a much more progressive agenda in 2016 than there was in 1992 (“the end of history”) but for the first time in my life there was a mainstream discussion of socialism in the USA. Clinton then chose to campaign mostly as a progressive (with some speed bumps) and she became a stronger candidate because of it. It doesn’t mean she is perfect or the people around her are – what is means is that it is possible to move her on the issues that our movements care about.

During the primaries, the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, immigrants’ rights groups, and others found smart and confrontational ways to push these issues into the center of the campaign by doing accountability sessions, protests, pickets, and other creative actions. Those movements must continue (and they will, regardless of who is elected), but each movement has to figure out what to do over the next 15 weeks to ensure the greatest chance of success after the election is over.

Should Clinton be challenged now on the issues where she is wrong? Sure — especially if there is a chance of persuading her in ways that actually build power for and accountability to the group(s) making the demands, rather than marginalizing them. Movements will have to determine whether it makes sense for them to be outside of the Democratic tent pissing in, inside the tent pissing out, inside the tent pissing both in and out, or outside the tent pissing both in and out, or some combination thereof. That’s a whole lot of urine everywhere, but hey, politics ain’t a catheter-bag.

Another major factor to consider from a strategic standpoint is what issues could Hillary get stronger on that would expand her electoral coalition and improve her chances of winning? In one recent example, she adopted some of Bernie’s ideas on college tuition. Yet ultimately it’s not just about what platform Hillary campaigns on (or even what she truly believes in her heart of hearts), but rather it’s what she will be able/willing do for us after the election. And the only definitive answer to that is: we know she can do nothing for us if she loses. Therefore, despite any misgivings we may have, we need to help her win. Getting her to agree with us and then she loses? If we want that candidate her name is Jill Stein.

Do leading Democrats need to learn that if their economic agenda ignores (or is hostile to) workers in order to serve the elite, it creates the opening for the rise of Trumpism? Yes. Despite the primary results, we’re clearly not there yet (and hence the choice of Kaine over Brown, Warren, or Perez, though I suspect other factors including my home state of Virginia were part of the calculus too). But can we teach them that lesson by allowing (or even helping!) Trump to win? That was what Jill Stein seemed to argue in her RI Future interview, and I think that is wrong so I will say it again.

First of all, if Trump wins I don’t think the centrist-conservative elements of the Democratic Party would even draw the correct conclusion. But secondly and more importantly, I don’t think that popular movements can win by losing. Victories and the confidence that people get from them expand the possibilities of future victories, and they are what help to build movements. Defeats have the opposite effect.

The ascendancy of Trump to the Presidency would be a devastating setback for millions and millions of real people, in all of our intersectional beauty — people of color, women, immigrants, LGBTIQ folks, workers. Hell, it would be a setback for lots of white folks, too, even if some of us are too poisoned by racism to see it. And it would set our movements up for renewed attacks and repression, and very likely lead to many defeats on our issues. As a candidate Trump has talked openly about limiting press freedom, and condoned violence and vigilantism by his supporters against protesters and people of color in general.

Do we think he would be less brazen once he had the power and the machinery of the federal government at his fingertips? I am not exaggerating when I say that I think that our organizations and tactics could literally be outlawed in the name of “Make America Safe Again: The Emergency Presidential Powers Act of 2017” (or whatever they call the law they pass to give Trump dictatorial authority in reaction to the first terrorist attack after he becomes President, if they even wait that long).

The election is a compression point for a whole bunch of complicated issues that people in our country have been grappling with, and yet really there are only two choices: backwards or forwards.

I’m not arguing for silence of criticism and certainly not for an abandonment of all other organizing. But I am saying that we need to roll up our sleeves and fight to elect Clinton, rather than wash our hands of it using the fact that she’s not perfect to justify it. The choice in this election is a stark one, and I am most definitely with her.

And in conclusion: Fuck Trump.

When we reference ideologies, we can mix up political self-understanding with the analytical and critical accounting of communicative action. We ought to debate whether Secretary Clinton is really a progressive if she is part of the 1%; or if you prefer America’s version of Kremlinology, we can wait to see whom she chooses as her vice-presidential candidate to decide whether the progressive or moderate label fits her best. [1] But to focus on Clinton’s self-understanding and the ideological connotations of her policy and personnel choices is to do something similar to what the Republicans themselves do in their politics. By focusing on Hillary Rodham Clinton we miss how ideology works in the Time of Trump.

There is substantial scholarly work identifying the articulation of Trump in the world of ideology and power. A number of scholars of fascism have made a strong case for why the label fits his practice.[2] It’s not just that his language can be vulgar and that he diminishes many in his oratory. The label is compelling because it serves to warn us of a fascist future America has so far avoided.

For some, however, this is not about an unrealized future, but revenge of the past. One of the world’s leading scholars of race and the history of white people, Nell Painter, marks a steady history of violence against people of color and sometimes their white allies; she argues that Trump borrows from an ideology of American white supremacy to express resentment for a black president and all that accompanies Obama’s leadership.[3] Rather than being the force for law and order, then, Trump’s performance helps to stimulate the disorder that demands a strong white man to resolve.

Trump and his defenders can defend his implicit and explicit racist and fascist speech by declaring he stands opposed to political correctness, celebrating that he tells it like it is. They say he expresses the real frustrations of the American people.  But in that very declaration, this coterie declares their whiteness and superiority without ever saying, explicitly, that white supremacy is the route to make America great again.

Of course Trump may never declare that he is a fascist or white supremacist, but that is not how ideology works in these times. We live in a time where those who care about truth are eclipsed by those who know how to put on a show, where comedians communicate the truth better than journalists or academics.  Trump, while no comedian, is a showman, and knows how to turn any news into useful news. Melania Trump’s presentation with plagiarism, Jeffery Isaac proposes, was

“a perfect representation of Trump and his campaign: all show and no substance, all mendacity and no truth, and all ego and no real concern for anyone else. Say what you want. Do what you want. Vilify others and then steal their words. Get caught and then try to shout down and bully those who notice. This is not an aberration. This is Trumpism.”[4]

In this light, it would be insufficient to articulate Trump’s communicative power by linking it only to ideologies of fascism and white supremacy.  His effect is realized through a celebrity culture that not only seeks salvation in the strong man, the superman, the Übermensch; it finds in the fantasy of beautiful blonde adult children and the ex-model wife an escapism that appeals to those who feel abandoned by policy wonks, free traders, movement activists, academics, and conventional politicians. [5] They can escape the world in which women and people of color threaten their imagined place and find themselves in the fantasy Trump embodies. These people, in their alienation from the world that exists, enjoy Trump.

Fantasy is different from the ideologies associated with conservatism, liberalism, or progressivism. It needs neither coherence nor evidence, for it is not designed to reflect or operate on reality. It is designed to constitute a reality that even its believers know is not real, but nonetheless has an effect that satisfies a desire that cannot be expressed openly in public.  And it’s even better if that fantasy is somehow denied, for its proponents then can cry injustice and break the rules even more to prove, ultimately, the reality of that fantasy’s power and of their desire. The Republican National Convention is not just about selecting a presidential candidate; it’s the latest performance of a fantasy that derails the relevance of conventional policy and politics.

In order to compete in the fantasy world made in the time of Trump, The Democratic National Convention and ensuing campaign cannot only be an expression of experienced leadership, policy expertise, and progressive and inclusive values.  Most American citizens know that the system is in crisis, and desperately wish that the future could be more like the selfie Democrats post rather than what Republicans offer when they picture their interns.[6]  But as crises and conflicts accumulate, Americans could become afraid that an ideology that embraces them all will be destroyed by the violence of the few, feeding the fantasy that order demands the return of a real man to power even if they, themselves, are not white supremacists and fascists.

We have seen how this works across the world. Putin blazed the trail, constituting the fantasy of a Great Russia at risk of destruction, finding evidence of that threat in democracy’s spread in Ukraine, and creating a war that demands even more authoritarian leadership at home. Erdogan has followed suit, finding the perfect opportunity in a bungled and possibly planted coup to impose a new order on Turkey, to impose the fantasy of a Turkey unbridled by expectations of western allies and cosmopolitan intellectuals.  Trump and his promoters take note and whip up desire by positing threats (immigrants, Muslims, crooked politicians) to an order that might only be fulfilled if a strong man leads. Those who embrace this fantasy find enjoyment not only in hating those threats, but finally being allowed to say it publicly.

Secretary Clinton and her allies may think they are running a convention and campaign against another politician, but they also need to recognize what it means to challenge a fantasy.  This 2016 election is not a contest of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. It is about the communicative powers of fantasy and escapism vs. those of political experience, expertise and solidarity.  And if that is the contest, the showman will win.

In the Time of Trump, knowing how the world works is not more compelling than knowing how to declare that others are stupid. That’s not my fantasy, of course; it is my nightmare. And perhaps that is the point around which Secretary Clinton might become president.

It’s not about vision or policy, but it’s about the fear of what Trump has already wrought, and what he might still bring were he to win. To work for the Democrats fulfills an alternative fantasy of salvation, except this time keeping America from descending to fascism and a full throated white supremacist order.

This electoral contest is shaped by the contest between those who resent what they believe has happened under Obama, and those who fear of what might be under Trump.

I don’t know which will win.

[1] http://www.publicseminar.org/2016/02/clinton-vs-sanders-whos-the-real-progressive/#.V4-4AJMrLEY

[2] http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20151209/NEWS/151209270 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/one-expert-says-yes-donald-trump-is-a-fascist-and_us_578d1a56e4b0d4229484d3e0

[3] https://www.facebook.com/historiansondonaldtrump/

[4] http://www.publicseminar.org/2016/07/why-melania-trumps-plagiarism-matters/

[5]   http://www.queries-feps.eu/Mag8_NEW.pdf

[6] https://mic.com/articles/149274/this-dem-intern-selfie-is-dramatically-different-from-paul-ryan-s?

To make these results even more stunning, the media’s insistence on over-covering Donald Trump should have juiced the GOP’s numbers, and the media narrative that the Democratic race is over should have depressed the Democratic numbers. But apparently not. The GOP also benefited from a three-way race, which should boost turnout over a two-way like the Democratic contest. Even with these advantages, Democrats solidly outperformed Republicans in turnout.

Unfortunately, some pundits have spun these results as good news for the GOP, pointing to the fact that GOP turnout was up over the 2008 primary. But that analysis conveniently forgets that John McCain had already sown up the Republican nomination by the time Rhode Island voted, while the Obama/Clinton race was very hotly contested.

In the real world, it is difficult to interpret these results as anything but more evidence that Rhode Island is moving to the left. On the right, some Republicans believe that voter anger at the right-wing Democratic establishment’s policies will deliver a red wave in November. Some pundits have begun parroting their talking points. Channel 10 political analyst Wendy Schiller even posited that Donald Trump might win Rhode Island.  Fortunately, it looks like Rhode Islanders are too smart to vote for Trump.  If these turnout numbers hold, the Republican Party will have a rough November in our state.