The First Year

A brief reflection on my first year of political blogging in the Trump era

Throughout its inaugural year, I explored a good range of topics on my blog — from Trump’s female props in conservative media to the disappearance of anti-war activism in an era rife with political resistance. But what I enjoyed writing about the most — and where I feel my knowledge base is strongest — is the insurgency in each of the two major political parties.

I was inspired to begin this blog in January 2017 because as a young black voter I had not felt particularly aligned with either the Bernie Sanders or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and felt each base held valid claims to their grievances with the other base. In essence, I wanted to deliver fair, level-headed analysis of the schism that had formed inside the Democratic Party.

However, I soon realized that my analysis propped up a binary that I didn’t find sustainable. The resistance wasn’t pro-establishment or “center-left”. And Sanders-aligned progressives weren’t anti-triangulation or less amendable to finding consensus with conservative voters than mainstream liberals were. In other words, the politics of insurgency were more complex and cut across more lines than Bernie vs. Hillary led me to believe. I acknowledged this in a few of my posts, but there is still so much more I would like to explore — and to do so more explicitly.

That said, in 2018 my writing will focus primarily on the many layers of resistance in the Trump era, and how different constituencies obtain power in a thoroughly unrepresentative two-party system. This will include both right-wing and left-wing insurgent movements in the parties, and any effort toward a third party movement ahead of 2020.

I will also be more intentional about elevating the black resistance, and exploring in more depth the tensions between traditional black constituencies in the Democratic Party and the party-ambivalent black left. For instance, soon I will be publishing a piece that gauges the prospects for a black female Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 based on the race and gender politics surrounding the 2016 presidential election and several special elections in southern states this year.

Of course, this blog isn’t just for analyzing American politics in the Trump era. I also aim to grow as a writer and to elevate the progressive agenda. Fairness is important to me, but so is honesty about what causes I intend for my perspective to serve. I support efforts to remake the Democratic Party from the bottom up, and to elect more left-leaning independent and progressive candidates to office in 2018 and beyond. These efforts will be a focus of my blog in the coming year as well.