Terry Bracy: Truth, power and the Harris opportunity

In the old days, pundits often offered their sage analysis while puffing on pipes until they discovered that while educating listeners, they were killing themselves.

Walter Cronkite was the archetype of that model, an admired World War II correspondent who went on to become the face of CBS news in an era when three television networks shared more than 90% of the American audience. A month after the surprise Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese, Cronkite returned from a trip to the battlefield and suggested the US was “mired in a stalemate.” So powerful was the newscaster’s reach that his concerns lit a fire under the growing anti-war movement that led to LBJ exiting his reelection race in 1968. He spoke truth and with it, exercised power.

The pundits of today who dress for Vogue covers and wear thousand-dollar suits have far less influence on the splintered media audience. And few share the gravitas of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Foreign affairs or the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe who reports on the lives of struggling Americans by being there. Yet neither of these modern-day Cronkites had any role in convincing President Biden to step down. That power went to rich donors and a new tribe of humans known as “influencers” who spend their lives making fusses and spreading half-truths on social media. Analogies are mistakenly drawn to the LBJ exit: Joe Biden was a brilliant President who simply grew too old. The issues that are top-of-mind to most are not foreign wars, but a fierce battle at home between the forces of democracy and Fascism.

In Florida, our fourth-largest state, MAGA Governor Ron DeSantis offers an early look at what life in America will be like if the anti-democracy forces take control. In his campaign to keep a pro-abortion referendum off the ballot, he is sending his “election policy” police to the front doors of signers to check their legal status. This may be a desperate act in thug warfare, but if the right wing wins the 2024 election, voter intimidation will become a widespread practice.

Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance is employing another tool from the Fascist playbook — dehumanization. He is spreading the word that immigrants will eat your house pets, a disgraceful claim he picked up from a nut’s Facebook post. This is the one-two punch employed by every tyrant since Caligula. Lies and threats have always been the meal that sustains authoritarianism.

Former President Trump recently doubled down on the intimidation served up by the governor he trashed and the vice-presidential candidate he chose. Trump has issued a warning to politicians, journalists, and plain voters who criticize him that they will fill our jails once he is elected. As if words are not sufficient to make his point, he has ventured into digital art to portray a long list of Democratic opponents in orange jumpsuits, the favored fashion of penitentiaries. Not all Trump followers in front of a mirror understand they are looking at a potential citizen of a Nazi state.

Not all by himself did the 45th President place America at this crossroads. There were two other major contributors. First is the underground right-wing culture which has been slowly and cleverly rebuilding its power in the courts and state legislatures ever since the devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The Goldwater debacle not only lost the presidency but also Congress by wide enough margins to bring passage of voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education, environmental reforms, and much more — the very progressive programs the right seeks in Project 2025 to destroy today. Donald Trump was not the instigator but the beneficiary of this decade’s long effort.

And second, my own Democratic Party’s programs have failed to solve the pressing problems that have contributed to a populist uprising. Surely there have been advances that the Democratic Party can claim. But as historian Thomas Frank laments in his classics Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas, the party of the people abandoned its base as it rushed into the arms of Ivy League professionals for new leadership. It made deals like NAFTA which further enriched the wealthy while breaking unions.

Kamala Harris has a chance to make this right, but only if like the Cronkite generation, she exercises power with truth.