Opinion | The election is taking place too early

I had hoped that this election would be a moment of national renewal. I had hoped that Democrats could decisively defeat MAGA populism and set us on a new national path.

That's clearly not going to happen. No matter who wins this election, it will be close, and the nation will remain evenly and bitterly divided.

In retrospect, I think I expected too much from politics. When certain sociological and cultural realities are established, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events. The two parties and their affiliated political bodies have spent billions this year, and nothing has changed in the race. The polls are exactly where they were when we started. If you had fallen asleep a year ago and woke up today, you would have missed little consequence except that now Kamala Harris leads the blue 50 percent of the country, not Joe Biden.

It is now clearer to me that, in most cases, politicians are not master navigators who lead us into a new future. They are more like surfers riding the waves created by people further down in core society.

Let's look at America between 1880 and 1910. In the early years of this period, American society was thrown into turmoil by industrialization and uncontrolled capitalism, resulting in enormous economic growth and untold human misery. Waves of immigration swept across the country and transformed urban America. Political corruption was rife in the cities, and in Washington, DC, political incompetence was the norm

America faced a central civilizational challenge: How can we harness the energy of industrialization to build a humane society?

The American renewal began in the hearts of people from all walks of life. People were desperate for change. “All history is the history of longing,” writes Jackson Lears about this era in his book “Rebirth of a Nation.” He argued that during these decades, “a widespread longing for regeneration—for a rebirth of various spiritual, moral, and physical kinds” permeated public life and inspired movements and policies that formed the basis of 20th-century American society.

Some of the movements that came from this longing were evil. Some people believed that they could bring order to an unruly society through false racial science and white supremacy. This was the era of lynching and racial terrorism.

But other movements actually led to rebirth. First there was a cultural change. The murderous Social Darwinist philosophy was replaced by the Social Gospel movement, which emphasized community solidarity and service to the poor.

After the cultural change there was a civic renaissance, which was supported by its ideals. For example, the Settlement House movement, led by women like Jane Addams of Chicago, alleviated the plight of poor immigrant families. The temperance movement, also led primarily by women, sought to curb alcohol consumption and marital abuse.

Unions rose up to demand fair wages and an eight-hour workday. The environmental movement spread not only to protect wilderness but also to promote human vitality that comes from contact with nature. At the top of society, moguls like JP Morgan have imposed order on the corporate world to reduce boom and bust. Philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller built libraries, museums, and universities.

When Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1901, society was changing. The legislative program we call progressivism—cleaning up local government, breaking up the monopolies, regulating clean food, water, and air—emerged from the cultural and civic change already underway. The pattern was first cultural change, then civic revival, then political reform.

Today we face another great civilizational question: How can we create a morally coherent and politically functioning democracy in the midst of radical pluralism and diversity?

I don't see any cultural movement comparable to the social gospel movement of the 1890s. Libraries are groaning with books diagnosing our divisions, but where is the new social ideal? Where are the values ​​that motivate people to put down the phone and dedicate their lives to changing the world?

Some days I think the civic revitalization part of the formula is progressing well. Through my work at Weave: The Social Fabric Project, I meet local leaders committed to restoring solidarity and helping the marginalized at the neighborhood level. However, such efforts have so far failed to reverse the catastrophic decline in societal trust. Our nation still lacks the sense of social and psychological safety that would enable us to have productive conversations across partisan differences. We still lack a national creed or narrative that would provide common ground between competing belief systems.

A few years ago there actually seemed to be a social movement that could bring about fundamental change, which I guess I'll call the New Progressivism. Groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter came to the fore. Racial justice programs spread across corporations and college campuses. Politicians offered ambitious plans – the Green New Deal, Medicare for All. Presidential candidates promised to decriminalize border crossings.

But the New Progressivism proved to be a dead end. DEI programs are in decline—or, as at the University of Michigan, in turmoil. Democrats aren't talking much about radical proposals like Medicare for All, which seemed à la mode in early 2020. The country is moving to the right on issues like immigration and the economy, and Kamala Harris is moving with it.

This election is taking place too early. This occurs before cultural and civic conditions are in place that could drive political and legislative reforms. It is simply unfair to ask Harris, who has been a presidential candidate for three months, to lay out a vision for comprehensive national renewal under these conditions. Politicians, especially when running for office, are professional opportunists and seek to please constituencies. They are rarely visionaries.

And yet this is a nation of constant rebirth and renewal: the 1770s, 1830s, 1860s, 1890s, 1930s, 1960s and 1980s. Today we continue to experience a period of economic recovery that is making America, as The Economist put it, “the envy of the world.” It is our social and political relationships that have become toxic and lead to exhaustion.

As the Lears book suggests, the sea change must occur in people's hearts and minds as they adopt an abundance mentality that drives risk-taking and social experimentation; when they have before them a comprehensive social vision that awakens enormous energies at all levels of society.

In 1902, psychologist William James wrote a book about conversion experiences called The Varieties of Religious Experience. Occasionally, he wrote, a belief or vision touches people in “the hot place of a person's consciousness,” the “habitual center of his personal energy.” These visions arouse great enthusiasm, shatter existing assumptions and often lead to heroic deeds.

In order for an entire society to change, the people in the society must have a desire to change themselves. A complacent, self-satisfied “I’m right” nation will be stuck forever.