A Year for Transformation by Barry Rosenbaum

Today, we enter the Year of the Fire Horse. It’s an auspicious event. Only once in every sixty years does the Year of the Horse coincide with the element of Fire. As explained in a February 10th post by Heidi Hu:

When the power and speed of the horse is combined with the accelerant of fire, one can expect great societal turmoil and global challenges.

The Fire Horse is also a symbol of courage and action. Depending on how we harness the Fire Horse’s energy, this tumultuous time can result in chaos or progress. It’s an auspicious year for political activism, where acting with courage, heart, and community is extraordinarily powerful and leads to consequential breakthroughs!

The last Year of the Fire Horse occurred in 1966, a time of major societal turmoil. The U.S. role in Vietnam expanded, leading to nationwide demonstrations and MLK’s first public speech against the war. Civil rights activist James Meredith was shot in Mississippi and later led the “March Against Fear.” The Black Panther Party was founded. LSD was made illegal. Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California, and the first Kwanzaa was celebrated. In China, the Cultural Revolution commenced. The first official meeting of the Catholic and Anglican churches in 400 years occurred.

Let us use this period we are entering now to act with courage and fortitude to end our political nightmare. The golden escalator of greed, despotism, and depravity must be dismantled. To do so, we must transform our political structures. Political parties do not last forever. The Grand Old Party is dead or, at a minimum, it survives in name only.

The true nature of the present Republican Party has been laid bare. It is a party of white supremacists, immoral tech tycoons, and fascists. It is a party willing to accept the killing of innocent Americans and immigrants without due process or cause. It is a party willing to cram upwards of fifty adults in holding rooms for inhumane periods of time, with detainees sleeping on floors, having no access to showers, sharing only one toilet, and being fed inadequately. If you are still a member of this party, you might question who you have had to become to accept this treatment of fellow human beings. It’s too late to say you did not understand the depths to which Trump’s party has willfully sunk.

The Democratic Party has prided itself on having a big tent. It is time to make that tent even more inclusive, while simultaneously becoming more focused on the core issues that touch us all. Given the precipice we are currently on, anyone who accepts the foundational principles of our Constitution and Bill of Rights should be welcomed into the party. It should be large enough for everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Adam Kinzinger, Andy Beshear to Tim Miller, Pete Buttigieg to Joe Walsh, Wes Moore to Cassidy Hutchinson, JB Pritzker to Christine Todd Whitman, Josh Shapiro to Jeff Flake, Gretchen Whitmer to John Giles, Raphael Warnock to Geoff Duncan, Maxwell Frost to George Will, Jasmine Crockett to David Frum,  Gavin Newsom to Bill Kristol, Chris Murphy to Liz Cheney,  Pramila Jayapal to Stephanie Grisham, and Tim Walz to Charlie Sykes. They are all patriots.

Because of the historical animosity between the two parties, I fear that for some, leaving the Republican Party and joining the Democratic Party would be a schism too wide. To encourage those hesitant to take the leap, the Democratic Party needs to rebrand itself with new leadership and a name more reflective of the time we are in—the Constitutionalist Democratic Party or even just the Constitutionalist Party. Now is not the time to cling to a name that carries too much baggage for too many people. Now is the time to save our democracy.

As Van Jones so eloquently and succinctly laid out recently, it starts with these “North Star” principles — democracy for everyone, dignity for everyone, and economic opportunity for everyone. If we can agree to these, we can move forward together as a nation. There will, of course, still be major policy disagreements about a whole range of issues, but we have been forcibly reminded that those pale in magnitude to the shared commitment to maintain and advance democracy and freedom, here and throughout the world.  

If we can truly unite around our country’s bedrock principles, the energies of the Fire Horse will continue to radiate well after this year is over, and the United States will still be a beacon of hope when the Fire Horse returns in 2086.