Gloucester Democratic City Committee

Deep exhale.

Feel that tension leaving your shoulders. Four years is long enough for it to get in deep, so you might want to take a stretch too, it’ll feel great.

We are now three weeks into the Biden Administration and things could not be more different. Our president is filling the ranks of the government with competent civil servants, rather than toadies and donors. We have recommitted to the Paris Accord and our support for the World Health Organization; reaffirmed diplomacy as our international calling card, casting out childish “me first” rhetoric. We are rebuilding the actual fabric of what really made America great.

However, restoring the norms of the pre-Trump era is not entirely possible, or at least likely to be a quick task. As much as we would hope that Trumpism would be evaporated in the light of this new day, the world has been changed. The new GOP is the GOP of Marjorie Taylor Greene; conspiracy theories and outright lies are now, more than ever, their stock and trade. Even our own local GOP leaders have propagated the lie that the election Trump lost was stolen or unfair. The most recent GOP nominee for the 6th Congressional District filed a spurious lawsuit to challenge the results of his massive loss to Seth Moulton (he lost bigger than any GOP candidate has in several cycles). The local GOP city committee leadership then posted images of this ridiculous lawsuit to celebrate it. These people have made themselves the enemies of democracy and we will never forget it.

We are called as Americans to the charge to not ignore attempts to weaken our democracy. Don’t be afraid to call out creeping bigotry and nonsense when you see it. We have a long road ahead to a new normal, and the Trump-era infatuation with ‘alternative facts’ should find there no place to take root.

Democratically yours,
Matthew C. Murray

What kind of week has it been?

Writing these monthly notes to you is a good way to go on record with what’s most pressing in our Party and community. Full confession though, sometimes I don’t get to it EXACTLY on the first of the month – and in this era, that can be dangerous. In this chaotic time, my notes from only the day before read as prescient as those film reels from the 50’s that promised us each a robot butler in our homes by 1990 – comically out of touch with how history is actually playing out.

Rather than rehash a dark litany of the week’s news it is our choice to look forward at the coming year. The GDCC will continue to meet and to be a sounding board for local Democrats and progressives who see our nation and its government as the ongoing experiment in liberty that it is, rather than something to savagely attack. We look forward to the true beginning of the Biden/Harris era, and a return to responsible government. This coupled with the recent victories in Georgia that secure us the Senate, we can now truly expect progress rather than the obstruction of the McConnell era.

Despite the hopefully fairer winds blowing from Washington, this does not mean we are standing idly by this year. It is our responsibility to hold the new administration to account on their promises and the bold action that they must now undertake to heal this nation, eliminate the threat of COVID-19, and assure our allies that the United States is back.

We look forward to seeing you all at our first meeting of the year this Thursday. For a format, we’re doing something that we’ve done many times right after an election. Rather than having a guest come to talk about policy or an issue, we’re turning the meeting over to our members to talk about the election, their experiences, what they hope from this new era. We’ll see you all on Zoom, this Thursday, January 14th at 7pm.

Democratically yours,
Matthew C. Murray