Why we need a Democratic Creed
Newsletter #24 / June 12, 2023
We need to stand for something. Our identity needs to be bigger than the next election, bigger than policy, bigger than all the events crashing around us. As Democrats, we need to stand for something so basic and so true that it inspires each and every one of us, something that unites and gives meaning to everything we do.
We have existed too long as a machine to win the next election. Of course we need to win the next election. We need to win the next ten elections, and we have to work our butts off to do it. And that's exactly why we need purpose, and vision. It's why we need to inspire. A party official recently said, “We need to find another Obama to inspire us.” No, we need our party to inspire us. We need to inspire us.
This country is in the grips of a vast social revolution ... social, cultural, and political. This decades-long upheaval is literally changing life as we know it. The powers behind the Republican Party understand this perfectly. It's why they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars for decades, just to manipulate identity (including ours). And it's worked. They haven't changed the rules of the game, they've changed the game itself.
It's time for us to rise to the occasion. We need to be more than an election machine, more than endless policy disputes and purity tests. We need to lead. We need to inspire. We need to be the moral standard for this country, and we need to do it together.
But how? What is it that unites each and every one of us, everywhere?
One thing: our beliefs. Our core values as Democrats, that is what sets us apart. They are the things that have driven us … imperfectly and so terribly unevenly … ever since the times of Abraham Lincoln and Sojourner Truth. Yes, they were Democrats. Their dedication to social justice makes them every bit a part of our heritage, just as surely as Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and Barrack Obama. Anyone who has ever stood for social progress is part of our heritage, our long struggle as a nation to make real life meet up with the intent of the Declaration of Independence.
That Common Thread of striving … however imperfectly ... to make America a truly just society is the essence of who we are as Democrats, who we have been since FDR founded our party in 1932.
But that essence won't be our reality until we stand up and declare it. That Common Thread and the values they stand for won't unite us until every Democrat in this country has heard them and taken them to heart. They won't be the banner that leads our nation into the future until that banner is written down and held up for all to see. It's time to take a stand. It's time to stand up and say “this is who we are, this is what we stand for”. It's time to declare: “These are America's values, and we are their champion.”
That is why you need to adopt the Democratic Creed. That is why you need to embrace the Creed and the vision of a just society … as long as it takes. Because this kind of fundamental change can't come from above. It can't come from the Washington bubble or the donor class. It has to come from us, the grassroots, the people who have always been the soul of our party and our country. And it has to come now.
J.M. Purvis
* To see The Democratic Creed, visit our website (Dems101.org), or read DEMOCRATS 101.To see the growing list of organizations that have already adopted, click //here.