What’s Next?

Although I run a non-partisan think tank that seeks to solve
public problems, regardless of ideology, I voted for Hillary Clinton and was
shocked and saddened at the election results. A woman of extraordinary talent,
accomplishment, and dedication to public service was voted down in favor of a
man who talks about women as if they were pieces of meat. Worse, a man whose
rhetoric and actions actively frighten millions of American citizens in ways
that white Americans truly cannot imagine. Deanna Zandt tweeted the day after the
election, “If you don’t feel sheer terror this morning, your privilege is showing.” That caught
me up short, just as the continual stream of police shootings of unarmed black
men have made me realize that when my teenage sons tangled with the police, I was upset and deeply angry
at them, but never afraid for their lives.

The headlines, rightly, point to a profound desire for change
among Trump​ voters, but
what  frightens me, albeit on a less visceral and immediate level, is how
that desire for change masks–and excuses–the profound division on display
in our country. We are accustomed to seeing blue coasts and a red interior, but
in state after state we saw rural versus urban​ communities, men versus women, people of color
versus whites, Americans with a college degree versus Americans with​
only a high school diploma. We saw Trump rallies
that were almost entirely filled with white Americans and Clinton rallies that
were multi-colored. And we saw the slimmest of margins–mere hundreds,
thousands, or tens of thousands ​of votes ​determining the fate of a country with over 300
million people.

We know many of the causes: Relentless residential segregation,
the absence of institutions (such as the draft or traditional public schools)
throwing Americans together and forcing them to challenge their stereotypes,
the proliferation of media echo chambers, fear-mongering inspired by demographic change. We will never be on
the same team, as President Obama claimed on Wednesday, if none of us even
know voters for the other side. We have to meet one another beyond the
Thanksgiving table, and must learn to talk with–and, above all else, listen
to–one another when we do.

As the great political scientist Robert Dahl argued, cross-cutting
cleavages have always been at the heart of successful democracies. Our
neighbors might have voted differently than we did, but our children went to
the same schools; we sang in the same choirs; we participated in the same fund
drives; we rooted for the same sports teams. The division along one axis of our
lives was offset by unity on others, allowing us to see each other as fellow
human beings regardless of our differences.

Our political system, educational institutions, social,
economic, and trade policies, even our technology, are all failing our
citizens. We see evidence of those failures not only in the millions of voters
who chose Donald Trump, hoping that he would smash the system, but also​ in the
even greater number of voters who chose Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012,
believing that he could achieve lasting change. Indeed, as we heard repeatedly
on election night, many of the same white voters who voted for Obama in 2008
and 2012 chose Trump in 2016. The determining factor here is not Democrat
versus Republican, but rather the people versus the establishment, ordinary
Americans versus hated “elites.”

America must renew itself once again, as it has before. We
need new narratives, new political coalitions, new and more effective ways of
actually making a difference in people’s lives. We must forge a positive
populism without demagoguery. But we must start, as Hillary Clinton said in her
concession speech, with “an inclusive and big-hearted America.” Not just
inclusive of traditionally excluded women and minorities. But also of white men
who no longer see a future for themselves. White women who seek more
traditional roles. Religious Americans. Rural Americans. And all Americans who
do not see a place or a future for themselves. New America will be majority
minority. But it cannot simply leave old America behind.

A map of solid red and blue squares across and within states
is a dysfunctional and dangerous America, an America of tribes. It cannot be
fixed by winning, but only by bridging. The election of one of the most openly
divisive candidates in American history may seem an odd place to start. But we
have no time to lose.