The civility debate, which almost reached a tipping point this past summer, laid bare a reality.

In June, Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of Red Hen restaurant, politely asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant after the waitstaff (which consisted of members of the LGBTQ community) conveyed to Wilkinson that they felt uncomfortable serving a woman they saw as an active participant in relaying and inciting the hatred that endangers their lives. In a move of solidarity with her staff, Wilkinson asked Sanders to leave the Red Hen. In the following weeks, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and senior White House adviser Stephen Miller were both publicly admonished while dining at Mexican restaurants amid national backlash for their inhumanity toward migrants and asylum seekers from south of the border during the family separation crisis.

View more

While the progressive public message was clear — if a publicly paid civil servant cruelly develops and propagates racist and discriminatory policies that rip young children and babies away from their parents, they won’t be given a moment’s peace; the Democratic response wasn’t nearly as strong. In fact, their tone-deaf response, which was strangely focused on maintaining civility instead of protecting detained children proved how Democrats are failing their progressive base at this moment of critical challenge to our collective integrity.

As The New York Times and other publications and politicos responded to the ejections with pious lectures about civility, Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters (D–CA) came out and not only defended the actions of citizens confronting Trump administration officials in restaurants, she doubled down by saying that they should be relentlessly harassed and ostracized by the American public until they stop dehumanizing and abusing families (among their many other offenses).

Yet as Rep. Waters politically channeled the rage many Americans felt regarding these child separations, she received little support from rank and file Democrats. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer both decided that she — a Black woman who has been repeatedly attacked by the president of the United States, targeting her sanity and her IQ — required a lecture on decorum.

After Donald Trump’s racist framing of Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people”, African-American Congressman Al Green (D-TX) sponsored the first vote in the House of Representatives on Trump’s impeachment — the House voted 364-58 on a "motion to table" the resolution, effectively killed by Republicans and Democrats alike.

In response, the House’s top two Democrats, Pelosi and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, released a joint statement saying, “The special counsel’s investigation is moving forward as well, and those inquiries should be allowed to continue. Now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.” Rep. Green had another impeachment motion tabled by a vote of 355–66 after Trump called Haiti and African nations “shitholes.”

This November, as several white nationalists and white supremacists plan to run as Republicans — including Russell Walker, who’s said that Jews are satanic, called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Martin Lucifer Koon”, and flatly stated that God is a white supremacist — some Democrats have decided to oppose the far left. Though a long history exists behind their reluctance to legitimize, support, and join progressives who’ve chosen to oppose the discrimination supported by the GOP, it’s just sad that Democrats' views aren’t progressing as fast as the GOP is regressing.

In the words of HuffPost columnist Michelangelo Signorile, “this is about something much larger than winning elections. It’s about standing up against tyranny and abuse and for what’s morally right. We’re called to do this only a few times in our lives. Now is one of those times.”

Journalist Haddiyyah Ali succinctly digs even deeper, writing, “Civility, in the face of such atrocities, is an act of cowardice.”

The bemoaning of civility and its loss, the reticence to abolish ICE, and certain Democrats in Congress providing votes for Trump policies and Supreme Court nominees — looking at you, Joe Manchin — are all indicators of why, moving forward, the Democratic candidates who are scared to unapologetically do right by the vulnerable and marginalized masses in the face of outright presidential incompetence and malevolence need not apply in the 2018 midterms, November 2020, or any time beyond that.

While the traditional Democratic concern for maintaining a center base doesn’t have to be completely abandoned, what’s considered too far left must be recalibrated in the face of America’s current harsh political, economic, and social climate. The danger of continually operating within a center-left state of mind is that Trump’s extremism is literally shifting what constitutes abnormal. There’s a political theory now known as the “Overton Window,” developed by public policy analyst Joseph P. Overton, which suggests that our society has a “window” of acceptable ideas wherein the ideas located within the window are considered normal and everything else is seen as ridiculous and/or radical.

He argues that when people force others to consider the ideas outside of the window, the window gradually shifts, making what was once unreasonable, socially palatable. The more Trump and his administration continue to practically cage and abduct immigrant children, effectively normalizing that tactic of immigration deterrence, the more opposing ideals, like abolishing ICE, are seen as radical. And if traditional Democrats aim to play to a center-left base, they will begin viewing the most stringent opposition to our state-sponsored child abduction as the opinions of radicals.

That’s how we end up with representatives who become detached from their constituents when, at the very least, they should aim to reflect what leftists are largely demanding. Unlike Pelosi and Hoyer, according to a CNN poll in taken June, 71% of Democrats were in favor of impeaching Trump. While Democratic governors and senators equivocate on the practicality of a single-payer health care option, 74% of Democrats support universal health care, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll taken earlier this year. While Democratic senators like Kamala Harris defend the existence of ICE, a plurality of Democrats favor abolishing it.

These topics, plus many more incredibly important social concerns, can no longer exist as mere wedge issues to be debated by “radical” lefties and “blue-dog Democrats” (Democrats who typically tend to vote more conservative), but rather as critical interests that must be shared across the party to reject and reverse this administration’s vile dogma.

Luckily for the Democrats, they don’t need to generate some grand scheme and ideal about how to move the party closer to where the abundance of liberals actually are today. All they need to do is follow the lead of the politicians in their party who are exciting and inspiring the base by audaciously advocating for extensive change, like 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will likely become the youngest women ever elected to Congress. But Ocasio-Cortez’s youth isn’t her claim to fame; it’s the fact that she prevailed in an upset win over the established incumbent Joe Crowley, a man so deeply embedded in the party that some thought he’d replace Pelosi as House minority leader. Ocasio-Cortez beat him with a platform far to the left of what many modern Democratic politicians would feel comfortable propagating to their base. And the fact that she unabashedly embraces it, to the great delight of liberals nationwide, only helps to make her detractors, like Fox News, look ridiculous.

Her refreshing brand of common-sense humanity is so infectious that she also won New York’s 15th District Reform Party congressional primary even though she wasn’t running. And while she deservedly continues to shine in the spotlight, there are some other voices in the Democratic Party throughout all levels of government who not only deserve to be recognized for their advocacy, but whose lead other Democrats should be looking to follow.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has been a strong advocate for the human rights of immigrants, minorities, and supports universal health care. Lucia “Lucy” McBath — the mother of Jordan Davis, the 17-year-old black youth who was shot dead by a 45-year-old white man, who alleged Davis and his friends were playing their music too loudly — won the Democratic nomination in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District on a platform promising to raise the legal minimum age to purchase a firearm and introducing legislation to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. And in Hawaii, Kaniela Ing has pushed for revolutionary change including tuition-free college, a $15 living wage, universal basic income, and Medicare for all.

These are the voices that must be uplifted from this November right through to 2020 and beyond because the soul of the nation is at stake. No longer can we tolerate cowardly Democrats who believe bipartisan consensus building should come at the expense of vulnerable communities. No longer can conscientious Americans stand by while Republicans effectively seek to dehumanize much of America's populations as if inner-morality is more precious than an actual life. Cowards need not apply in 2020 because taking the country back will not and cannot be done through amicable compromise with evil and incompetence.

The presentation of centrist Democrats as liberals’ “common sense” voice is exactly the Democratic problem heading into 2020. While seats have already been flipped, that doesn’t erase the biggest issue the Dems have had during this campaign: having the politicians align themselves with the people. For whatever reason, it seems that Democratic politicians are unwilling and/or unable to capitalize on the energy of their base. When you look at the rallies, the town halls, the protests, the counter-protests, social media, and the furor in the air all around us, there is a wide swath of progressives who desperately want aggressive change. And they are being met with a party that is set on following the established rules, not causing uproar, and committing to a sense of civility that their own voters largely don’t give a damn about. For smart, lifelong politicians to avoid diving into the fray in the manner many of their constituents demand, just to protect a rapidly shrinking center-left core, is proof of political cowardice.

The reality is that Trump poses a threat that isn't just merely one of political ideology, but rather an existential crisis tearing at the soul of a nation divided. He doesn’t just represent a shift to conservatism, but an embrace of violent, entitled, discriminatory and treacherous rage fueled by xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and a warped, white supremacist-approved, American-exceptionalist worldview that threatens to disenfranchise the most vulnerable and continues to punish them at every turn.

Some people may argue that positioning away from the center is pointlessly risky when all signs are currently pointing to a massive streak of Democratic wins in November and possibly 2020. But to focus on representation without simultaneously scrutinizing a candidate’s stance on specific policies is to potentially court another round of gutless politicos more worried about being “primaried” by a member of their own party and less worried about actually affecting substantive change in the lives of the marginalized. Success isn’t just turning a red county or red state blue; it’s electing Democrats who will fight harder to enshrine and enforce progressive ideals than their opponents will fight to undermine them. The people have been ready for this change since the morning after election night.

Get the Teen Vogue Take. Sign up for the Teen Vogue weekly email.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: One Year Since Charlottesville: Alt-Right Candidates are on the Rise