As members of the Democratic Party of Oak Park gathered for their first regular monthly meeting since it became clear that Donald Trump won the presidential election, one sentiment seemed to sum up the mood.
“This is tough,” said Democratic Party of Oak Park committeewoman Eileen Lynch, speaking to the standing room only crowd gathered Saturday at the group’s headquarters in Oak Park. “I’m finding it hardest to talk to my daughters who I infused with Democratic activism. This is a devastating setback and I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
But some also took a longer view. State Sen. Don Harmon, president of the Illinois Senate and the Democratic committeeman for Oak Park, preached resiliency, saying that setbacks are inevitable in politics. Harmon recalled when he was a student at St. Chiles Catholic School in Oak Park and did some volunteer work for 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, who lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon.
“I have experienced profound disappointments at many stages along the way in politics,” Harmon said afterward. “But I have great faith in the resiliency of our system, to correct overreaches, to bring us back to the middle. I don’t know how this is going to shake out but I have to maintain that faith that we will be able to correct it. There’s plenty of work left for us all to do and as Democrats we need to wrestle with the reasons why a majority of the voters don’t seem to trust us to fight for them and that’s going to require some soul searching and adjusting of our priorities to make sure they match the priorities of the voting electorate.”
But not everyone was so measured. One volunteer declined to talk about how he felt.
“You can’t print profanity,” the man said.
Officials from the Democratic Party of Oak Park said they had worked extremely hard to elect Kamala Harris, making more than 20,000 phone calls for Harris — the fourth most calls of any group in the nation. In addition to phone calls, they sent postcards and many traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan every weekend to knock doors for Harris. To many, losing was like a kick in the gut.
Jim Dickert, 86, wrote 1,800 postcards to voters in swing states to encourage turnout among likely Democratic voters as part of a program based in Oak Park. Dickert faithfully wrote 10 postcards a day for six months. They were all mailed in October.
Gordon Hellwig wrote 200 postcards and spent six Saturdays this fall knocking doors for Harris in Michigan and Wisconsin. Hellwig spent Election Day and the previous three days knocking doors in Muskegon, Michigan. Hellwig, 68, believed that this was the most important election in his lifetime.
Both volunteers looked to the future with misgivings.
“I think democracy is in danger,” Hellwig said. “The threats to end the professional civil service and return to the spoils system, the threats to reproductive rights nationwide. I was a foreign service officer, I was a diplomat, so the notion that we should end alliances that have helped secure the security of this country and the entire world since 1945, to throw those out, to undo those, is a grave threat to our national security.”
Jan Goldberg, a retired high school history teacher who lives in Riverside, had a hard time understanding why the majority of voters voted for Trump while acknowledging that many voters had economic concerns and were angry about high inflation during the presidency of Joe Biden. But Goldberg said that she thought Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol was disqualifying.
“I’m just sickened that people would put the price of eggs over the spirit of our Constitution,” Goldberg said.
Harmon said a measure of empathy would be more helpful than being paralyzed by fears.
“Demonizing people who vote a different way than we do is not productive and everyone is entitled to their own vote,” Harmon said. “I think Democrats failed at convincing voters that our priorities are their priorities. They prioritized cost of living, inflation, job security, affordable housing and we were painted as out of touch with those priorities even though those are core priorities.”
Mariyana Spyropoulos, who last week was elected to be the next Clerk of the Circuit Court in Cook County, spoke at the Oak Park meeting and rejected the notion that it was just racism or misogyny that caused Harris to lose.
“There’s something else,” Spyropoulos said. “That’s too simple an explanation.
“Sometimes I feel we live in a bubble.”
While some activists have begun to think about how to counter changes a Trump presidency will bring, others are not ready to go there yet and want to take some time off to heal and process things.
“We’re going to pause and take care of ourselves,” Lynch said.
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.