When the anticipated “blue wave” waters the scorched Earth that thug politics has wrought upon this nation, we cannot revert to the business-as-usual that preceded it.

Trumpism was presaged by LePageism, and Maine has brooked eight years, not two, of fact-averse, bully-based anti-intellectualism on top of decades of forsaking the common good and promoting profligate hoarding of wealth as the due reward of a well-functioning economy. But it is not good economics to blow our natural inheritance on one big party where a select coterie of old white guys remains immune from social ills while the rest of us fight each other for trickle-down leftovers and leave our children to clean up the mess.

The “blue wave” cannot be just voting Democratic. The Democratic Party must offer a meaningful response to an economic system that rewards avarice. It must offer a truth and reconciliation process that finally confronts our exploitative past and present, making movements like #BLM and #MeToo no longer necessary. It must offer everyone a choice among possible good lives – as a right of birth – that can be realized without taxing the ecosystem with careless regard for future generations.

The Maine House District 32 primary race between progressive Chris Kessler and self-described “moderate” Richard Rottkov exemplifies the potential and limitations of the “blue wave.” Both candidates support public schools, Medicaid expansion and environmental protection, but Rottkov touts his party-insider centrism as a “consensus-builder.” What “consensus” will possibly emerge among lawmakers who deny climate science and who express limbic fears that immigrants are the cause of the nation’s ills, and that the solutions are tax cuts for the wealthy and arming teachers?

Kessler knows that the blue wave is not about compromise in the face of such thuggery and ignorance, but about making a future that is very much better than Rottkov’s “center.” Choose progress. Vote Kessler in the June 12 primary.

Eben Rose

South Portland