"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?"
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley, 1818
It will not be enough to slay the monster, we must destroy the laboratory that created him.
Writing in the latest Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has brilliantly chronicled the Rise of Donald Trump and the current state of the Republican party: hollowed out, leaderless and essentially bereft of new ideas.
And despite all that, it still controls both chambers of Congress, 31 governorships, and in 23 states, it also holds the leadership on both sides of the statehouse. That is their castle.
There are reformers within the GOP, but that math is a powerful incentive for the old guard to leave things as they are, even if that now includes overt racism, fascism, sexism and the other politics of hate.
We need to change the math. There is nothing to be done right now about gerrymandered Congressional Districts, but as for the rest:
Remember, remember
the 8th of November,
Vote blue, no matter who
This is a lot to ask, particularly for those of us in the progressive wing of the party. We understand the bipartisan nature of big money corruption, and that a reckoning will come to our party as surely as it has come to the Republicans. We pride ourselves on evaluating candidates on an individual basis, and shy from marching lockstep into the polling places. But this year, we must.
We must fight the urge to split tickets, or to vote for the Republican next door rather than the Democrat we don’t know. The GOP and its poisoned piper have led us too close to the abyss, and we must never get this close again.
We must build a wave that will wash away the very structure that allowed Trump to rise. We must disenfranchise the Republican party, sweep it from our institutions so that reform is the only option left to it. If we do not, there is no guarantee that another Trump won’t rise up, perhaps one with with a sweeter song and softer edges. And that is a risk we can ill afford to take.
Remember, remember
the 8th of November,
Vote blue, no matter who