I‘m not going to be too profound here or load this with a lot of links. The “tl:dr” curse is always waiting.
The big revelation coming out of the Race to the White House 2016 is the way the Republican Party is crashing and burning. Donald Trump has pretty much exploded the myth of principled Republican voters concerned about moral values and character, balancing the budget, honoring the Constitution, etc. etc. Instead, they’re a bunch of authoritarian followers looking for a strong leader who’ll crush their enemies. Trump has brought out in the open what the GOP has been cultivating for years — racism, sexism, religious bigotry, xenophobia, paranoia — and he looks like just the man to harvest the crop. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
What is getting less attention is how the Democrats should respond to it. The party of FDR has never quite gotten over the Reagan Revolution; third wayism and triangulation is how they’ve tried to split the difference; Republican Lite as it were. Hillary Clinton is already talking about her desire to wrap up the delegate count so she can focus on going after Donald Trump. Presumably, the Very Serious People will be eagerly awaiting the banishment of Sanders to the wilderness so that Clinton can Pivot To The Center to win with the so-called moderates. Hippie-punching will ensue, and all the wrong lessons will be learned from the Republicans about the dangers of playing too much to the base.
Well, screw all that. If there’s any triangulation to be done here, I want it to be between Clinton and Sanders. I do NOT want to see a pivot towards the fascist nightmare rising in our midst. The Democratic standard bearer needs to go after the entire right wing establishment, not just whichever sociopath comes out on top.
We don’t just need to keep the White House, take back the Congress — we need to take control of the narrative and drive a stake through the black heart of the whole right wing monster. Every state where Republicans are in control is a disaster — Democrats need to seize the horrible examples out there and use them to discredit Republicans and their ideas forever.
The problem with triangulating and pivoting is that it calls your own brand into question, can and will be seen as a sign of weakness, and gives the other side a legitimacy they do NOT reciprocate. The Democratic Party has a huge opportunity to make a real distinction between themselves and the collection of creeps, thugs, oligarchs and outright whackos that calls itself the Grand Old Party. It doesn’t matter if either Sanders or Clinton win IF the Republicans are allowed to continue their descent into madness and take the country with them.
What do you think?
P.S. I promised no links, but I’m going to throw in a couple anyway. If you want to know what fascism in America looks like, David Neiwert has a long look at the history of the KKK in this country. It puts the rise of Trump into context, and probably has a lot you didn’t know about how mainstream the Klan has been. The second is a post I wrote the other day linking to what you need to know about the authoritarians amongst us.