A lot of things could’ve been a trigger for me to write this over the past year with Donald-effin-Trump in the White House; having lived in New York City since 1980, a thing that seemed absolutely absurd right up until November of 2016. I’ve seen this blowhard up close, in all his tabloid glory, over the years. I feel like we’re reaching an apotheosis in America. An inflection point. Which may have begun awhile ago, but the direction from here on out is as yet undetermined.
No, what triggered what I’m about to write was the recent CPAC gathering this past Thursday, that Trump graced with his frat boy presence. Where, among other inanities and insanities, he endorsed arming educators as a response to school-based gun massacres, lied about ‘great healthcare plans’ (which will be worthless to policyholders while making the healthcare system MORE expensive for the rest of us), decried his bald spot (in a surprising moment of self-examination-slash-criticism), demonised the media, and debased himself and the Republican party with a sad spectacle of reprising the golden oldies of the 2016 campaign that the audience seemed nostalgic for, by leading the chant “Lock her up! Lock her up!”. This from a political party holding the reins of power in the House, the Senate, and arguably the Supreme Court; this was a wholly unnecessary, gratuitous, and nasty indulgence of sheer crowd manipulation. If Trump weren’t such a clown, it would’ve been scary. In fact, beyond Trump, it IS scary. And I think there are up-and-comers within and without the party that are taking notes, now that this kind of treatment of one’s political opponents is in danger of being normalized in America.
But this note isn’t about Trump. This is about an Opportunity. An opportunity, I realized while watching as much as I could stand of the CPAC speeches, that has been unwittingly handed to progressives and Democrats by the radical right white nationalists that have hijacked the GOP. A jujitsu, if you will, that is fast becoming possible, should progressives and Democrats everywhere seize the day and be nimble enough, and trust enough in the decency and good sense of that majority of Americans that are appalled at what they saw of the CPAC spectacle last week, and want the 2018 elections to serve as a much-needed brake to the boundless mendacity of Trumpism.
I’m just going to throw some ideas out there. They might be far-fetched. They might not be practically possible. But here goes…
I’m reminded, watching the paladins at CPAC relieve themselves of civilized political discourse, of a passage I recently read in John Lewis Gaddis’ book “George F. Kennan: An American Life”:
McCarthyism remained another concern [for Kennan, a diplomat, iconoclast historian, and friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer]. It fed on contempt for artists and writers, Kennan warned a University of Notre Dame audience in a well-publicized speech on May 15 [1953], “as though virility could not find expression in the creation of beauty, as though Michelangelo had never wielded his brush, as though Dante had never taken up his pen, as though the plays of Shakespeare were lacking in manliness.” This “anti-intellectualism” flaunted its own virility, fearing that in the absence of such exhibitions, “it might be found wanting.” Unchallenged, its practitioners would reduce the range of respectability to “only themselves, the excited accusers,” excluding anyone not engaged in “the profession of denunciations.” Having lived for years [as a diplomat, for the US] in totalitarian states, “I know where this sort of thing leads.” — Part IV, Ch 19, “1953-55 Finding A Niche”, pg 490
In allowing itself to be hijacked, the Republican Party is waaay out there on a limb. The Tea Party extremists have spent so many years calling each other ‘conservatives’, and kowtowed to so many ‘conservative’ paymasters, that they truly believe they ARE conservatives, and that they actually lead a conservative political party.
But, as we--and honest conservatives—know, this is decidedly not the case. They are far, far away from the honest conservatism of Edmund Burke.
And Democrats need to start making hay about that fact.
We are not in normal political times, and we should not run a normal political campaign in 2018. This needs to be a crusade (with a pardon to our Muslim brothers and sisters). A crusade against extremism and for reclaiming our democracy and our dignity as a civic society.
“We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that believes the height of civic engagement is torchlight parades chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’ and that those who do such things have ‘good people’ in them.
“We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that believes in rights without responsibilities when it comes to comparing the ownership of guns versus the ownership of a motor vehicle (If they’re both necessities, as you say, why do you treat them so differently?), but are willing to turn rights and responsibilities on its head when it comes to endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, making 2nd class citizens of half the population that abridges their rights as human beings.
“We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that believe deficits don’t matter when handing out tax cuts to the already-wealthy (while our elderly are forced into jobs at McDonalds and Walmart to make ends meet), but will shut down government when investments in infrastructure and jobs threaten to temporarily raise spending that benefits everyone and every business.
“We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that praised law enforcement to the high heavens, through the killings of innocent POC to the brutalizations of Chicago’s Homan Square detention facility (and Clinton’s emails) only to dash them down, along with the entire national security establishment, within 6 months, on the shoals of ‘deep state’ paranoia when that same law enforcement found likely crimes, misdemeanors, and malfeasance in inconvenient places.
“We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that believe it makes sense to cut the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), NIH, and the EPA, because corporations have proven to be such responsible stewards of health and the environment, just like “We’re Not The Crazy Ones” that think ‘free trade’ is compatible with slapping duties and tariffs on products and commodities to protect domestic industries and interests...even when those same industries didn’t ask for the protection and don’t see the sense in committing multiple billions of dollars to invest in a domestic capacity that will take years to develop, yet can’t be staffed at current domestic labor costs!
While the Republicans like to give the appearance of monolithic cohesion, the truth is they’re a policy mess; a complete contradiction in terms on one issue after another. That much isn’t news. They can’t govern so much as they can dismantle the necessary things a majority of Americans have come to expect from government, while indulging in the kinds of anti-regulatory opportunism that got us risk-free mortgage derivatives; that brought us the Great Recession of 2008; that gave rise to the Great (Bankster) Bailout of 2009; that generated the Great Computerized Gerrymander of Congress in 2010; that brought Tea Party Republicans into the offices of public power after being relegated to years of handing out fliers for Lyndon LaRouche in parking lots around the country. And if they can’t dismantle outright, they’ll kill through neglect.
No, my friends, last week’s CPAC conference showed a majority of reasonable citizens and voters across America just how far the crazy has come...and they’re just getting started, if the conference is any guide. And that exposure of extremism to the rest of a reasonable nation indicates an opportunity.
But what to do with that opportunity? Honest Republicans seem to be paralyzed, unsure of what to do. Feeling unwanted in their own party, unable to vote for current Republican leaders, but finding it difficult to vote for Democrats for any number of reasons, ranging from family tradition to policy differences.
Yet, as we know, Nature abhors a vacuum. We can either let that vacuum remain unfilled in ways that risk ever-escalating extremism that creates its own nefarious opportunities; or in classic American tradition, we consider the impossible possible in ways that allow cooler heads to prevail and outflank a visible threat to the nation by seizing opportunities to disrupt a gathering storm in unexpected ways.
Those opportunities could be of the shorter term variety. The kind that will announce a correction in 2018 that will last the duration of Trump’s presidency, but that leaves a question mark for the future beyond Trump.
But there’s another, larger, opportunity that is possible to imagine. One that has become almost a tradition of the Democratic Party over the past 50 years, of sacrificing for the national good. Like when the Party parted ways with the Jim Crow South in passing Civil Rights legislation in 1965, putting it into the political wilderness for 25 years; after raising taxes in 1991 (to Gingrich GOP hysterics about the fiscal damage that led it to very nearly boycott the final vote) that proved Keynes correct (that not all deficits are equal, depending on where the spending was targeted); and after the Bailout of 2009 that prevented another Great Depression while attempting to reintroduce limits onto laissez-faire capitalism.
An opportunity that acknowledges the real, if currently muted, divisions within the Democratic Party, while also functioning to cast out the current, extremist GOP, onto the fringes of political discourse where it belongs.
It may be time to suggest, propose, encourage, or otherwise facilitate, an amicable split within the Democratic Party, such that one part can provide a safe harbor for former conservative Republicans that can no longer countenance the blithe radicalism touted by Trump’s Republican Party, while another part provides new political opportunities for expression and development of policies that signal a more comfortable home for the progressive wing of the current Democratic Party.
Providing ‘safe harbor’ would be for honest Republicans that, like Democrats, are shocked by the infantilism and nihilism infecting public discourse and policy in the United States. These would be the honest Republicans that believe that Government has the capacity to do reasonable things for decent people, and that Fairness is not just a word, but something to be implemented, that allow citizens to have their views respected and reflected in public policy and in proper accordance with the laws and customs of a democratic-republic worthy of the name.
Above all, these would be the honest Republicans that truly understand that losing a fair contest of public opinion carries no shame, while winning such a contest carries with it a responsibility to continue engaging and respecting the opinions of the losing side.
It’s a choice, for Democrats, between muddling through and hoping for the best of an already-bursting Democratic coalition that pitches progressives in with libertarians; economic liberals with socialists; Greens with Keynesians, and being bold by redefining the terms of civic engagement while those terms are still held by a majority of Americans.
I’m not pretending to know how to affect such a scheme, especially on an amicable basis that doesn’t inflame an already-inflamed polity. I might even be accused of appearing panicky with a suggestion like this. But looked at strategically, it would force an issue on a timetable of our choosing, it would wrong-foot a dangerous, minority-driven GOP in incalculable ways by providing an escape hatch for conservatives that are either just going along with the GOP without any conviction, or are opting out of civic participation altogether; neither of which is healthy for a democracy. Instead of trying to convince honest conservatives to pull for Democrats, why don’t Democrats take the opportunity to help them build that harbor for honest conservatism in order to prevent those twin afflictions of indulgence and indecision from festering into open sores of extremism that force people to choose between two mutually exclusive polar opposites of ineffective forms of representation which, in frustration, often leads to violence?
In other countries with different forms of democracy, splitting parties is normal and happens all the time. Only because of our sanctified two-party system is such a thing considered out-of-the-box thinking. And I’m purposefully not thinking about the very real structural impediments (that I’m all too aware of) preventing 3rd parties from becoming viable on the state and federal level. But that doesn’t mean something bold in this direction shouldn’t be contemplated by Democrats. In fact, as long as a majority of Americans on both sides of the political divide feel the same way about a radicalized GOP, it is tantalizing to imagine instantly marginalizing the current Republican Party and everything it, and Trump, stands for (or not). And if the GOP can’t, or won’t, bring itself to break apart along those fault lines, maybe the Democrats can once again do the nation a service and do it for them? After all, it’s not like a split of the Party hasn’t been discussed among Democrats, just not with the purpose of facilitating the marginalization of a threat to American democracy, as represented by the anti-democratic, anti-intellectual bellowing heard at CPAC, that seeks to demonize political opponents and make enemies of fellow citizens.
Having said all this, allow me to caveat my own premise:
I know how loopy this all might sound. Even I can see the risk of weakening the Democratic Party when we expect it to be the bulwark against Tea Party extremism. What I’m imagining is a formal split that is still able to provide a situational coalition on the ground in order to counter an existential threat to both. But it is entirely possible that this is all premature. That the long-expected Republican split over it’s own contradictions may yet happen on it’s own, just on a different timetable than we expect.
But beware, the opportunity for Democrats to do something bold has a Sell-by date. “We’re Not The Crazy Ones” works only as long as enough Americans are still shocked at the change within the Republican Party, are still cognizant that it doesn’t have to be this way, and before the Democratic Party is forced to respond with its own brand of (perceived) radicalism to accommodate calls for an answer; one that will likely play into the hands of the foreign meddlers that we already know are fueling the extremist rhetoric across the board. That we have it in our power to shunt this nascent extremism into the blind alley where it belongs, defending itself on its own extremist terms rather than bodysnatching a venerable, if sometimes misguided, political party that has historically provided a needed check on prevailing thought and policy.