Let’s look at two examples. In 2000, republican, George W Bush became president. “Bin Laden determined to strike US” was the title of a presidential daily briefing. He like the future republican president wasn’t a big reader. To be fair, it was not specific actionable intelligence. Nevertheless, enough events had pin-pointed Bin Laden as the world’s most dangerous terrorist. That’s why President Bill Clinton attempted an attack upon him. The information should have led a curious president to investigate our weaknesses. Executive Order by Tom Clancy was written prior to the attack on September 11, 2001. It envisioned a plane being used as a weapon and hitting the US Capitol. We should have taken steps to make ourselves more secure. As a result, over 3,000 Americans were killed and the Patriot Act was passed. A recession started. Two wars were started. The Iraq War was clearly a mistake. A nation building enterprise in Afghanistan was a mistake. Hurricane Katrina was mismanaged. No serious climate change legislation was considered or promoted by this administration. Justices Alito and Roberts were confirmed to the Supreme Court. We had a horrible recession.
Secretary Clinton wasn’t and isn’t Senator Bernie Sanders. Does that mean that there weren’t great differences between Secretary Clinton becoming President Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump taking the office? Consider all the dangers that we still face because Donald Trump won the presidential election. Donald Trump nominated Justice Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch. Between the two justices nominated by Presidents Bush and Trump and confirmed by the US Senate, we have five justices. That’s a majority right there. Even with the electoral college which favors republican nominees, republicans still face a slightly uphill battle in presidential elections. Republican presidential candidates are very unlikely to win the popular vote. To win a presidential election, then, a republican presidential nominee must almost always win the electoral college vote while losing the popular vote. Nate Silver has calculated that as an uncommon event, considering it from a probability standpoint. However, that doesn’t mean that we would have twenty straight years of democrats occupying the White House. Consider all the threats to democracy that we have now. Trump only won 62 million votes in 2016. By letting him into the White House, he became a much larger threat. Ronald Brownstein recently stated that ¼ to 1/5 of republican voters are uncomfortable with Trump. At least this percentage of republican voters know that Donald Trump lost in 2020; they recognize that the big lie is a big lie. They recognize that the insurrection was an attempt at a coup and that the motive offered is a lie. Consider the management of the pandemic and the unwillingness of so many republicans to get vaccinated.
Look at the election deniers that are running to administer elections all across the country. Brownstein also rightly characterized the typical Trump voter: a person animated by grievance in terms of being displaced in a changing and diversifying country. The republican voters were tending towards this already. Voters do, in the end, get candidates who reflect their views. Donald Trump as president was only possible because this is what republican voters wanted and allowed. Certainly, Trump only won a plurality and not a majority of the vote in most of the early primaries. They have a winner take all system in presidential primaries. He only won a majority of the vote after his wins of all the delegates in early states made most of his challengers drop out and those who remained had no viable path to the nomination. Still, they, then, had a choice: a safe and conventional politician who was well-prepared for the office and a guy who was completely unqualified and unprepared for the office.
President Obama earned his doctor of jurisprudence from Harvard Law School and was the Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law Review. He was offered a tenure track position as a law school professor at the University of Chicago. He served as state senator for eight years. He ran for US Senate in a large and populous state, Illinois. Republicans have won US Senate seats representing Illinois in the recent past. He faced numerous challengers for the seat in the Democratic Party primary. Had the voters not felt he was well-prepared, then they would have chosen a different nominee. He, again, had earned his doctor of jurisprudence from Harvard Law Review and Professor Laurence Tribe stated that President Obama was the best student he ever had, he served as state senator for eight years, and he was offered a tenure track position as professor of law at the University of Chicago. He, then, faced a republican challenger, Alan Keyes. He won a majority of the vote. This is significant. Over a period lasting longer than a year, he gained the confidence of a majority of the voters in the state of Illinois; a majority of voters in Illinois were convinced that he was well-prepared and well-qualified for this Senate seat. He ran in a Democratic Party presidential primary against former Senator Hillary Clinton. Had voters in this primary been at all uncomfortable with then Senator Obama, they knew that they had an extremely well-qualified alternative choice, a choice who began as the overwhelming favorite. He defeated her in a close primary. He faced a popular senator in the Republican Party who was viewed as a moderate, a maverick. If Senator Obama was unable to convince the voters that he was well-prepared and well-qualified to be president, then they had a very experienced republican alternative whom they could choose. He won nearly 54% of the vote, the biggest popular vote win in 12 years. It says a great deal about President Obama that he was able to win not only a majority of the popular vote but win by such a large margin. While President Clinton won by larger margin (in 1996), he did not win a majority of the vote.
The point of this is that Donald Trump did not even begin to have the preparation and qualifications that President Obama did. Donald Trump only held a bachelor’s degree. With experience in government, perhaps this deficiency could be remedied. Donald Trump had no experience holding elected office at any level at all. None. Zero. Nada. Cero. Donald Trump didn’t even have any experience in government. It is, obviously, possible to hold a position in government without being elected (ambassador, Secretary of Treasury, Solicitor General, ...) . He is and was and always will be a bigot. That by itself no matter what other preparation and qualifications a person has immediately totally and completely disqualifies a person. He is a malignant narcissist. Nevertheless, let’s forget about the bigot and malignant narcissist stuff even though it is completely true and provable. The other facts above are not subject to debate. The danger of putting a person with so little education and with zero elected office experience and zero experience in government period should be immediately apparent. The office of the president is not an entry level position. There is a crisis that takes place in the term(s) of every single president. I can name crises in the administration of every president since President Carter.
The Democratic Party is a big tent party. About half of us are progressive and the rest are moderate/centrist/conservative. Therefore, about half of us are likely to be unhappy with the outcome of the primary. However, what we have in common is even more important than that which divides us. Suppose the most progressive candidate won and you are a progressive, would you want the moderates to take their ball and go home? Would you want moderate D voters in that scenario to either not vote or vote R because they felt that the nominee was too progressive for their tastes? The answer must be that you would not want this to happen. In the same way, if you are disappointed in the outcome of the primary and feel that the nominee is too conservative for your tastes, you still should support the party’s nominee because it is better for the country and any progress towards your positions on issues is better than no progress or worse, going backwards. We progressives are not the fount of all knowledge. The moderate candidate might be better than our choice. There is a benefit in putting many brains with a similar framework together.
As the two examples above demonstrate, it ALWAYS matters whether the Democratic Party’s nominee for president wins or the Republican Party’s nominee for president wins. There are huge costs to the country and its people when a republican nominee for president wins. Now, there are large threats to our democracy if republicans win. I read a well-researched essay which attempted to answer the question why the blue wall fell. Part of the explanation was that too many voters who lean D felt that their lives would not change based upon who won. They felt that their lives would be no different whether the D nominee won or the R nominee won.
There are many things that we can do to participate in our elections beyond simply voting. However, it is essential that you do not bash our party, our party’s leaders, or our party’s candidates. Many people who know you may realize that you lean left or are progressive or are weakly affiliated with the Democratic Party. These people may not be politically astute or aware, but they feel like you are. If you bash the Democratic Party or its leaders or its candidates, then this person may reason: person A is a democrat or leans that way. If they think that the party is terrible and the leaders of the party are terrible and the candidates of the party are terrible and they are a democrat or lean left, then they will question why they should bother to vote for Democratic Party candidates. Your words and your social media posts matter. You can discourage those who are not politically involved from ever getting involved. Right now, we are facing the most important midterm in over a century. Our democracy is at severe risk. Which political party wins this midterm is likely to determine whether we retain our democracy after the 2024 presidential election. The Democratic Party is the only political organization that can keep the Republican Party from taking our democracy from us. A million different and unique people may view our posts over a month’s time. We are approaching the midterms. Therefore, people who generally don’t follow politics may lurk and read Daily Kos.
This is not an admonition not to criticize the Democratic Party although praising it instead of criticizing it would be better. It is to say that it is vital that you keep your criticism in context and retain your perspective. Point out the good things that the party and its leaders are doing. Remind your readers that the majority in the Senate is 50-50 with the 50th vote coming from West Virginia. Don’t be melodramatic. Point out why it is vital that we retain our majorities in both chambers of Congress. Point out the danger to our democracy if the Republican Party wins control of one or both chambers of Congress. Acknowledge the best arguments that the party’s leaders may have and put them in their strongest form for your readers. Acknowledge that even when the leaders may vote differently than you wish that they would that they are still operating in good faith. Make clear the awful and very negative consequences if the republican(s) win.