I know many of you will be surprised to learn of this, but the often exasperating, sometimes infuriating Andrew Sullivan has written a piece so vitally necessary and so well-stated that it deserves your attention. It’s located here: nymag.com/…
Let me begin with this brutally honest excerpt:
The past week was another watershed, it seems to me, in the rising power of Donald Trump. Flake is quitting; Corker is retiring; McCain is mortal. Sasse, Murkowski, Collins, and Paul remain, but the odds are mounting against them. A new slew of Bannonite candidates is emerging from under various rocks and crannies to take their places. The Trump propaganda machine was given a chance to turn the Russia story into a Clinton scandal - lowering even further the possibility of impeachment - and gleefully took it. The FBI is the next target for a barrage of hostile propaganda, since it might expose the Supreme Leader. Mueller is being daily savaged in the right wing press. Outside Washington, Trump’s targets are faltering. The NFL is reeling; a Gold Star widow is attacked; Obamacare is at risk of being sabotaged to death; the EPA is castrated.
This time last year, I warned about an abyss. This is what it looks like. The Congress is paralyzed, reduced entirely to staffing the judiciary with the far right; it can pass no significant legislation and reach no compromise on anything, without Trump undermining it. The bureaucracy is shell-shocked and demoralized; the State Department is a wasteland; the press has sunk even further into public disdain. The police are increasingly seen either as incapable of error, or morally suspect. The essential civilian control of the military has been weakened, with an embittered general’s honor now deployed as a way to play political defense in front of the press corps. “My generals”, as the president calls them, as if they swear loyalty to him and not to the Constitution. The Republican candidate for the Senate from Alabama, Roy Moore, believes that there should be a religious test for public office. As Ben Sasse blurted out yesterday: “It feels like this party I’m a member of has gone post-Constitutional.”
In other words, Trump and his minions are WINNING. It does not matter what evidence surfaces against Trump and his criminals. As long as the Republicans run Congress, and as long as the right-wing propaganda machine continues to defecate non-stop lies, the radical Right will continue to push its wildly destructive agenda. There is a hard core of Trump supporters that simply will not listen to reason and will not accept any criticism of their Dear Leader. As Sullivan puts it:
He [Trump] is the total master of an enormous mob that, so far, has completely overcome the elites. He achieves this mastery through incendiary oratory, hourly provocations, and relentless propaganda. His rallies are events of mass hysteria and rage. His propaganda machines - Fox News, Limbaugh, Breitbart, Drudge - rarely crack. And there is no one in our political life capable of matching this power. Name one, if you can.
With the unbending support of this mob, Trump and his gang are attacking, subverting, and undermining the institutions upon which the American Republic rests. We are being led by a psychologically unbalanced man who CANNOT and WILL NOT ever admit error of any kind. The danger is maximum, and is NOW.
What to do? Sullivan lays it out clearly:
But the only reliable and sane solution is a massive mobilization of the anti-Trump majority at the polls next year... We have to turn the mid-terms into a presidential election. Sane Republicans need to vote for the Democrat. Leftists have to put aside their divisive identity politics. Liberals need to coalesce around a simple strategy - not impeaching but checking Trump decisively.
Aside from the “identity politics” crack, I agree 100%. I have long argued that Democrats need to vote in EVERY election. They need to contribute money to progressive candidates directly. And above all, they need to NATIONALIZE MIDTERM ELECTIONS. 2018 needs to be made a referendum on Trump. Let’s have those commercials where the Republican candidate’s face morphs into Trump’s. Let’s tie Trump around the Republicans’ goddamned necks. There should be national advertising spots that emphasize a few simple messages: You know that Congress you all hate? THE REPUBLICANS RUN IT. The Republicans have enabled corruption and criminality. The Republicans have turned their backs on ordinary Americans. And the Republicans and Trump are one entity. Let’s harness anger. Let the final message on our commercials be VOTE AGAINST TRUMP. VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT. Andrew Sullivan has, astonishingly, laid the case out rather brilliantly and cogently. I recommend you read his case for yourself.