There are many affluent "moderates" in the news media who have enough conscience and intelligence to see Trump for the menace he is. Since the election, they have done a great job of exposing him. Quite a few of them are disaffected Republicans. It is time to hold them to account again.
When the Democrats start to fight back and win again, and particularly as progressives start to win, these pundits and anchors will start opining not only about civility but about the impossibility of selling progressive policies in the "heartland."
As if much of what they call the "heartland" has shown any real heart during Trump's rampage, and as if the Midwest and South are somehow the life force of America's principles and identity, while the rest of the country is some sort of alien appendage. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Steve Schmidt has been a staunch, articulate ally in the fight against Trump. A long-time Republican strategist, Schmidt persuaded John McCain to select Sarah Palin. He is no progressive. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory in New York was a step too far left for him, and now he's arguing that radical Trumpism and "dishonest progressivism" are equivalent dangers. He uses the gigantic national debt Trump has incurred as an argument against progressive solutions.
This is nonsense, but we'll see a lot more of it. And it will come from other valued allies against Trumpism, allies we have grown fond of.
That's part the complexity of life. We can't go to war with everyone who disagrees with us, but we must know when to ignore them, when to argue, when to battle and when to align with them to make progress or to fight an enemy. The parliamentary system is better suited for such flexibility than our two-party system, because it demands that competing groups work together.
The obvious problem for Democrats, both mainstream and progressive, and also for people who consider themselves to the left of the Democratic Party, is how to marshal the strength to fend off the hybrid monster that is Trumpism and Republicanism while also fighting among ourselves to promote our own visions.
Fighting Trump is the biggest priority until we take him down. For progressives, fighting Trump means continuing to align with conservatives of conscience and with mainstream Democrats.
But it does not mean hiding our light under a bushel. It does not mean pretending to be ashamed of ideas like the $15 minimum wage, Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, and taking back every bit of the Republican's trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the rich. It does not mean being polite to blatant racists and child-stealers. It does not mean letting big corporations and big banks continue to rule our lives and our political parties. And it certainly doesn't mean continuing to pretend that climate change and the social disorder it brings isn't the most urgent threat to human civilization.
It takes a lot of courage to look at this world with your eyes open. It's like staring at the sun -- you've got to turn away. But it's our job to keep regaining focus.
It takes even more courage, or character, to continue to work with people with whom we sometimes disagree violently, and to thread the needle between alienating them completely and betraying our deepest principles. But that's our job too.
So let's just do our job, with compassion and strength.