Former Vice President Joe Biden voiced a unique concern about the 2020 election results at a campaign event in Iowa on Friday. The presidential hopeful stated that “he's concerned about what would happen if the Republican Party were totally "clobbered," BuzzFeed News reports, adding that he’s “really worried that no party should have too much power,” and that “a countervailing force” is needed.
I get what what he was trying to say, but I think he’s 100% wrong.
Once again, Biden is showing me that he is not the one we need right now. First of all, given the lopsided representation the GOP has through systematic voter suppression, over-weighted rural representation, election rigging, and gerrymandering, there is little chance that Republicans will ever be under-represented. The GOP has too much power, not too little. Lamenting a well-deserved potential loss isn’t something any Democratic candidate should be doing.
Furthermore, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell don’t have any concerns at all about annihilating the Democratic party. They have shown they are willing to ignore the needs of entire blue states and territories, make legislation that only benefits their base, and cram unqualified judges/Justices down our throats. This new judiciary not only doesn’t represent large swaths of America, but actually seeks to suppress them.
Trump’s GOP isn’t just trying to defeat us, but destroy us. We desperately need someone who can rise up to fight that level of evil, and so far, at least, I’m not seeing it. As Bill Maher once stated, the Democrats don’t even bring a knife to a gun fight, they bring a covered dish.
I agree with Biden: Two parties are better than one, but only if both are American parties. The GOP has willingly surrendered to a hostile, foreign enemy. Right now, there is only one major party remaining that is protecting our Constitution and the American people. The other is doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding.
In recent years, the Kremlin learned that they didn’t have to do the work themselves to harm our nation and our democracy, but could instead mold American conservatives into useful idiots to do it for them. Russia jumped directly into our culture wars and bonded with the right over their common ground: disdain for immigrants and homosexuals, and love for white supremacism and authoritarianism. Russia hosted exchange programs and got heavily involved with right-wing groups, like the NRA.
Trump was their opportunity: He ran unapologetically as the pro-Putin candidate, complained openly about First Amendment freedoms, and then publicly sought Russian assistance in the 2016 election. For the first time, we had a Russian asset in the White House. From the outset, Trump stated he believed Putin over his own people. He insisted on fawning over Putin after his corrupt election, even as he was told not to. Yet nothing prepared the American populace for his humiliating submission to Putin during the 2018 summit in Helsinki.
I recall in the 1980s how much Republicans hated Russia. Sting even had to put out a song to remind people that “Russians love their children, too.” How times have changed. The GOP is now become the party of Russia, led by a “godless, socialist KGB officer” who holds America in contempt. Putin’s approval rating has even charted higher among Republicans than Barack Obama. One only need to turn on Fox News to see how far the GOP has fallen into Russian territory.
Every single initiative the GOP is now promoting benefits Russian interests: preventing states from blocking foreign election interference, refusing to enforce or outright lifting Russian sanctions, turning our backs on the Kurds, punishing NATO, helping Russian satellite states, abandoning our allies, demanding Russia be allowed into trade summits, advancing Russian conspiracy theories, surrendering U.S. farm markets to Russia, giving them U.S. bases, and on and on and on ...
People are always shocked by things Trump has done. Yet there is always one underlying, guiding principle: What will benefit Putin? If it helps him, Trump will do it. Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsay are always there to help. All I can say is they must have done something pretty bad to be blackmailed to this point. I don’t know why Trump is so submissive to Putin. Whether its blackmail, indebtedness, or just that Trump misses his dad, Putin knows how to play him like a dog. It’s shameful and humiliating for any proud American to witness.
Meanwhile, the GOP marches on to become even more authoritarian, and ever more Soviet-like. They want a dictator. They want to lock up journalists. They want to cage people of color. So yes, Joe, one-party rule is intolerable, but there are much worse things possible in this current political climate.
Besides, one-party rule is essentially impossible with our first-past-the-post system of voting. It always skews to a two-party system. I am hopeful that Americans will fight to reclaim their nation by making the Democratic party the dominant force in politics for years to come; however, like every other time in our history, we’d split in two factions. There would be a progressive wing and a moderate wing.
Eventually, these two would split into parties that half the nation would rally behind. At least then, we’d be arguing over ideas of how to best to improve our lives. What a wonderful concept that would be. That seems far and away more preferable than fighting with an opposing party, hell-bent on staying in power at all costs, even if it means submitting to Putin’s desire to harm our own people—surrendering our most fundamental American principles to do it.