“Democrats have got to find another gear”

“If Democrats and you cannot find the stomach to fight it, pack your bags,” I wrote Thursday morning.

Later in the day. Talking Points Memo published a letter from a reader (TD) who did just that (subscription or trIal membership required). He saw Jan. 6 coming in 2017 and started preparing to get out.

As TPM’s David Kurtz and Zainab Shah wrote, there are no shoes left to drop. TD writes, “We know what happened, we know who did it, and we know what the goal was and continues to be.” Believing some deus ex machina lies ahead simply sustains false hope and delays decisive action.

And that’s the problem Democrats face. Josh Marshall has readers telling him he and others just do not see the red lights flashing or just look away.

“Characterologically I’m not really the type to jump up and down about things,” Marshall explained Tuesday evening. “And the funny thing was that I mostly agree with this reader’s sense of urgency.”

Brashness, flamboyance, bold action? Many lefties direct that into the arts or charitable work. And the middle? They just want to be left alone. Direct confrontation may not go with the personality. (I say that as a behind-the scenes activist.) Confronting the peril head-on seems not to be in Biden’s nature, either, as the country slouches, day by day, not towards the liberal Gomorrah of Robert Bork’s imagination, but towards the white-nationalist, authoritarian one of Steve Bannon’s.

“If we lose this fight, when exactly do we have the next one?” asks TD. “If Democrats can’t whip Joe Manchin today, how can they rescue American democracy tomorrow?”

TD summarizes:

It’s hard to conceptualize, much less believe, that we might soon live under de-facto single-party minority rule, but I’m having a hard time finding a path to a different outcome. You can call that pessimistic, but I say it with the same clarity-of-purpose as when I turned to my wife four years ago and said, “I don’t want to be in the country during the 2020 election.”

I’m enormously privileged to have had the option, and now I’m doing everything I can to extend the option as long as possible. It breaks my heart to admit this, but I’m afraid the American experiment is coming to an end, and no, Mr. Franklin, we couldn’t keep it. …

Democrats have got to find another gear. If they want me to believe they can save America, I need to see them fight for it.

Somehow, we need to tap into our inner Sarah Connors, break out of our mental prisons, and confront the threat more head-on than we have to-date. That applies double to Democrats in Washington, D.C. and in state capitols.

Right on cue, Brynn Tannehill (“American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy” offers a Tweet thread that we are sleepwalking towards a post-democracy America, as she wrote in October:

In the same way that some Republicans shrug off slavery as a “necessary evil,” modern conservatives see the destruction of democracy and disenfranchisement of most Americans as vaguely regrettable, but necessary to save “Western civilization.”

From her Tweet thread:

Two fundamental truths that the left / center as a collective are failing to emotionally and intellectually accept and understand:

1. The GOP is authoritarian, and intends to end our democracy
2. Once our democracy is dead, there’s no legal way to bring it back 1/n

Reams have been written about how the GOP wants to take power for a generation, and remake the country in the image of its base.

Polling shows less than half of democrats believe this, though. This is in part because of irrational optimism. 2/n

The unbelievers assume that the GOP isn’t really THAT bad, that norms will hold, or that the pendulum will swing back and they’ll just win the next election.

None of these are remotely true. Once democracy goes under, there won’t be a “next time”. 2/n

Competitive authoritarian and fascist regimes show us this constantly.

Once the incumbent party has the ability to rig or overturn election results they don’t like, they never leave power voluntarily.

You can’t remove them via courts when they’ve picked most of the judges. 3/n

You can’t peacefully protest you way out of it: dictators laugh at that. Look at the Women’s March in 2017. Look at Belarus.

Less peaceful protests that threaten the regime end up like Tiananmen square or the bonus marchers. 4/n

I cannot point to an example of a country recovering from competitive authoritarianism like Russia or Hungary’s. Unlike Yugoslavia and Spain, the GOP isn’t reliant on a single strongman dictator: Trump is easily replaceable with fanatic like MTG, DeSantis, Jordan, etc… 5/n

Trump was just an expression of the ID of the GOP base. Other leaders in the party have figured out how there’s no drawback to harnessing it. 6/n

So when people ask me what can we do, my advice is to do whatever you legally can now, before it’s too late, while something can be done.

After democracy is gone, I’m out of recommendations that are legal: because none of them work. 7/n

Maybe mass general strikes? Semi-autonomous zones? In reality, once democracy is gone via a party subverting the system in a way that’s legal, there’s nothing left on the table that has much of a chance of success. 8/8

Addendum: Here’s how I see things breaking out, post-democracy roughly:

~20% of the US loves the fascist government, and eggs it on to do worse

~10% doesn’t love the fascist government, but supports it broadly based on polarization

~ 30% are more or less apathetic, because they don’t vote and don’t see it as affecting them

~ 20% are Dem institutionalists, who believe “we’ll get ’em next election” and continue to believe normalcy will return 9/n

~ 15% are Dems who recognize democracy is dead, but embrace solutions that haven’t a prayer of working

~ 4% are leftists ready to embrace extra-legal means

~ 1% who feel immediate danger, or have the financial means, leave the country 10/n

The result is probably violence that is successfully suppressed by the government as the US sinks further and further into competitive autocracy and people become accustomed to the new normal. 11/n

P.P.S.

To be clear about what I’m saying here, once we fall into competitive authoritarianism:

1. Peaceful protest won’t work
2. Violence won’t work

Maybe the GOP would stop being authoritarian on it’s own? Doubtful though. Balkanization seems plausible.

I wish I had an answer. I’m doing what I know to do with the limited influence I have, but it is all within the framework of the democratic system I inherited. Those rules I understand. But unless some among the Oval Office coup plotters are held accountable and go to jail, there are no brakes left and no guardrails to keep the country from running into the ditch. They laugh at the rules and we let them, hoping someone else will bring them to heel.