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- Some Thoughts on Our Common Disaster
I’m not a hopium peddler. Since I don’t need to make money from this blog, I don’t need to write clickbait posts explaining how Democrat X DESTROYED Trump, or Trump is ENRAGED by event Y, and how either of those two things CHANGES EVERYTHING. I don’t write that stuff, and when I see it, I discount it. Depending on how you want to track it, the current decline in our country started with Reagan, or with Bush v Gore, or with the reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent war. Pick a time, but I think we all know that the X-rays clearly show this thing was broken long ago. Trump just put the pedal to the metal on a downbound train. Anything that took that long to break will take a long time to fix — hopefully not decades, but it certainly won’t be one election, or two, or even maybe 10.
There are many recipes for bringing this country back to something like a functioning democracy with decent social programs. In a piece on abolishing the filibuster at The American Prospect, Ryan Cooper has a pretty good, short summary of what needs to happen:
Trump and the MAGA cult have done catastrophic damage to American institutions. It will take sweeping reforms just to return to something approximating the functioning prior status quo of 2024. That means aggressive law enforcement to deal with the crimes that have been committed throughout the regime—which probably number in the millions at this point—but it also means passing a lot of laws to shore up the American republic.
Here’s a sketch of a moderate program to save democracy and freedom: statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; Supreme Court reform to break the conservative majority; confiscatory taxation on ultra-billionaires; mass breakup of corporate conglomerates, particularly in media; multimember districts for the House; and updated and strengthened protections for civil and voting rights. I could aim much higher than this, of course, but that’s about what I would call a bare minimum.
I doubt that many of you would argue with his basic point, though the details of what you’d propose might be different from his. The reality is that the current leadership of the Democratic Party is very far from embracing this kind of change, and they’re clearly hoping that they can get back into power without providing much of a positive agenda. They’re hoping “Trump Bad” will propel them into victory in 2026 and 2028, and then, what? I really don’t know, but it’s certainly not Cooper’s list, which is pretty close to mine.
We also have to deal with the reality that our entrenched representatives will take bad votes. I’m guessing more than Fetterbro will vote to confirm Markwayne Mullin. It looks like Trump is going to request $200 billion more to fight the Iran war, and I think we all know that the party establishment is going to have a hard time saying no, because they are terminally afraid of not looking “tough on defense.”
So, when we see results like Tuesday night’s in IL-09, and in other races, where the Democrat most likely to push for the kind of changes we need is beaten by another Democrat who won’t, it’s easy to be upset. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed about it, too. But I’m taking a long view, and if you think that Democratic leadership isn’t worried as hell about the many primary challenges their incumbents are facing, you’re mistaken. If you think that the candidates who beat serious challengers aren’t going to be looking over their shoulders — and thinking twice about coupling pretty words with shitty votes — then you’re mistaken.
I’m not taking about the arc of history bending towards justice, or any other high-sounding rhetoric. I’m talking about nuts and bolts politics. And, unfortunately, our political environment is so fucked that it will take a long time and some really tough fights to get us where we need to go.
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