By Tim Miller
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Crisis. An existential threat to our democracy. A mortal
danger. A White Supremacist. Emergency
This is what President Trump’s opponents on the left say
they believe about the current administration.
These accusations are serious and the fact that people on
the left have made them before, about every Republican presidential aspirant
from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Mitt Romney doesn’t make them untrue
and this time around at least, they are claims with which I largely concur.
So let’s take the idea that Donald Trump is an
existential threat to our constitutional order seriously, for just a moment,
and assess what that means for our politics.
In any other aspect of life, if a person believes they
are facing an emergency or a crisis or a mortal danger, there would be a
corresponding set of actions that would follow.
For example, last year the apartment complex that was
under construction behind my condo was torched to the ground in the dead of
night. Flames engulfed the block and little balls of fire began raining down
into our courtyard as if the End Times had cometh.
When the firemen came to evacuate us, we did not spend a
few hours searching their twitter archives for problematic tweets before
accepting their assistance.
We didn’t make sure that we brought every single item
from the house with us.
After-all, this was an actual emergency. So we grabbed
the essentials as quickly as possible, ensured everyone was safe, and followed
the instructions of the professionals who were trying to keep our home from
burning to the ground. (In the end, our complex was spared and nobody was
hurt—bless up to the Oakland Fire Department.)
This is the survival instinct in action. It’s how people
experiencing real crises act. According to the CDC the three stages of those
experiencing emergencies are first denial (hello election night 2016!); then
deliberation (been a few years now); and finally, decisive action.
Nowhere in that response matrix does the CDC mention
“torturous nitpicking of allies.”
People who think they are legitimately in danger don’t
let the perfect be the enemy of the not-dead. They don’t take shots at those
who are trying to help them. They don’t spend much time navel gazing, either.
They deny, then they deliberate, and then they act.
***
Does this any of this sound at all like what is happening
in the Democratic primary right now?
I mean that seriously: When you look at the behavior of
the candidates and their partisans, does it match what you would expect from
people in the midst of a crisis that threatens the foundations of the country?
It sure seems like a big bowl of No to me.
To take just one, exceedingly minor, example, last week I
wrote a piece that mocked some of the more absurd attacks that have been levied
against Pete Buttigieg from his Twitter antagonists. The response to me
pointing out that This guy over here trying to beat Trump is being attacked
unfairly was for more people who say they’re trying to beat Trump to lose
their minds about how awful it was that Mayor Pete was being defended by a Bush
lackey in a neocon rag.
Please understand: This isn’t about me. I’m extremely
well acquainted with the fact that some on the left will always think I’m a Bad
Person with Bad Thoughts. What seems absurd is the insane levels of antipathy
aimed at Buttigieg—a guy running to try to stop the mortal danger, white
supremacist, existential threat-crisis.
And it’s not just Mayor Pete! Elizabeth Warren is getting
dragged for making money as a consultant (a real consultant, not a Hunter-Biden
consultant). Everyone on Twitter has basically decided that Joe Biden is
somehow unfit for office even though he’s a year younger than Bernie Sanders
and was considered beyond reproach for the 8 years he was a heartbeat away from
presidency.
Doesn’t anyone notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy
pills.
It’s mystifying to me that this continues to happen, when
the person that emerges from the Democratic primary is going to need not just
the Peteys, but also the Bernie Bros, and the Yang Gang and the K-hive—not to
mention the human scum—to all be in the same boat fighting against the Category
5 Sluricane that they claim to believe is threatening to end the very existence
of our democratic republic.
And yet, here we are, with Pete Buttigieg being labeled
History’s Greatest Monster because he rang the bell for the Salvation Army one
time and was an entry level staffer at McKinsey.
***
Here’s a thought experiment for Democrats: If right now,
today, the president of the United States was Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush, or John
Kasich, then would the party be behaving any differently? How so?
Got anything?
Because I’m coming up almost empty. It’s possible that
the polling might be shifted somewhat. Anecdata tells me that there may be a
few more folks in Biden’s camp who are with him more as an “in emergency: break
glass” candidate than there would be if the GOP opponent was slightly less
hated. But beyond that, it seems to me that the Democratic primary and the
online debate about the candidates would be essentially the same, maybe sans
some of the high-falutin’ rhetoric about the violation of norms.
***
That’s a stark departure from what I expected coming into
the primary. Given the seething hatred of Trump from Democrats (and his
manifest unfitness for the office) I genuinely believed the Democratic contest
would be tame to the point of orderliness.
Watch the first Democratic primary debate in 2007—if you
can make it to the end without dozing off. It’s basically a mutual admiration
society. Eventually that primary got kind of bitter, but even then Obama had to
apologize for calling Hillary Clinton the senator from Punjab.
That hasn’t been the case so far. In a few of the
Democratic primary debates Trump has barely been mentioned at all, while the
candidates have spent minute, after minute, after minute, cracking back on each
other about the minutiae in their healthcare plans. When Joe Biden released a
rapid response video targeting Trump for getting laughed out of NATO, his very
internet unfriendly campaign was rewarded with 12 million views and a big
online conversation share – mostly because none of the other campaigns are
doing it.
The Democrats aren’t just litigating their policy
differences—they are absolutely sliming each other on a personal level. They
are taking pretty minor process disagreements about transparency to 11, while
rarely mentioning that Trump is running an unprecedented and opaque corporate
welfare scheme benefiting his own business from the White House with serious
national security implications. As Frank Luntz pointed out last week, many of
the Democrats’ intra-party attacks are going to resurface during the general
election, weaponized by Trump.
I understand: Politics ain’t beanbag, yadda yadda yadda.
But that old saw only holds in times when we’re arguing
between the 40 yard lines. The whole idea of there being an actual, real-deal,
emergency-crisis is that the normal rules of engagement get suspended.
***
All of which is why I have the sneaking suspicion that a
lot of Democrats don’t actually view Trump as a unique crisis.
Or rather: They don’t view him as being more than a
difference in degree from the “emergency-crisis” Republicans always
represent. For these Democrats, all of Republican/conservatism has been
inevitably leading to Trump and the only difference between Trump and, say,
George H.W. Bush, is that Trump says the quiet part out loud.
For other Democrats, I suspect they genuinely believe
that Trump is a crisis, but also that, as a wise man once said, a crisis is a
terrible thing to waste. And now is their chance to push for more of what
they’ve always wanted.
And still other Democrats seem to think that the election
is a gimme. Recently I talked to a Democratic campaign consultant who said a
lot of his peers have convinced themselves that Trump is so weak that this is
the moment to bring on the most radical revolution they can get. (These
individuals seem not to remember 2016.)
In a weird way, I understand these three groups. I mean,
they are, as an analytical matter, wildly incorrect. But I understand why, if
they view the world that way, they’re acting the way they are.
But for the Democrats who say that they think this is a
unique hinge of history and that Trump must be defeated in order to preserve
the political order, why are they fighting each other with an intensity that is
indistinguishable from 1992, or 2000, or 2004, or 2008, or 2016?
Actual emergencies require sacrifice. They require
willingness to work with people that you have major differences with to achieve
a solution. They require hard choices and reflection about what you are willing
to part with to come out the other side.
I believe Donald Trump is an actual emergency. I hope
Democrats who agree will start acting like it.
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