To My Democrat Readers, Whomever They May Be

Toward the preservation of a two-party government system

I should start with a disclaimer. Given my druthers, I’d much prefer a parliamentary system where the big guys have to form coalitions with smaller parties. But that being said, two parties are better than one.

With three government branches and two parties, we have multiple backstops against a single party — or a single man — seizing control. Right now both sides are feeling a hankering for a Strong Leader who will get rid of the bad guys once and for all. I’d rather have Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog squabbling on the clock, then going home peacefully after the Washington workday is done.

We don’t have to be buddies, but I’d rather we not start shooting at each other. Because as soon as that starts, we’re going to get our Strong Leader. And if you are at all politically active online or offline, you’re going to be a target no matter how enthusiastically you support him. (Don’t believe me? Look up the final fates of most of the Bolshevik Old Guard.)

Toward that end, here are some suggestions on how Democrats can reclaim some of the territory they lost and find their place amidst the biggest political realignment since the Civil Rights Act. And if you’re a Republican who’s thrilled to see Trump’s return to power, stick around. You might just learn something too.

If You Want Reach, You Need to Reach Out

He hardly ever calls. When he does, it's all business. And that's President Barack Obama's vibe with top Democrats on Capitol Hill. With Republicans, there's even less chemistry.

Nancy Benac, “Three thoughts on Obama's relationship with Congress,”
Associated Press, January 12, 2015

It was not that Barack Obama hated Republicans or White folks. (Good luck explaining that to people convinced he was a Kenyan Muslim Communist married to a transsexual football player). But the frequent comparisons to Spock carried some weight. At heart Obama was a thinker, not a schmoozer, and in the political arena even Presidents have to make small talk.

Unlike Clinton and GW Bush, Obama rarely engaged with the Congress. By 2014, when both the Senate and House had flipped Red, relations between the Executive and Legislative Branches had gone from frosty to openly hostile. Where working across the aisle had once been seen as an important skill, it was now a sign of treachery to the Party.

There were definitely politicians who hated Obama because they thought he was an uppity Negro. There were many more who read his cool, cerebral personality as arrogance and indifference. And in politics appearance means everything. You may think me presumptuous for implying that Obama’s problems were due to anything but racism. But when you’re President, the buck stops at the Oval Office.

When Obama left and Donald Trump arrived, those battle lines became trenches. Trump wasn’t just the opposition, he was evil incarnate. One did not negotiate with him any more than one would compromise with Sauron. Democrats did everything in their power to stem the tide of Trumpian fascism. Republicans who found Trump dangerous or distasteful found themselves cast out into the cold as RINOs.

Millennials may find it difficult to believe that things were ever any different. But the last time our Congress was this divided, we wound up having a Civil War. If we don’t start electing politicians willing to negotiate and compromise, we may find ourselves in a situation where we aren’t electing anyone at all.

Republicans have clinched control of the Senate and are likely to take the House as well. As the minority party, Democrats can spend the next two years as bitter but disempowered opponents with no coherent platform other than “we hate Republicans.” Or they can engage in compromise and cooperation on matters where there is a shared interest. The latter may irritate the True Believers. But since there aren’t enough of them left to win elections, you needn’t trouble yourself with them.

You Make Coalitions by Addition, Not Subtraction

It’s great to have strong beliefs. It’s important to have a coherent ideology. But when you go for an All Or Nothing approach, you often end up with bupkis. For eight years the Left has waged war against “White Supremacists” — by which they meant “everybody who doesn’t buy into all our beliefs.”

Ronald Reagan famously noted that people who agree with you 80% of the time are friends and allies, not traitors. But the Left has repeatedly shunned Left-leaning people who had concerns about trans women in women’s sports and prisons; who felt we should avoid involvement in the Ukraine war; who criticized open borders.

Purity spirals have long been the bane of dissident groups. There’s a difference between heated debates that help shape a party platform and struggle sessions designed to browbeat followers into conformity. Ultimately you wind up with a committed core of True Believers looking down scornfully on the cucks who can’t handle the Unvarnished Truth.

If your goal is to be a big fish in a small pond, purity spiraling may help you gain a few followers. If you want to play in a big pond, you’re going to need a big school. The whole point of political activism is — or should be — to gain political power. You should have some ideals that are written in stone. But you also need room for flexibility.

As of this moment Trump leads the popular vote by 3 percentage points. Putting aside the aberrant 2020 vote count for a moment, Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by 2.1%. That suggests that around 5% of American voters who went with Hillary in 2016 decided to go with Trump for this go-round. Did those voters become fascist misogynist haters over the past eight years? Or did they reject the Democratic candidate and platform for other reasons?

In a race with a Black candidate on the ticket, Donald Trump made significant gains among voters of color. You could dismiss this as a rise in “multicultural White supremacism” and write off those voters as Uncle Toms and Tio Tacos shucking and jiving for the Bad Orange Man. But in doing so, you’ve ensured that they’re going to vote for your opponents again during the next voting cycle.

For decades Democrats have taken voters of color for granted. Since the Republicans showed little interest in winning their votes, Team Blue could get away with it. Trump has put that voting bloc into play. In 2020 Biden won the Latino vote by 59% to 36% for Trump. In 2024’s Trump/Harris race Latino men went for Trump 55% to 43%. If Donald Trump can win the hearts and votes of Hispanics, you can damned well convince at least a few MAGA folks to support your cause. If, that is, you’re interested in gaining their support.

Getting Back to that “Coherent Ideology” Thing

When your political ideology is I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING, you’re going to accomplish very little save a warm dopamine glow of self-satisfaction. Especially when wealthy and powerful interests are working overtime to make sure your energy is diverted away from any revolutionary cause that matters. You have strong feelings, and you know there is something very wrong with our society. But if you don’t direct those feelings toward positive action, you’re just wasting everybody’s time.

For all its flaws, old-school Marxism reached out to working people and promised to better their lot. Today’s left sees them as enemies to be beaten and ultimately eradicated. The Woke Left envisioned they/themselves as revolutionaries, but they were fighting a bourgeois revolution that would prop up the status quo against its unwashed peasant enemies.

The Woke Left don’t call out billionaires, they seek their support. They hate Elon Musk and Peter Thiel because they won’t play the game, but how often do you see them complaining about Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, or George Soros? Woke Lefties will retweet ads from any multinational corporation that posts fashionable slogans and puts up rainbow flags on Pride month. And let’s talk about the Rainbow Revolution, shall we?

Most Americans couldn’t care less what consenting adults do to or with each other, but “consenting” and “adult” are non-negotiable. Instead of basking in your triumph, you decided to expand the Sexual Revolution to elementary and middle schools. Then when you faced inevitable pushback, you decided that complaining parents were all abusive Christofascists who wanted to LITERALLY KILL gay children.

Those angry parents who are protesting — and getting elected to school boards — would have been perfectly happy to sign off on anti-bullying measures that protected children from abuse and harassment. Nobody likes bullies, and nobody cheers when a bully shoves a “faggot” into a locker. You could have improved the lives of many young people. Instead you used them for your own sexual and political agenda.

At this point homosexuality is about as shocking as left-handedness. The only way you could get the populace riled up is drag queen story hours and trans-identified men in women’s locker rooms. This certainly helped prop up donations for your cause as earnest status-seekers made it trendy. But it did even more to turn apathetic voters into angry conservatives. And, in the process, it revived long-dormant fears that every gay man is a boy-buggering pedophile.

You’ve won all the support you’re going to get from those passionate about their rights to perform unusual activities with their genitals. In the process, you’ve driven away people who want to talk about the right to a living wage. Do you think it’s coincidence that support for “sexual minorities” is lavishly funded by corporations, while support for worker’s rights gets little funding and mainstream media coverage?

Fear Only Goes So Far

Christopher Weyant, Boston Globe, August 22, 2019

For the past eight years, you’ve been living under the shadow of Orange Sauron. And now that Sauron has returned to Mordor on the Potomac, you’re once again consumed by terror. Many have dismissed your fears as play-acting for social media credibility. I disagree with them. I have no doubt that you are genuinely frightened.

I’ve often spoken about René Girard’s idea of mimesis. We imitate the actions and beliefs of our peers. You are afraid because everybody in your circle of friends is afraid. This is not at all an unreasonable instinct. When you see a crowd running in terror, it’s generally wiser to join them than to head in the opposite direction to see what the fuss is all about. But like many hard-wired drives, the pack instinct can be used against us.

Because they were so successful in terrifying their constituents, the Democratic Party became complacent. They assumed that they could get the masses to vote through fear and fear alone. Running on a campaign of “at least I’m not Trump” will get you some votes, especially if you’ve got a sympathetic mainstream media providing endless stories about the Evil That Is Trump.

But sooner or later your bugbear no longer provides the same adrenaline rush. The longer the slasher series continues, the less scary the monster gets. Ultimately the monster becomes an antihero. After all, what greater indicator of power is there than the ability to instill terror in one’s opponents?

You don’t have to like Donald Trump, but you should make a sober assessment of your personal risk. In eight years of screaming at Trump, how many of your friends or family members have been arrested on politically motivated charges? How many have been beaten in the streets by thugs wearing MAGA hats? How many have been subjected to punitive IRS audits? Come to think of it, how many Trump haters have suffered any consequences save upvotes and asspats?

You’ve protested Trump by donning pink pussy hats, marching beneath inflatable giant Trump babies, and disrupting goverment meetings while dressed as Gilead Handmaids. You have done this because you believe Trump is a dangerous tyrant. But in most tyrannies these actions would earn you long prison terms — or get you shot in the streets. If Trump were half the tyrant you think he is, you wouldn’t be talking about him the way you do.

The Left has trapped itself in a cycle of fear around Donald Trump. The journalists who write the screeds and the audience that consumes them have created a feedback loop. In the process mental health has declined precipitously, sometimes with tragic consequences. This eternal panic is not making you more politically effective and it sure as shit ain’t making you happy.

So What Happens Now?

Barring an unforeseen medical catastrophe or assassination, Donald Trump will be President of the United States for the next four years. For the first two years he will be working with a Republican Congress and a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. What happens next is largely up to you.

I don’t have high hopes for the continued survival of the American government, but I expect we will be seeing elections in 2026. The opposing party often gains ground in the interim elections after a Presidential race. Trump is facing serious economic headwinds and an increasingly unstable world. How he responds, or fails to respond, to those crises will have a major effect on your chances of winning back the House or Senate.

To do that, you will need to gain back some of the people who cast their vote for The Donald in 2024. That means understanding their concerns and making some effort to deal with them. Or, at the very least, acknowledging them as valid rather than dismissing them as Russian bots and Trumptards spreading disinformation.

For years left-leaning media has been insisting the economy is great, there is no inflation, and Joe Biden is sharp as a tack. As a result, mainstream media is now less trusted than ever. With Musk at X’s helm and Trump in the Oval Office, you now have considerably less opportunity to silence or deplatform people with inconvenient opinions. This means you’ll have to refute them the old-fashioned way — with better information.

On the bright side, I expect that many of Trump’s loudest supporters will kick up their heels and rest now that America is Great Again. We saw this happen after the fall of Nixon and the Vietnam withdrawal. A radical American Left that had been gathering steam for decades celebrated their victory with disco, cocaine, and the Me Decade. And we all know how that turned out.

You can reorient your party and your political ideas. You can take an honest assessment of what went wrong and what you can do to prevent it from happening next time. You can take a deep breath and contemplate the possibility that you’ve been “awfulizing” the results of a Trump Presidency. You might even reach out to friends and family you’ve lost touch with over political arguments. Or you can keep doing what you’ve been doing, then be shocked, just shocked, when you get the same results.