It should be agreed by all Democrats:
If any candidate appears to be significantly more likely to defeat Trump than any of the others, that candidate should be the nominee. And we agree that we will abide by the decision made by the Democratic convention on who that strongest candidate is.
I’d like that to be agreed by everyone involved in this nomination process— from vague supporters to primary voters to political leaders. I’d like for each of the candidates to encourage their supporters to make that commitment.
I imagine the strongest test of achieving such a pact — a kind of limiting case -- would be whether the Bernie people would agree to put their shoulder to the wheel to elect Michael Bloomberg President.
My suggestion is that the Bernie people, whose political passions run counter to much of what Bloomberg represents, think of their support not being about making Bloomberg president but about getting the powers of the Presidency away from Donald Trump.
Removing Trump from the Presidency is the main task — the most urgent task-- of these times, probably the most important political task of our lifetime. (When have we ever seen an “emergency meeting” of an organization of federal judges, or a letter signed by more than 2000 former Justice Department officials calling for this Attorney General — who has violated his oath of office in a whole raft of ways as a bag man for this lawless President — to resign?)
The possibility of Trump’s reelection puts the fate of American democracy actually in doubt, he’s shown us clearly that his winning in 2020 would be a national disaster of the first order.
So I would hope — in view of all the damage that has already been done to this country and the world by Trump’s winning that election — that the Bernie people would recognize
that it was of huge importance to the nation — to the future for all of us — that Hillary win that election, and Trump never got the presidential powers he’s used so consistently destructively. that it was a mistake for a lot of Bernie people to stand aside and let Trump become President because they acted on their distaste for Hillary, rather than on the need to protect the nation from an unthinkable President like Donald Trump. that solving the Trump problem must take complete priority over solving any of our other problems (like health care, like income inequality, like the corrupting role of money in our politics, and all the other issues on which Bernie is fighting — none of which would advance anyway if Trump gets re-elected). AndI would hope that those Bernie people who dropped out politically when Bernie lost the nomination would have learned how to weigh the relative import of one’s beef with one’s own side with the need to defeat the other side, when that other side poses such a serious threat to the nation’s welfare.
And therefore I would hope that whoever the Democratic Conventions sends forth to contend with Trump for the Presidency would have the full and strong support of the Bernie backers.
Whoever gets nominated.
Even to include supporting Bloomberg, if it turns out that the convention thinks he’s a much safer bet to defeat Trump than any of the others (including Bernie, whose fate in the general election looks scary to a lot of people who would wish him well). The difference between Bloomberg and Trump is almost black-and-white on the particular battle that matters most at this moment: where on the spectrum of constitutional democracy vs. dictatorship?
(I’d like the Never-Trumper Republicans to sign on to such an agreement as well. Those Republicans who have been as outspoken as anyone about Trump’s crimes and corruption should agree to support whoever emerges from the Democrats’ process to lead the political battle to get Trump out of the Presidency.)
So let’s all agree to make the defeat of Trump the priority, and to accept however it plays out through the whole nomination process of primaries and debates and convention-voting. Let’s all agree that we’re all in this all the way until Trump is defeated.
Unified. Determined that intraparty fractures must be avoided, for victory is just too damned important to indulge in anything that would weaken us in the campaign to defeat Donald Trump.
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Some offerings:
Having spent the previous forty years investigating the forces that have shaped the human world over the millennia, I have felt compelled since 2004 to turn my full-time attention to understanding and calling out the destructive force that has taken over the political right in America over the past generation.
Here are a few articles, written in the past several years, that expressed something important to me about how our situation is to be understood and about the experience of living in times of such darkness and danger — times of a downward slide of American democracy and of a rise in the power of a political force that consistently works to make our world more broken.
“Cry the Benighted Country” – on the way the balance of power between the forces of “good” and “evil” (or life-serving vs. life-degrading, or constructive vs. destructive, or wholeness vs. brokenness) can shift in a society, and how over the past generation we have witnessed an adverse shift in America. “When Evil Rises Among a People” – on the painful and frightening experience of watching people who had seemed good and decent get transformed into something that serves “Evil.” (It starts with a stunning scene from Cabaret.) A compendium of op/eds that I’ve written weekly to challenge the conservatives, among whom I live, can be found here. And a compendium of op/eds I’ve written to challenge Liberal America to see this battle for what it is -- and to fight it as it needs to be fought -- can be found here. (And one piece to which I’m quite attached, representing a much-needed break from dealing with all the darkness of these times,(And one piece that for me represents a much-needed break from dealing with the darkness of these times is titled “The Sacred Space of Lovers.”)
In 2019, in an effort to convey the Big Picture of the dynamics driving the story of our species -- generally, and that also illuminates specifically the meaning of the current American “Trump Crisis” -- I published a series of three op/eds under the banner “WHAT SHAPES OUR WORLD.” The three pieces – each dedicated to one big idea – were:
Evolution: A Most Elegant and Illuminating IdeaHow the Rise of Civilization Brought the Reign of PowerGood Battling EvilThe place where I’ve tried to put the pieces together to show the Big Picture was my 2015 book — written just before the rise of Trump — WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST: The Destructive Force at Work in Our World— and How We Might Defeat It. (The complete text of that book is available free of charge in pdf form here. The book itself can be had on Amazon.)