It seems plain that the America we’ve celebrated for more than two centuries is in serious jeopardy. Perhaps even hanging by the proverbial (or at least idiomatic) thread. The Republican Party is no longer hiding its assault on American democracy, and is waging a multi-front war to grab the power that the Constitution assigned to “the will of the people.”
By “war,” I don’t mean just of the violent kind, though that has now been unsheathed as part of the Republican arsenal. This is the Party that was complicit in the violent Insurrection of January 6 (and is doing all it can to prevent the American people from learning the truth about that attempted coup d’etat).
But the political “war” the Republicans are waging includes trampling on the rules that are supposed to regulate the struggle for power, doing anything that the Republicans believe will advance their multi-dimensional drive to gain illegitimate power.
- The Big Lie is an illegitimate assault on the electoral process at the heart of our Constitutional order.
- The voter-suppression measures the Republicans have passed in the states — along with empowering their partisans to overturn election results they don’t like — is another act of political war.
- Their across-the-board obstructionism — making the failure of the President their priority, rather than the success of the nation — represents another aspect of their all-out drive for power.
(And, as that across-the-board obstructionism indicates, this conduct of politics-as-war predates Trump’s rise to dominance in the Republican Party. That’s what they did to Obama, too. And the theft of a Supreme Court seat — in 2016 — shows that Trump only made the Republicans’ conducting politics in the spirit of war more blatant.)
We are at war, in that sense. And when the futures markets declare that the Republicans have a better than even chance of taking over the Congress in next year’s election, it should be crystal clear that the extraordinary danger we now face calls for an extraordinary response on the part of the Democrats.
Because it is essential to the survival of American democracy that the Democrats prevail.
That extraordinary response required of the Democrats means conducting their side of the political battle as if they understood that we are at war, and that winning that war is essential.
We know what winning a war requires: a degree of unity and coordination unnecessary in normal political times. When the United States fought World War II — in which the stakes were huge, but perhaps no greater than in the present political war — we had a commander-in-chief. The President’s desk was where the buck stopped.
While he had input of information and advice from diverse sources, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ultimately called the shots, and his orders were followed because he was the commander-in-chief.
(None of his generals or admirals acted free-lance. No one thought it their place to say, “No, I disagree, we should make the war in the Pacific our priority, rather than the war in Europe, like FDR said.” Such disunity and lack of coordination is a recipe for defeat.)
The nation needs for the Democrats to make Biden the FDR for this national emergency. The nation now needs for the Democrats to empower President Biden to be their commander-in-chief for the present political war.
Of course, that goes against the habitual political culture of the Democrats, upon whom imposing discipline has aptly been compared to “herding cats.” But extraordinary times require getting beyond one’s ordinary habits.
We have witnessed, in recent weeks, how the lack of discipline of some Democratic unherdable cats has inflicted considerable damage on the Democrats, and on their President. Those who have refused to follow the President’s leadership have made the Party look ineffectual, and President Biden look weak.
The futures markets have noticed, and assessed downward the Democrats’ odds of achieving their legislative goals, as well as their odds of keeping control of Congress out of the hands of this increasingly lawless and authoritarian Republican Party.
In World War II, this nation was fortunate to have as its commander-in-chief an exceptionally able and charismatic President. Biden does not have FDR’s charisma, nor FDR’s outstanding gifts as a communicator to the nation. And it is not clear he has all the warrior qualities that would be ideal in a war-leader in this situation.
But President Biden does have the qualities most essential to assure that his calling the shots would serve the nation well.
- Biden can be trusted to do what he thinks will serve America’s interests and values best. And
- The shots that Biden and his team call are quite reliably of a quality that they would make America better.
A decent man with a high quality team dedicated to the common good.
(I would assert that of all the possible scenarios for America moving into the future from these times of multiple crises, it would be difficult to compose a better scenario than the one where what Biden and his team propose were automatically adopted.)
(And in any event, this war has been imposed on us, and — to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld — we’re compelled to go to war with the President we’ve got.)
If the Democrats were to coalesce with that kind of cohesion behind this President — giving input, but letting their “commander-in-chief” make the final judgments
- the Democrats would look strong,
- Biden would look strong,
- the majority of the people would like what they accomplish,
- and that strength would be something the American people would reward at the polls.
(As I’ve argued here earlier this week, the headwinds of adverse public opinion that sank Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, and came too close to sinking Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey, were the consequence of the lack of the necessary discipline among the Democrats — thanks to two renegade Democratic Senators — which made the Democrats look weak, disorganized, and ineffectual. Perhaps this argument — even if not persuasive as an appeal to their patriotism — could be used as a club to impose a cost on the likes of them.)
I would never have imagined myself arguing for all the Democrats in Congress willingly subordinating themselves to their leader, willingly refraining from exercising the autonomy the Constitution allows them.
But then, I would never have imagined an America where the other of America’s two major political parties seems hell-bent on turning this nation into an authoritarian, minority-rule, one-party state.