It’s cringy to see so many “liberals” in the US celebrating The Lincoln Project, Mitt Romney and other Republicans as heroes for swooping in to save the day from Trump. I understand that “moderate” Republicans are much needed reinforcements at this time and they should certainly be included in the larger political coalition to defeat fascism. But let’s be cautious about the terms on which we allow these newcomers to engage with the post-Trump policy landscape.
The perfect storm of Trump and Covid-19 has created immense momentum for the advancement of critical progressive issues like access to healthcare, universal basic income, environmental protection, and diverting police funding into social services. The pandemic has amplified the urgency that so many grassroots movements like the Bernie Sanders campaign, Extinction Rebellion, BLM, and others have worked tirelessly to convey to us for years. In the Before Times, these could be dismissed as fringe-left issues. Now, a growing number, and maybe even be the majority, of Americans rightly see them as essential to our very survival.
Many other countries and international institutions, like the EU and the United Nations, are actively rethinking governance structures (namely the relationship between the market and the state and devolving power to local leadership) to become more socially, economically, and environmentally resilient to crisis. In the US, instead, we are making room at the table for middle-of-the-road, status-quo-loving Republicans who broke ranks with Trump years too late, for reasons having more to do with personal grievances or perceived threats to their interests rather than any significant differences in policy with the current administration. If we let them take credit for a Trump defeat, the people who have laid the groundwork for meaningful social change will be thanked for our efforts and dismissed.
This is already occurring within the Biden campaign. In fact, after having suspended his own campaign in an attempt to build party unity, Bernie Sanders has just put his name back on the Democratic ballot in protest of the fact that his supporters have been completely sidelined from the task-forces and leadership positions in the campaign. This is reflected in a Democratic platform that has made none of the promised concessions on issues that were central to the Sanders movement, like Medicare For All and marijuana legalization (note: the latter is important not only for those who partake in recreational or medicinal weed use, but for those who could be released from prison for nonviolent, weed-related offenses as a result of legalization, who are disproportionately people of color.) Biden’s VP pick, Kamala Harris, reinforces these positions and demonstrates that the Democratic Party is more concerned with being palatable to the center-right than it is about giving voice to the people marching in the streets in protest of police brutality, the way someone like Karen Bass could have. In this context, it isn’t surprising that there are Republicans slated to speak at the Democratic Convention.
Having come closer than ever before to genuine victories on policy, progressives are once again forced to yield the floor to old white men who are deemed better positioned to shape the democratic institutions that they, until about yesterday, participated in dismantling.
You may shrug and say, “well, at least they’re here now to help rid us of Trump”, or worse, “at least we avoided fascism.” But fascism isn’t just an end and it certainly isn’t just Trump trying to postpone elections or violently suppress peaceful protests with federal forces. Fascism is a strong political tendency, a magnet towards which our society will always be pulled unless we secure major gains for workers, limit corporate power in elections, defund military and police institutions, and disband institutions of white supremacy like private prisons. Do these goals sound like something moderate Republicans would advocate for or even tolerate? No. In fact, it’s something that Biden himself may struggle to support in practice, given his campaign financiers.
This entire strategy is based on the outdated assumption that “the “swingiest” voters are working-class whites in the Midwest, who supposedly hold the keys to the White House,” when in reality, those who hold the keys are the very people that the Republican Party has worked so hard to disenfranchise.
The crazy part is that it’s not all that clear the extent to which we need these Republican consultants, talking heads, or voters to win. They have nothing to gain from a second Trump presidency, either. The way I see it, these Republicans are jumping off a sinking ship. Instead of providing them safe passage to the next election on our already-quite-troubled vessel, we are letting them steer.
If we are serious about defeating fascism, we will have to vote for Joe and Kamala in November. But more importantly, we will need to remain in formation for long after this election is over and continue fighting for progressive causes even if/when Democrats are at the helm of the executive and legislative branches. With our hearts constantly broken by politics at the federal level, let us lean in to local races to elect true progressives and work in community on issues that would genuinely restore democratic institutions, like ending gerrymandering, instating nationwide mail-in ballots for all elections, overturning Citizens United, defunding police, and supporting progressive PACs, like Matriarch. Many of these issues are nonpartisan, so if there are Republicans who wish to work with us, I will happily welcome them to our table.
