What's the Democrat Dilemma?

Being retired, if not exactly retiring, I spend entirely too much time reading political analyses. I find most less than enlightening, a few quite cogent, and occasionally a mix of nauseating and infuriating.

A nauseating case in point was the recent mewling by Times columnist Ezra Klein, who opined that Charlie Kirk was essentially a good political operative and skillful debater. Of course Klein noted Kirk’s nastiness, but that notation was a mere sidebar.

Klein’s piece dismayed his friend Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was apparently offended by Klein’s rather casual diminishment of Kirk’s overt racism. Coates and Klein then published a dialogue in the Times, wherein they gently negotiated their differences. Therefore my nausea.

It’s to be expected from Klein, who is invariably a pragmatic insider, not a strong, clear voice for, well, much of anything. But I expected more from Coates, including better taste in friends.

In the Coates/Klein duet, many words were spilled over the dilemma for Democrats. Klein’s approach, which I will tersely summarize, is to bend principles beyond recognition in order to gain a seat or two here and there. For example, he suggested putting up a few pro-life Democrats in red or purple places, thereby giving them a leg up, sacrificing women a bit in the bargain. Nauseating pragmatism.

Klein also cited Obama’s shift on same-sex marriage, suggesting that he would not have been electable had he supported it pre-election. Perhaps it was a political calculation, and not the only one from the somewhat centrist Obama, whom I greatly admire and recognize the complexity of his achievement. James Baldwin would have been unelectable - even in 2008.

Just today, September 30th, the Times published another political analysis from historian Timothy Shenk. The essay, titled,” Democrats Are in Crisis. Eat-the-Rich Populism Is the Only Answer,” offered a similar set of pragmatic steps Democrats should take to regain power. As the title suggests, Shenk proposes shelving all the culture war nonsense and getting back to the pocketbook issues that most voters care about. Sort of a reprise of James Carvilles’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” campaign slogan for Bill Clinton.

The extent to which racism, homophobia and transphobia have been normalized is astonishing. The posthumous legitimization of Charlie Kirk is full moral capitulation. He was a manipulative, opportunistic bigot, who used a cheap gimmick, pretending to “debate” college kids, when he was just drawing them into semantic tricks and traps. Having a man with an undeserved megaphone - Ezra Klein - treat him as a worthy ideological opponent is ethical and political malpractice.

It was unintentional, but take a gander at the roster of pragmatic apologists mentioned in my short piece:

Ezra Klein - white, privileged heterosexual male.

Timothy Shenk - white, privileged, heterosexual male.

James Carville - white, privileged, heterosexual male.

Bill Clinton - white, privileged, heterosexual male.

How easily and glibly they are willing to sacrifice 60+ years of social progress in service of pragmatic political strategy. They all pay lip service to civil rights, but it’s hard to hear them as they furiously backpedal. And of course trans folk are entirely expendable, left to be run down in the streets by MAGA Clown Cars.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in a recent Times Magazine essay:

Robin D.G. Kelley, a historian at U.C.L.A. whose scholarship on racial injustice also landed him on the Professor Watchlist, is struck by how rapidly our society has changed since Trump took office a second time.

Kelley pointed to the fact that Trump was widely condemned during his first term when he called the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., “very fine people.” Now, Democrats and political centrists were lining up to honor a man who promoted the same Great Replacement Theory that served as the rallying cry for that march. At a time when the president of the United States is using his power to go after diversity efforts and engaging in a mass deportation project, some progressives are arguing that people of color, immigrants and members of other marginalized groups who felt dehumanized by Kirk’s commentary, podcasts and debates have to find a way to locate common ground with his followers.

“There has been an extreme shift,” Kelley told me. “This treatment is authorizing the idea that white supremacy and racism is not just a conservative idea, but a legitimate one.”

The problem for Democrats is not their lukewarm commitment to social justice. The problem for Democrats is that they are battling a battalion of pathological liars.

Trump is a serial liar.

Nearly all Congressional Republicans are blatant liars.

Every employee of Fox News is a lying liar or too stupid to discern truth from fiction.

All the voices on Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart and Truth Social are liars and/or so drenched in their own nonsense that they’ve come to believe it.

Every member of Trump’s cabinet is a liar or brain-wormed disabled.

It is unclear whether all right-wing podcasters and social media stars are liars, or just saps that swallow all the lies emanating from the liar list above.

Although my social media consumption is mostly local, it is remarkable how consistently the MAGA folks cite information from the dishonest sources I’ve noted. That’s why Trump won and why many Republican candidates win in tight races. The margins are thin and the election deniers and conspiracy theorists are enough to turn an election.

This is what Democrats must attack head on and unapologetically. Call out the lies and the liars. Don’t engage in phony debates or try to find common ground with bigots.

And most of all don’t throw women, folks of color and LGBTQ+ folks under your campaign bus.