The realignment is here
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| Joe Biden, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 |
If you've read me at all, going back to 2012, I have often written that one of Barack Obama's unstated goals was to break this increasingly fascist GOP. Of course, he couldn't come out and say that. But every action he took as president was to highlight the stark differences between his Democratic Party and the nihilists of the GOP. While Democrats wished to govern for the benefit of all—even those who hated them—Republicans' only concern was power for its own sake, and it would sell out its rube followers to that end, feeding them an endless diet of sugary culture wars while their plutocrat backers robbed them blind.
He didn't succeed in his eight years in office. But everything he did laid the groundwork for what we have now.
I can see him knowing that after his two terms were up, there would be a whitelash against his administration. That white people—and let's be honest, I mean mostly white men—would rebel against his multi-culti times. That they would swing back hard right. And he wouldn't have been wrong: we saw this in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms.
But could anyone have suspected that the white right would swing to such an unfit, uncouth, ignoramus like Donald Trump?
I, like many others—apparently including Trump's sister—made the mistake of taking his candidacy as a joke. And, of course, he took it as a joke as well. He was running to brand himself. He wasn't supposed to win. But win he did, and he's been as awful and despicable as we thought he would be.
And this was what set in motion the downfall of the GOP. Republicans could have repudiated him. His now-lickspittle famously averred that if the GOP nominated Trump, it would be destroyed, and deserved to be so. He was talking about the 2016 election; it didn't happen then, but consequences take time to work out. And now, the GOP is on the verge of being erased as it is now constituted.
Look at the coalition coalescing around Joe Biden. Liz Warren supporters are behind him 96-0, according to a recent poll. Bernie Sanders supporters are behind him 86-4—that four percent being the dead-enders on Twitter. So, the left is locked up.
But look at the right. We have traditional Republicans like the members of the Lincoln Project, and Republican Voters Against Trump, joining up to put Biden in the White House and Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress.
What I see forming is a new alignment, stretching from the moderate Left to the right of center, placing rebuilding this country after the soi dissant dictatorship of Donald Trump. It's a coalition which seeks to neuter the extremes of both Left and Right. But make no mistake: extreme leftists are a sad joke who can't really affect anything. The danger is from the extreme Right, which will erupt in isolated instances of violence as they're sidelined and shunned.
How long this realignment will last is, of course, an open question. But for now, it's a coalition which places country above party. It's a coalition which will stick together until the work of repair is done. It's a coalition which will eventually dissolve, but not into the virulent warring camps we have now, but into normal, partisan politics, which accepts certain rules of the road.
But here's the thing: the longer this coalition lasts, the harder it will be for anything like the modern GOP to re-emerge. People will get used to competent government. People will be disabused of the notion that the most frightening nine words are "I'm with the government, and I'm here to help." People, in a time of plague and economic collapse, want the government to help. It's what they thought would happen, and isn't happening under Trump. A Biden administration will rebuild Americans' faith in an activist government. A Biden Administration will take up where the Obama Administration left off, finishing the work he started. The dregs of the Right won't be able to scare Middle America with the bogeyman of government overreach, because Middle America wants the government to be in a position to help.
What we're seeing is a realignment comparable to a government of national salvation. Our country has problems which we can't solve along stringent ideological parameters. Especially when one of the now-dominant ideologies doesn't wish to solve the problems, but exacerbate them. We are in a place unique in our history: partisan politics being put aside for the greater good. We haven't seen this since World War II, and we are in an equal struggle for the soul of our nation, and the world. We are what Abraham Lincoln said: the last, best hope for humanity on earth. The world is looking to us to beat back this dark shadow. As we go, so goes the planet.
So, gird your loins. The struggle is never over, and this is our call. We beat back fascism once. We have to do it again.