Democrats Still Don't Get The Power Of Accountability
Their studied indifference to Elon Musk's dirty tricks is a bad omen, even if Kamala Harris wins.
Some of Kamala Harris’s best lines on the campaign trail pertain to ending the whole, lamentable Trump era.
“We’re not going back,” is the canonical example, but this idea that most people are exhausted by Trump, and ready to move on from him, is part of the story she tells about the enthusiasm for her campaign.
It’s effective and important, because while Democratic Party, Inc. can’t boast consistent majoritarian support nationwide, there is a national majority out there that despises Donald Trump.
If you’re like me, November 5 is fateful to you because after Election Day the road not taken disappears. He’ll either be locked out of power once again or we’ll have to suffer many more years of Trumpism. If he loses, Democratic tactics and strategies will shine in retrospect, but if he wins, the tactics and strategies Democrats didn’t use, the ones that might’ve stopped him, won’t be available anymore.
Harris’s pitch works because more than half the country doesn’t want to contemplate the latter scenario. But there’s a scenario wedged between “Trump wins” and “Trump loses forever and all time,” and it’s that Trump keeps looming over everything well into his 80s. After all, 2020 was also supposed to be the election that ended the national Trump nightmare, and yet here we are.
I really hope Democrats are giving some thought now, belatedly, to the question of why it didn’t work out as they imagined. There are plenty of exhausted liberals and progressives out there who don’t think elected Democrats understand their role in his post-insurrection revival. These days I find myself frequently wondering what, if anything, Democrats will do differently if Harris defeats him in two weeks. What will they do in the closing months of this year, and next year, and in the years thereafter, to insure Trump, or Trumpism through his chosen successor, doesn’t stage yet another comeback?
What they’re doing now suggests: very little.
SPLENETIC LOTTERY
If Harris wins, Democrats will face their third crossroads in three straight Democratic transitions, where they’ll have to choose between accountability and “looking forward.”
So let’s draw a subtle but important distinction: When Harris says, “We’re not going back,” it sings to me. When she says some variation of “Americans are ready to turn the page,” it fills me with dread, because I continue to doubt whether Democrats as currently lead and advised are capable of treating accountability as a necessary condition of forward progress.
For instance: Over the past several days, Trump’s top benefactor, Elon Musk, has been effectively paying people to vote for Donald Trump, and enticing them with entry into a daily sweepstakes for $1,000,000.