The Democratic Party's Cynical Caper

 

By David K. Shipler

               Now that the mid-term primaries are over, the cynical wing of the Democratic Party can tally its “wins.” Those are the radical right-wing election deniers and Pro-Trump fans of autocracy whose victories in Republican primaries were owed in part to Democratic-funded ads.

Six of thirteen such candidates won and are headed to the November election, where Democrats hope their extremism will be repulsive enough to the broader universe of voters that their Democratic opponents will prevail. That could happen, but it would be a sordid achievement.

              First, as some leading Democrats have warned, it’s a risky proposition. Some of those crazies could get elected, as Trump himself did after Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran as if Trump’s own flaws would defeat him.

Second, even where Democratic candidates prevail in the general election, the Republican radicals and their nonsensical conspiracy slanders will have been given more of a platform courtesy of Democratic money.

“Many of these candidates develop a much larger following, even if they lose the current race,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist. “What we have seen is, they come back and win for school board or state legislative race or for city councils because of this new awareness and this new recognition.”

Third, spending $53-million in nine states has broken faith with Democratic donors who thought their contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would be going to—duh—Democratic campaigns.

Fourth, and perhaps most important in the long run, to work against principled Republican House members who had the courageous patriotism to vote for Trump’s impeachment after January 6, is to help undermine the prospects for a reformation in the Republican Party. The country needs two responsible political parties, and the Democrats have now helped enhance the dangers of embracing decency.

January 6 and the Hypocrisy of "Democracy"

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

                 Communist East Germany officially entitled itself the German Democratic Republic. The dictatorship of North Vietnam was named the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And the Trump insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 executed their violence against Congress in the guise of protecting democracy.

                Democracy—that alluring concept, that aspiration, that illusion—is still a moral ideal, even among autocrats and would-be oppressors who wear it as an empty label. In the United States, moreover, the Constitution remains gospel, cited even by those who would shred its principles as fiercely as many religious zealots corrupt their holy texts.

                If the United States has a state religion, the late historian Robert Kelley used to say, it is constitutional democracy. That remains so. The very threats to constitutional democracy are being made in its name. The radical right mob that invaded the Capitol, seeking to keep Donald Trump in power, did not reject democracy; they fought for it, or so they believed, having accepted Trump’s lie that he had won the election. “Stop the Steal” became their mantra. They did not reject the Constitution; they claimed to defend it, even while attempting to sweep its provisions aside.

                The Republican Party, now a conduit for radical-right fantasies and dreams, pretends to bolster democracy while becoming the most formidable anti-democratic force in the United States. Instead of sobering the party, the January 6 assault emboldened Republican-controlled state legislatures to enact onerous restrictions on voting and—more menacing—disempower local officials who administer elections honestly. Election officials, facing death threats, leave their jobs, opening the field to the miscreants. “Election integrity,” the Republicans’ rationale, means the opposite. It sets the stage for elections that would be truly stolen.

                When words come to mean the opposite of themselves, when noble ideas are twisted into tools of their own demise, a society dives into a whirlpool. It is sucked down not just by legal mechanisms or institutional processes. Those are mere cover for the deeper currents of distrust and alienation, of humiliation and an angry sense of helplessness. Those, in turn, nourish a vulnerability to demagogues—not only Trump but Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other propagandists—and a susceptibility to outlandish tales of malevolent conspiracy. Even if Trump disappeared tomorrow, those currents would still course through much of America.

The Method to Trump's Madness

 

By David K. Shipler 

                President Trump’s critics see him as impulsive, willfully ignorant, devoted to immediate self-gratification, and even mentally deranged. He is all of that. But he is something more, too. He is canny and calculating, more skillful at playing the long game than generally recognized.

                Even as he appears candid and unscripted, Trump has cleverly laid the groundwork in managing both public opinion and government for enhancing his power and shielding himself from the consequences of his ethical and legal corruption. And for an heir to moneyed privilege, he is remarkably perceptive about the anxieties and grievances that have driven millions of working-class Americans into his cult of personality. Many thought they were voting for a non-politician, but they got a president with the political instincts of a marksman—at least when they are his target.

                In his first significant play, beginning even before his election, he took a hammer and chisel to chip away at whatever trust Americans retained for news organizations that inform citizens on the workings of society and government. “Fake news!” he cries whenever a press report exposes his lies, incompetence, bigotry, self-dealing, spasmodic policies, defiance of law, and the like. “The enemy of the American people!” he brands the news media, reviving the wording employed by Mao, Lenin, Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels, and Stalin. To anyone who knows history, the phrase is chilling, for millions of Russians under Stalin went into the Gulag or before firing squads after conviction of the charge “enemy of the people.”

Rethinking Russia--Part Two

By David K. Shipler

                Donald Trump certainly acted like a guilty man when it came to accusations that he and his campaign had cooperated with Russia in promoting his candidacy. If a playwright had created such a character, he would have been considered too obvious.

                This is the fourth key question in assessing Russia’s actions during the 2016 campaign. The first three—whether the Russians hacked the Democrats’ emails, whether the Russians impersonated Americans online to exacerbate fissures in the society, and whether those activities helped elect Trump—were examined in Part One. Now we look at numbers 4 through 6.

                4. Based on Trump’s display of anxiety about the Russia investigation, his attempts to stop it, his aides’ interactions with Russians, and the lies some told to Congress and FBI agents, the assumption of a cover-up seemed reasonable. Trump and some of his people acted as if they were hiding something illicit or illegal.

Furthermore, the Mueller report said, dozens of Russian tweets and posts were cited or retweeted by campaign officials, including Donald J. Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, and Michael T. Flynn. But there is no evidence that they knew of the Russian origins. And the investigation didn’t find cooperation or coordination or conspiracy. Rather, the evidence it lays out portrays a haphazard array of contacts among Americans and Russians in erratic pursuit of two apparent goals: profitable business opportunities and improved superpower relations.

Rethinking Russia--Part One

By David K. Shipler

                Imprecise thinking about Russia has afflicted the United States in the wake of the 2016 election. The lines between fact and speculation have been blurred. The evidence of Russian misdeeds has been expanded into broad, unproven theories about Moscow’s motives and the impact on the election results. Legitimate contacts between Americans and Russians have been clouded with suspicion. And together, all these parts—both Russian activities and American reactions—have hobbled the ability of the United States to engage Russia in the kind of fruitful relationship that would promote American national interests.

                The election interference was only part of a broad deterioration, notes Kenneth Yalowitz, a veteran diplomat who served many years in Moscow, and then as US ambassador to Georgia and Belarus. It was preceded by a series of damaging episodes that broke down dialogue. “The bureaucracies have no connections anymore,” he said. “There’s no systematic conversation any longer. We don’t know each other. Given the very difficult state of the relationship, this is the time we should be talking to each other.” Instead, he said, “Our policy is just sanctions and breaking agreements.”

The downward slide can be mapped with landmarks of hostility: the West’s expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, which ignited historic Russian fears of close encirclement; the European Union’s courting Ukraine, the home of defense industries and a Russian naval base; American support for street protesters’ ouster of Ukraine’s elected, pro-Moscow president; then Russia’s thinly-disguised invasion of eastern Ukraine and overt annexation of Crimea, which reanimated Western fears of aggressive expansionism; a Russian tit-for-tat maneuver in America’s back yard to help prop up the anti-US regime in Venezuela; Russia’s military intervention in Syria, which restored Moscow’s foothold in the Middle East; Moscow’s violations of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and President Trump’s scrapping the agreement instead of renegotiating; Russian backing for right-wing racist parties in Europe; Moscow’s cyber intrusions into politics and elections in Estonia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Germany, France, and Austria; and Russian money to support Brexit, seen as part of a grand plan by the Kremlin to break up European cohesion.

                It’s a grim and dangerous list. When the election is added, with the surrounding political anger, the rigor and clarity required to evaluate what has happened is going to be hard to achieve. Trump, who campaigned on improving the relationship, has handcuffed himself by appearing unduly pro-Russia. He has fawned over President Vladimir Putin, downplayed the election interference, tried to thwart Mueller’s investigation, and left real policy to such hawks as National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

                Moreover, the American debate has been muffled, thanks largely to Russia’s having cemented its standing as an adversary. Unorthodox voices have been marginalized as they question conventional wisdom and hold Washington at least partly responsible for the rising tensions.

Russia and the US: The End of Evangelism

By David K. Shipler

            Most Americans during the Cold War would probably have been stunned to learn that the Soviet Union, also known by Ronald Reagan as the Evil Empire, saw itself as a highly moral enterprise. It regarded its economic and political systems—centrally-planned socialism and the order brought by one-party rule—as the most beneficial for other countries, and it sought global influence not only to enhance its national security but also to spread its ideas of social justice.

            It goes without saying that the Soviet system of dictatorship and state-owned production was unjust in the extreme, especially for the little guy. But the Russians’ sense of righteousness was as fervent as the Americans’ reverence for free enterprise and pluralistic democracy. So, pursuing their mirror images of what was best for the world, both Moscow and Washington propagated their beliefs abroad with missionary zeal.

            The evangelical streak in Russian foreign policy ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the death of Marxism as a state ideology. True communism, never achieved, withered as a goal at home and abroad. Today, Vladimir Putin’s Russia seems driven only by a non-ideological impulse to protect its borderlands militarily, promote itself economically, and expand its international reach to recover its reputation from the humiliation of decline.

            The United States has also become less ideological in foreign policy, it seems, since President Trump took office. Defense of human rights and the spread of democracy—and even the promotion of capitalism abroad—have taken a back seat to an inchoate campaign of counter-terrorism. To that end, Trump finds no fault with his chums in the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, for example, but cites human rights violations in rolling back relations with Cuba.

What Should Democrats Do?

By David K. Shipler

            The distraught Democratic Party is at odds with itself about how to counter the unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. On the revolutionary side are the Bernie Sanders supporters and others who want to trash the party’s own establishment, play Tea Party politics, and obstruct everything proposed by the White House and Congressional Republicans. On the pragmatic side are the political pros who want to get elected in states that went for Trump. Both sides recognize the need to win seats in local races and state legislatures, plus the all-important governorships ahead of the 2020 census that will determine redistricting.

            Among the key decisions that must be made is how—or even whether—to approach the white working-class citizenry that voted for Trump. Some argue that the nationwide demographic wave favors Democrats as minorities ride to majority status in the country at large. Identity politics will eventually work as the percentage of whites diminishes, so goes the reasoning, because Republicans have turned their backs on minority interests while Democrats have embraced them.

            But the assumption has flaws. First, minority voters come in many different political flavors and can’t be counted on to vote overwhelmingly for liberal Democratic ideas, even if they’re most helped by them. Socially conservative currents run through certain nonwhite subcultures: the anti-abortion views promoted by some black churches, for example, and an anti-regulatory position among small-business owners. It’s possible that an aversion to female leaders was partly responsible for Hillary Clinton’s poor showing in Florida’s largely Hispanic counties. Exit polls showed that Trump won 28 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, to Clinton’s 66 percent, compared with Obama’s 71 percent in 2012.

The Longer Campaign: Radicalizing America

By David K. Shipler

            The most significant lesson of the election may be one that has gone practically unnoticed: Conservatives have failed to radicalize the American electorate, even after years of well-organized, heavily-financed efforts. Most voters have not been pushed to the extremes, not by Fox-News and Rush-Limbaugh propaganda, not by thinly encrypted appeals to racial bigotry, not by evangelical preachers threatening the wrath of God for abortion and same-sex marriage. Fire and brimstone ain’t what they used to be.

As the pundit class has observed, Republicans have been left behind by the demographic shift. But that’s not the whole story. The group identities that have always described the landscape of American politics run deeper than skin color or national and religious heritage. Groups have real political interests and resilient attitudes, not easily manipulated in an open society where multiple voices can be heard.