Democratic Strategies that Don't Court Disaster

How have Democratic leaders been so stolidly resistant to facing up to the true scale of this threat in anything other than fundraising appeals? Regrettably, advancing age and the institutional complacency that often comes with it play a major role here. The members of the Democratic Party's leadership caste continually yearn for the long-vanished shade of "The Party of Lincoln." They pine for the camaraderie of Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan and the difference-trimming compromises struck in the Senate cloakroom half a century ago -- and by indulging in these clubby reveries before the public, they continue to transmit the message that the GOP is a normal political party, committed to upholding basic constitutional rights, freedoms, and power-sharing norms.

This state of political and intellectual sclerosis is imperiling the future of our democracy. Democratic leaders, against all available recent evidence, cling to the legitimacy of our institutions and system when the authoritarian crisis in our democracy is deeply embedded within the institutions themselves. Put another way, we are facing a profound structural reckoning: the institutions are illegitimate, and the system has been hijacked. [...]

Vote harder? Sure. But Democrats must also work harder, fight harder, think bigger, act bolder and step forward, now, or else . . . well, there is no or else. It can't happen here? It has already happened here, and the shock of the Dobbs decision may have finally served notice even to deference-minded Democrats that there is no path forward without playing hardball and without radically reimagining the constitutional order that was designed more 235 years ago over candlelight by slaveholders.

Either we fight back now or it all slips away -- a republic we could not keep, truths that were once self-evident withered and sour, the worst form of government except for the bigoted authoritarianism that would replace it.

Previously, previously, previously.