[[link removed]]

THE DEMOCRATS ARE SLOW-WALKING INTO FASCISM  
[[link removed]]


 

Van Gosse
July 11, 2024
The Nation
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Is doubling down on a candidate who is almost certainly going to
lose really the best the left can do? Until and unless Schumer and
Jeffries, joined perhaps by Pelosi and Clyburn, make that visit to the
White House, we remain stuck in never land. _

President Joe Biden stumbles while taking the stage to speak at Tioga
Marine Terminal on October 13, 2023, in Philadelphia. (Screenshot:
YouTube Sky News Australia),

 

Anyone reading this recognizes that the Democratic Party has been in
deep crisis since the June 27 debate between President Biden and
Donald Trump.

Yet I think we are collectively still avoiding its full implications.
Our discourse is shaped by coded language, allusions and illusions,
and inchoate hopes that somehow events will straighten themselves out.

Plain speaking is called for.

President Biden is not experiencing a “condition,” as suggested by
Nancy Pelosi on July 2 (“I think it’s a legitimate question to
say, is this an episode, or is this a condition?”) and George
Stephanopoulos in the July 5 interview (“Was this a bad episode or
the sign of a more serious condition?”). To the tens of millions who
watched the debate, including me, he appeared to be suffering from
significant cognitive impairment. His staff shield him from virtually
all unscripted encounters, and as investigations by _The New York
Times _
[[link removed]]and _The
Washington Post_ 
[[link removed]]document,
his condition has grown markedly worse in recent months.

If the appearance of cognitive decline is accurate, it will likely
accelerate, making further debates, interviews, and press conferences
even less viable than they are now. Only the president can agree to a
neurological examination to disprove this perception, but he dismisses
that option out of hand. When Stephanopoulos asked “Would you be
willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included
neurological and…cognitive tests and release the results to the
American people?,” the president replied, “Look, I have a
cognitive test every single day. Every day, I have that test,
everything I do. Not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the
world.” In no way is that reassuring.

If correct, the electoral implications are truly dire: a “landslide
[[link removed]]”
for Trump, as Senator Michael Bennet has warned.

On November 5, millions of Democrats will stay home, knowing there is
no chance of victory. Millions of others will either switch to Trump
(the “suburban women” key to Democratic victories in 2018, 2020,
and 2022) or throw their protest votes to minor candidates (younger
voters and others deeply alienated by Biden’s support for mass
murder in Gaza).

We face not only a Trump victory but something far worse: a Republican
sweep of Congress, even possibly a popular vote majority for the
Republican candidate—something that party has only gained once (in
2004) since 1988. Trump will then be entitled to claim an overwhelming
mandate for his authoritarian rule
[[link removed]]:
concentration camps for millions of undocumented people, a purge of
the federal civil service, deploying the Department of Justice and the
FBI to go after his opponents, and so much more.

This danger should concentrate our energies. We have been here
before—a desperate president disconnected from reality, holed up in
the White House, trying to hang on. That was Richard Nixon in the
summer of 1974, as revelations of his personally directing covert
attacks on the Democratic Party kept surfacing, finally culminating in
a bipartisan vote for articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary
Committee.

That was the endgame. On August 7, 1974, the Senate and House
Republican leaders, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and John Rhodes of
Arizona, joined by Barry Goldwater as the leader of the party’s
conservatives, went to the White House to tell Nixon he must resign.
He did so, speaking to the nation in pathetic unconnected sentences,
on August 8.

Powerful donors, major editorial boards, voters across many states via
polls, and a handful of Congress members have urged Biden to resign,
but they are not getting through. As observers have noted
[[link removed]],
Joe Biden has built his career on claims to defy the conventional
wisdom and is now defying demands to do what would save his party. The
Senate and House Democratic caucuses both passed the buck in their
meetings on July 9—no full-throated endorsement, just standing pat,
waiting to see what happens. No one wants to kill the king, or be cast
out—as if normal politics will continue under Trump!

It is notable, in this context, that leading Senate progressives like
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Squad members
[[link removed]] like
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Presley, and Chicago’s Working
Families Party–backed Mayor Brandon Johnson
[[link removed]] have
either equivocated or affirmed that “Joe Biden is our nominee.” Is
this really the best the left can do—double down on a candidate who
is almost certainly going to lose? As Representative Adam Smith of
Washington put it
[[link removed]],
“The idea that we are going to slow-walk into fascism because we
don’t want to hurt somebody that we respect’s feelings—I cannot
even begin to tell you how angry that makes me.” It took the wily
old pol Nancy Pelosi to insist that all options remain
open, telling _Morning Joe_
[[link removed]] on
July 10 that “it’s up to the president to decide if he’s going
to run,” refusing to be pinned down on whether he should stay in.

Until and unless Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, joined perhaps by
Pelosi and James Clyburn, make that visit to the White House, we
remain stuck in never-never land. The president, who has acted as a
statesman in important ways and deserves our respect, will be able to
pretend to himself that the party still wants him. Let us hope
Democratic Party leaders finally grasp the urgency of this moment, and
do the hard, necessary, but also humane thing.

Otherwise, we are faced with two prospects as of January 2025: the
need for massive civil resistance in the face of unleashed repression,
and what we might call “left federalism”—as in the ability of
governors and legislatures in states like California, Illinois,
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York to nullify federal edicts and
keep democracy going. A frightening prospect of ever-increasing
confrontation, but it may be all we have in the face of the coming
juggernaut.

_[VAN GOSSE is Professor of History emeritus at Franklin and Marshall
College and cochair of Historians for Peace and Democracy
[[link removed]].]_

_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
[[link removed]].
Distributed by PARS International Corp
[[link removed]]. _

_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]]
to The Nation for just $24.95!_

* Joe Biden
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* 2024 Elections
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Party
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[link removed]]
* Stop Trump
[[link removed]]
* Kamala Harris
[[link removed]]
* Chuck Schumer
[[link removed]]
* Hakeem Jeffries
[[link removed]]
* MAGA
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]