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The Democratic National Committee is commissioning a report to examine the party’s defeat in the 2024 presidential race—and it looks like that report is going to skip over Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection.
You read that right: The DNC is doing an autopsy and avoiding the proximate cause of death.
Frankly, it’s an insult to the American people’s collective intelligence. Voters knew something was wrong well before Biden embarrassed himself and the nation on the debate stage last June.
It’s also strategically unsound, and a stark reminder as to why what we’re doing here at The Next Move is so important.
Back in May, I wrote the following about the “Blue MAGA” [ [link removed] ] echo chamber:
This is not a national election year. The already thin excuses about hiding the pro-democracy camp’s dirty laundry from the public eye hold no water today. If there isn’t room now for self-reflection in service of self-improvement, there never will be.
I’ll double down. As long as the Democrats cannot acknowledge reality in an internal audit, they will never be able to face the voting public with the honesty required to move on and they will continue to cede the field to the MAGA right and the far-left.(Why do those of us who support free societies have to tell the truth when the other side lies so shamelessly? Aside from being the right thing to do, honesty preserves democracy—deceit only really works in service of its destruction).
Before I got into politics, I was a chess champion. In chess, as in any competitive sport, there’s only one goal: winning. There’s no excuse for sticking to a bad strategy. I want to transplant that mindset into the fight for democracy.
So at The Next Move, we’re doing things differently. Here’s how:
Acknowledging mistakes and moving on
The DNC’s 2024 after-action report is an evergreen story about establishment moderate failure. I keep returning to Biden’s condition because doddering Democrats keep taking us back to the issue with their denials and obfuscations. It is the perfect litmus test to determine whether a politico is in it to win it, or just to protect their reputation.
What I am calling for is self-reflection, not self-flagellation. Acknowledge that you screwed up. Start working on a plan to do better. Regain public trust.
I even threw together a short script [ [link removed] ] for fessing up and moving on. Unsurprisingly, it’s about the Biden decline cover up, but it could be modified for any number of recent establishment missteps. Here’s an excerpt:
In the interest of fighting a dangerous demagogue, we claimed the mantle of the truth, and we failed to live up to that very basic standard [...] We recognize that we have lost many voters’ trust, and trust is something that is earned. So beyond combating Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda, we are committing to restoring your confidence in us.
Here’s the rest of that post [ [link removed] ], which exemplifies this ethos:
Holding up a mirror to America—and to the pro-democracy camp
My reputation, passport, and accent all betray the fact that I’m not from here.
I have been an admirer of the United States since childhood. America provided me safe haven when I had to leave my home in Russia under threat of imprisonment—or worse. So I am personally invested in the success of American liberty. But I am ultimately a guest in this great republic.
My words therefore come with an important caveat: The fate of this nation will be decided by US citizens. What I can do, however, is lend my experience as a guide, to help you become more effective stewards of democracy.
Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville provided incisive commentary on the nascent American union from the perspective of a man who’d grown up in the tumult of post-Napoleonic France. With the humility that such a comparison demands, I’d consider The Next Move a Tocquevillian exercise: Insight into the battle for freedom in the US from someone who was raised under Soviet communism, who watched hopefully as a flawed democracy emerged from the ashes of the USSR, and who fought back—and ultimately had to flee—when a KGB veteran snuffed out that spark of freedom.
But I don’t want to simply hold up a mirror to America broadly, I also want to specifically challenge the pro-democracy camp, of which I consider myself a member. We can leverage the lessons [ [link removed] ] my fellow dissidents [ [link removed] ] and I have gleaned from decades combating authoritarianism around the world.
Read this post [ [link removed] ], which puts this objective into action:
Cultivating thoughtful debate and learning from it
Most people say they want liberty and prosperity, but they disagree on how to get there. Many of us are frustrated with the hall monitor behavior that comes with fads like political correctness and cancel culture, which stifle honest conversations in pursuit of our goals. And real debate and open disagreement are the only ways for the pro-democracy movement to refine our strategy and win. But the goal of this debate has to be arriving at some form of truth; it can’t just be cheap spectacle.
There are currently three popular products that are passed off as debate, yet miss the mark.
First, there’s the pay-per-view wrestling model. The food fight. Piers Morgan. Twenty leftist college students versus one conservative agitator—or 20 conservative agitators versus one campus leftist. It’ll get branded as debate, but this sort of thing often has the nutritional value of a cat video.
Then, there’s intellectual over-indulgence. Debate on issues that don’t merit debate. “Is fascism good or bad?” “Should we support Russia or Ukraine?” This kind of discussion is unenlightening because anyone with even the most basic moral foundation should know the right answer going into things. The ancient Greeks would call it sophistry.
And finally, there’s non-debate. Is Trumpism bad, or is it really bad? As with the previous two models, we learn nothing. And this framework is all too common in the pro-democracy camp.
It’s not impolite to disagree with one another. It’s honest. And, if done well, it is productive!
Therefore, The Next Move is cultivating real, thoughtful disagreement in service of figuring out… the next move. We’ll take as a baseline that you know that freedom is a virtue and authoritarianism is not. The question is how best to approach the complex problems that come with protecting the good and fighting back against the bad.
We recently ran such a debate [ [link removed] ]on how liberal democracies can best respond to bad actors like Germany’s far-right AfD who seek to use our openness as a weapon against us. Instead of offering a debate that’s pro- and anti-AfD, we focused on a more actionable question: “What we should do about an organization that doesn’t comport with the core principles that underpin free society?” I’ll admit, this wasn’t our best-performing piece—I think it got drowned out a bit by the ongoing Epstein Files [ [link removed] ] noise. But I encourage you to take a look.
Stay tuned for more debates [ [link removed] ]—and let us know in the comments what questions you’d like us to tackle.
Staying rooted in a positive vision and democratic values
Everything I’ve just laid out has to be done in service of fighting for something. The failed candidacies of people like Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Andrew Cuomo show us that “not the other guy” is not the right answer. Anti-democratic politicians, are, by definition, running on a negative platform. Anti-anti-democracy is just a double negative.
Democracy and politics are processes on the road to human flourishing. We win not when one party or another is more successful (The Next Move and our parent organization are strictly non-partisan!) but when voters aren’t left to pick between bad and worse. When Americans instead feel they have a real choice and a serious public discourse that illuminates the best path forward to prosperity. When the global forces of authoritarianism are in retreat and a steadily increasing share of the world can enjoy the bounty of free market innovation and growth. When the United States leads in concert with its democratic allies.
That vision is the basis for our work—and our endgame. Admiral Bill McRaven lays it out [ [link removed] ] better than I ever could, bringing substance and credibility to the narrative:
I intend to return to this piece from time to time as we experiment with new types of content. Think of this article as a north star—if you’re ever wondering why you’re reading something on The Next Move, look here, and know that we publish with purpose.
Thank you for being part of this community. I hope you’ll keep reading and that you’ll make your own voice heard!
Garry
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