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Don't Let Them Divide and Conquer [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-14
I’m reading all of these articles, and I get it. We wouldn’t be Democrats if there weren’t 85,000 opinions about how to do one thing. And people have individual agendas in terms of their opinions about the future of the American political system, about who should lead the Democrats, and — yes — the left also has a “burn it down and start over” wing.
Here’s the thing though: This is not ordinary politics. The threat from fascism right now is existential. Trump thinks he’s a king. He’s flagrantly breaking the law and threatening the world order. Some of us probably don’t like the current world order either, but how does a world run by authoritarians and oligarchs to you? How about the end of constitutional rights for all Americans? A return to American expansionism and imperialism? The end of civil rights for women, racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ community? Or how about we all just die in a pandemic created by government response policy that is rooted in conspiracy theories and wonky religious extremism instead of science and facts.
So… I really don’t care if members of the pro-Democracy coalition are progressives (and I’m as proud of by progressive bonafides as anybody else on this site), center-left politicians that have to win over moderate/independent voters, or even anti-Trump conservatives. The bigger the “army” of the opposition, the better. We can have are policy debates later.
And I know some people just want the catharsis of a “rebellion moment.” Unfortunately, politics and government aren’t really about just doing everything that makes you feel better. In fact, that is precisely what MAGA and Trump are about — doing the things that make them feel good, from revenge, to “owning the libs,” to trashing people who scare them.
Wanna win? You have to start unified. You have to understand that our system only tolerates two parties. And right now — we have a fascist party and a non-fascist party. It’s not a debate between left and right, it’s a debate between left and wrong.
Wanna take back the House? Well, we could do it this year, but the type of Democrats that can win in the 3 open Republican districts probably need to be more centrist to cobble together the type of voter coalitions that get you to 50%. Get control of the House, and then we have a platform for real, legal, structured resistance: Subpeonas for Elon Musk, the ability to impeach incompetent cabinet officials, and legislation that bulks up constitutional law (that the GOP Senate would be committing political suicide to reject).
Finally, I would point out that “divide and conquer” is a mainstay of the MAGA playbook. They divide us by gender, by race, by religion — because they know that the more confusion, the more people opt out, and the more people opt out, the less power we have to reestablish our democratic ideals.
So, if you’re in a fighting mood — remember who you’re really fighting. This is not the moment a third party to rise. It’s not a moment to take down the elected Democrat you hate the most. And it is most certainly not the moment to remain obsessively focused on one policy item only.
As Ben Franklin pointed out when we first fought for our fledgling democracy (as flawed as it was and still is): “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
This Republican government is hurting people and killing our country — on purpose! Definitely a time for all of us who are pro-democracy to “hang together.”
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