With victory in Nevada, Senator Bernie Sanders has solidified his place as the Democratic frontrunner and likely sets Democrats on a path to repeat the 2016 Republican story. I will not be part of that story.
This article is from The Editor’s Corner, with insights, short-posts, links, and general ramblings from Editor/Owner Justin Stapley.
I well remember some of the conversations I had in 2016 with, at that time, fellow Republicans. As I voiced concerns with Donald Trump, the commonly expressed reply was the “But Hillary” position.
To so many Republicans in 2016, Hillary Clinton represented a singular and unique threat to the American Republic. The idea of a Clinton Dynasty was particularly distasteful. Add in many of her platform positions, decidedly to the left of her husband’s, as well as the likely nominations of two Supreme Court Justices, and it’s easy to understand why the Never Hillary instinct won out. It’s not difficult to comprehend why the initial Never Trump majority became such a small minority.
As I have tried to make clear, while I disagreed with these rationales for supporting Donald Trump in 2016, they are not why I recently left the Republican Party. I didn’t feel like I could personally adopt a lesser-of-two-evils posture in 2016. But I have always been able to understand why others would choose to do so. There were, and still are, legitimate and compelling reasons to have kept Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
No, the reason I left the GOP was that the populist upswelling of discontent that propelled Donald Trump to the Republican nomination, and forced so many Republicans to make a difficult lesser-of-two-evils decision, has now infected the whole of the party and become its prevailing spirit. As I often say, the Republican Party now treats the 2016 lesser-of-two-evils as 2020’s greater good. I didn’t leave the Republican Party because they elected someone I can’t support, they left me by going where I can’t follow.
So, what does any of this have to do with Bernie Sanders? Well, from my unique perspective as a non-populist exiled Republican, it has everything to do with Bernie Sanders.
You see, populism isn’t an ideology. It’s a vessel for ideology (or simply for obtaining power). Demagogues of all stripes and prevailing beliefs can use populism to propel themselves into positions of influence and power. Too often, when I attempt to point out the similarities between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, people cannot move past their dramatically different positions on the political spectrum. They get hung up on ideology and fail to recognize the very real similarities in their rise to prominence.
In even a marginally functioning society, men like Sanders and Trump would be bottom-dwellers. Not so many years ago, they were just that. Once upon a time, Trump was a walking tabloid article, and Sanders was a socialist clown. In a time not so long ago, mostly serious leaders held the nation’s political positions. Meanwhile, Trump was talking smut on Howard Stern, and Bernie was honey-mooning in Soviet Russia.
But populism rises out of discontent with the system and with the powers-that-be. Populists are those who become convinced that the deck has been stacked against them. In the system, they see only nefarious actors who are keeping them down and destroying their beliefs and their way of life. Such movements are ripe for exploitation by demagogues willing to embody the spirit of such movements.
This is the story of Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the 2016 election. It is quickly becoming the story of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party, and the 2020 election.
This is why I will never “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” And, frankly, it’s why I’m unlikely to vote blue at all in 2020. Far too many Democrats have become so hung up on opposing Donald Trump that they fail to recognize that the same spirit that infected the Republican Party has also infected the Democratic Party. In fact, I would argue Democrats have long been far more susceptible to this spirit than Republicans ever have.
For the GOP to fall to populist nationalism, a perfect storm of factors had to align. Contrary to the claims of many on the Left, Trumpism is not conservatism unveiled. The Republican Party and the conservative movement had to take a major fork in the road to get to where they’re at today. Many rank-and-file Republicans still don’t comprehend their party’s abandonment of conservatism. But Republican leaders, politicians, and personalities know full well the compromises and hypocrisies they’ve had to embrace to stay relevant in the age of Trump.
But the Democratic Party has a track record of populism, demagoguery, and statism going back to its roots. Andrew Jackson, the first Democratic president, was the original anti-establishment candidate. He was the first president who was neither a founder nor the son of a founder. Capitalizing on his folk-hero status, he rode mostly southern discontent with the prevailing meritocracy to power. And, once in power, he used the presidency in a very different way than any of his predecessors. The Jackson presidency, in many ways, foreshadowed what the presidency would become in the next century.
It was the Democrats who rose up in violence against Abraham Lincoln, whose sin was assuming the presidency without a single electoral vote from the Southern States.
It was Democrats who elected the shockingly racist Woodrow Wilson to the presidency, and empowered him to embark on a crusade for a “New Freedom.”
It was Democrats who, under Wilson’s leadership, engaged in a second founding, crafting the trappings of a progressive democracy perpetually in conflict with the remaining processes of the 1789 republic.
It was Democrats who followed FDR’s “New Deal” vision and empowered his four-term presidency to massively increase the size and scope of government.
It was Democrats who double-downed on this government expansion by championing LBJ’s “Great Society” and crafted a bureaucratic nightmare, a veritable Leviathan of government control and authority impacting the private affairs of every US citizen.
It was Democrats who elected a smooth-talking young Senator from Illinois, who spoke of hope but whose words and actions alienated Americans who “cling to guns or religion,” whose presidency marked a historic opportunity to reconcile our ethnic divisions but who somehow managed to leave these divisions raw and growing.
It was Democrats who, seeing the growing threat of Donald Trump, still chose to nominate the most unpopular candidate in recent history. It was Democrats who engaged in a blanket condemnation of half the country as racists, misogynists, and fascists when she lost.
And, apparently, it’s going to be Democrats who nominate an openly socialist Muppet character and embark on a collectivist revolution while expecting the rest of us to go along with them so we can “re-establish the norms” that Donald Trump has violated.
But I will not go along with this scheme. I will not avert my eyes or wink when those who oppose Trump engage in the same behavior and mindset that I witnessed capture my former political party. I will not embrace the fiction that simply removing Trump can re-establish norms of any kind.
I will not pretend that a political party whose prevailing spirit has been collectivist and authoritarian for over a century is the party to trust in reeling back a presidency and a government that Donald Trump has revealed to be so beyond the checks and balances the founders originally established.
Most importantly, I am just as solidly #NeverBernie as I am #NeverTrump.
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