"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."
Just saved you the trouble of reading JMM’s not-really-all-that-interesting essay. The crucial issue about the Democratic Party is that it’s the oldest political party in America. It’s been around since Jefferson. The Republican Party dates back to Lincoln, and I’m pretty comfortable saying Trump has smashed it to bits. It’s all MAGA all the time, but nobody thinks MAGA is going to hold together when Trump is gone. Which is only 40 months away (but me no “buts” about a third term. That’s as likely as the courts declaring the 2020 election was “rigged.”)
Post-Trump, whither the GOP? The GOP is a cult now. It won’t survive the death (real or political) of its leader. (Jr. is no Joel Osteen. He’s not even a Richard Roberts.)
And if you look back on the 20th century, the greatest presidents of that century were Democrats. Eisenhower is the exception that proves the rule, in that he warned us of “the military-industrial complex.” And he was right.
Nixon visited China, but he also “weaponized” the government against his enemies (the real scandal of Watergate). Reagan was President when Gorbachev realized the USSR was headed to history’s dustbin. His policy towards Central America was scandalous enough (the “School of the Americas “), but he managed a scandal in DC on top of it, one GHWBush found a way to pardon himself out of. (We REALLY need to amend that pardon power clause.) FDR gave us the New Deal and guided the country through the Great Depression and WWII. Truman gave us the Fair Deal and desegregated the military. JFK set us up for the Civil Rights Act which LBJ passed in memoriam, and then he got the VRA, and Medicare, and the Great Society, establishing the government programs we take for granted (and rely on) today. Which have been damaged by Trump, but not destroyed; and they won’t be.
All this talk of Dems in disarray is just punditry bafflegab. The last organization the Democratic Party had died in LBJ’s administration because of Vietnam. The party literally split over it, and handed the White House back to Nixon by nominating McGovern. It was the true beginning of the primary process, and it’s been a mess ever since. (Although there was the year Pat Buchanan gave a speech at the GOP convention that Molly Ivins memorialized as sounding better in the original German. Buchanan would be denounced by Stephen Miller as a pro-immigration communist. Such is Republican “unity.”) But the post-McGovern mess was inevitable, too. And then the only thing Nixon accomplished was an agreement to end the war, which, like his presidency, ended in ignominy. McGovern wasn’t wrong, but the nation wasn’t ready to face it. Nixon’s “secret plan” turned out to be as much of an embarrassment as the Trump negotiated withdrawal from Afghanistan. One might conclude that GOP Presidents talk tough, but have no idea how to end a war we shouldn’t have started.
LBJ had control over the party, even the Southern Democrats who opposed his civil rights measures. He knew how to get around them. He knew how to keep people inside the big tent. Vietnam did LBJ in with the primary voters, and probably ruined HHH’s chances in the general, too. Nixon pulled the rare trick of winning re-election by the greatest landslide in history (sorry, Trump; you were never even close), and then turning the GOP in Congress against him less than 2 years later.
But the Presidents with scandals IN office (Clinton’s, despite the blue dress, were all prior to his inauguration. The Lewinsky mess was escalated into an impeachable offense by a prosecutor with nothing better to do than find something to prosecute. There’s a reason we shouldn’t let that happen, to anyone.), are Nixon, Reagan, GHW shutting down Iran-Contra before it could bite him; Cheney’s abuses of power under Shrub. Now Trump using the office to finally earn more money than Daddy left him, and selling pardons, to boot. (As I said, that pardon power has to be changed.)
There’s a common thread here, and it’s GOP presidents. Republicans tolerate scandal in their politicians. Democrats don’t, in any politician. Not to the point of being the party of Javert; but the GOP is the party of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
It’s another reason the GOP dies with Trump. That, and
Trump is already checked out. He got elected to stay out of jail. His attempts to leave his mark on history (arch, ballroom, Greenland) are all failing. He’s going to withdraw further into his own reality, and ignore the one the rest of us live in. The GOP will crash in ruins around him, and he won’t even notice; or care. Oh, the party name may go on; but I doubt it. It will be too tainted, too connected to MAGA, to last much longer. The hypocrisy is, finally, just too much. Besides, Trump is their tent pole, and he’s already leaning 45 degrees.
The Democrats, in all their glorious disarray, will carry on. It’s the American Way.
