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The further we get from the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the more I become convinced that Michelle Obama standing on that stage saying, “When they go down, we go up,” was a death sentence. Now she has realized it. In the brief period this past election cycle when Democrats were trying to win, calling Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird,” he backed away from the statement on the convention stage. But then, just as quickly, the Democrats retreated from their line of attack. Why try something new, with apparent success, when you could apply the same old playbook until failure?
The reason that phrase sticks in my head is because it was a failed strategy from the beginning. If your opponent is “going down”, following the rules will not help you. The teacher won’t give you a gold star. In fact, it will only give your opponent more space and opportunity to play dirty. The Republicans (who are currently winning in politics) know that they are in a competition and that the Democrats are their opponents and enemies. They behave like this. Democrats, time and time again, seem to be trying to prove that they are not actually at odds with Republicans. In their efforts to maintain peace, they allow violence to reign. They cannot or do not want to fight.
There are a thousand examples of this, but let’s choose a recent one. On Monday, the Laken Riley Act came before the Senate. The Laken Riley Act is a racist bill based on a single extreme act of violence that would force the government to detain all undocumented immigrants accused of minor crimes such as shoplifting and petty theft. It would also allow states to sue the government over federal decisions related to immigration enforcement, a change that would have ramifications long after Trump leaves office. The bill will require billions of dollars in additional funding, and 12 Senate Democrats voted for its passage, giving the Trump administration its first easy victory in what will surely be four long years.
This is part of a long-standing pattern in which Democrats believe their cooperation will be returned; that in exchange for passing this, Republicans will help Democrats pass their own bills at some point. This will not happen. When a Democrat occupies the White House, Republicans balk, cry, and cheat to make sure nothing gets accomplished. When a Republican occupies the White House, Democrats strive to “compromise.” Democrats have become so concerned about what will get them elected or keep them from being re-elected that they have stopped working for the people who elected them and are instead working as collaborators with the people their constituents despise.
Think, as I often do, of the stolen seat on the Supreme Court. After the death of the demon Antonin Scalia in March 2016, the Senate Republican majority complained, complained, delayed, and refused to hold a hearing or vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination. Garland was nominated for 293 days before Trump took office and rescinded his nomination. Then, in staunch opposition, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in late September 2020, Senate Republicans pushed through Amy Coney Barrett before Trump could leave office. They stole a seat and then showed that they had stolen it by making sure the Democrats couldn’t do the same thing the other way around.
It’s nonsense, yes. It’s also… how the game is played. It is not new that politics is based on nonsense. What seems new is that elected Democrats continue to pretend that this is not happening. When you hear Democrats in power talk about events like this, they sound shocked and amazed despite constant evidence that this is established and common. “Much of liberal politics amounts to shouting ‘Moooom! Daaaad! He’s cheating,'” Colette Shade writes in her new collection of essays. Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything. “But even as a child, I could see that no one was coming to save us.”
There are two ways to lose to a cheater and only one way to win. The goody two shoes has options that can only fail her: report the cheater to some authority that inevitably won’t care or doesn’t exist, or abandon the game altogether. Democrats don’t want to give up their fancy jobs with their good hours and comfortable lives, so that’s not going to happen. Instead, most of the time they choose to report and complain. This never works and it’s not about to magically start working. Even if they did, they would have spent an immense amount of time and energy complaining about cheaters and trying to get “justice” in the game they were presumably playing instead of… actually playing the game. While they complain about cheaters counting spaces incorrectly, the cheater continues counting spaces incorrectly. They move forward. Instead of spaces, what is stolen are rights, freedoms and futures.
The only way to beat a dirty player is to play dirty right back.
I can already hear the moans. Do we want to live in a country where people cheat to win? Do we want to lower ourselves to their level? Do we want to ignore the made-up standards and rules that everyone agreed to follow? The problem with these questions is that they do not reflect an ethical situation that exists. One party is already doing it. As a Texan, I have seen Republicans win through shady and underhanded methods my entire life. They managed to close most of the abortion clinics in the state in just three years by acting fast, dirty and smart. Meanwhile, Democrats have mostly observed and insisted on rules. Those rules have not reopened those clinics.
The successes of the Democratic Party in my lifetime (and there have been some!) have never been as if the party was fighting with all its chest for its followers. I want a group that has a stake in the game. I want a party with members who risk their own comfort and status for the general good of the people they represent. I want a party that plays dirty if necessary to protect people’s rights. I want a party that understands that morality is not the same as following a list of rules that the opponent refuses to follow. And I want a game with a fucking strategy. I want candidates with real beliefs, policies that really matter, and plans for how to achieve them. I want a party that sees the Golden Rule as something that no longer applies when the other side opts out. I want a party that will keep the earth from burning and take care of the piles of health care bills on everyone’s tables and make sure every child has food and an education, and I want that party to put ends before ends. media. I want a party that cares.
And if Democrats aren’t going to become that party, there are other ways to play this game. If the rule book is on fire, if decorum and deference are dead, we can opt for defiance. Timothy Snyder’s First Rule About tyranny is “Do not obey beforehand.” He writes that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching to power what can do it.” This, of course, is floating around again as far as the Trump administration is concerned. But perhaps something can also be gleaned from this regarding how we respond to all power, even that of the opposition party we voted for.
Perhaps, as a party, Democrats will not be able to adapt to the new rules. They just lost an important election because of their commitment to civility and refuse to acknowledge that they may be to blame for the loss. A party that is not going to win is not a party that I want to represent me. We can’t make our own decisions about our future based on how we think the Democratic Party will respond, and we can’t show them that they can continue to win their seats in Democratic states by doing the bare minimum. Maybe we have to do this without them.
Some of this has been going on forever. Mutual aid – caring for each other within communities and outside of modern institutional structures – has always existed. Other, more offensive-minded manifestations of this, such as booing Ted Cruz out of polite society, are relatively new to the modern American political landscape, but they don’t go far enough. The people who run this country should not live comfortable lives while the rest of us suffer. If decorum is dead, let it be buried.
In a way, this is a liberation. The rules are now irrelevant. The game is being invented again. There are ways to tilt this in our favor, if we are willing, strategic and brave. We can run for office without party backing, building our own community ways to survive and thrive. We can set things on fire and demand action and find clever, clever ways to achieve what we want. It will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to cobble together a new system. But the old system is obsolete. We can destroy what remains and build something else in its place.
