Mr. Vice President, I don’t get it. You are such as likable person. You’ve served your country honorably for decades. You were, by all measures, a productive, supportive and effective Vice President. You’ve shown extraordinary grace and dignity in adversity and tragedy that most couldn’t even fathom.
That’s why it is so tough for me to understand or even believe that don’t you seem to understand the significance and gravity of the moment.
There is no good faith at all in the national Republican Party. They’ve made a Faustian bargain — maybe they made it long ago — that prevents them from acting in good faith. Trump isn’t an anomaly. He’s the logical extension of their approach.
Democracy is a necessary evil to overcome in their quest for power, not an end to strive for. Their aim is to rule, not govern. Their approach is asymmetrical warfare. They even admitted it — advocating for the “destruction of the administrative state.”
Suggesting that we should aim at the resumption of the natural course of things, the way things were, the status quo, the center, compromise with Republicans — is the real pie-in-the-sky idealism.
That only works when both sides believe in democracy, the will of the people, the norms. When the other side is comprised entirely of bad faith actors whose actual policy goals are wildly unpopular and destructive, there is definitionally no middle, no resumption of negotiations, no trusting the process.
If you need evidence, just watch the response by Republican leadership to Trump and his so-obvious-that-Hollywood-would-never-make-the-movie corruption. He’s a vessel for their malevolence. They just wish he’d stop saying the quiet parts out loud and being so bad at everything.
More evidence is their decades of voter suppression, gerrymandering, opposition to voting security and support for nearly unlimited election funding.
That’s why your attack on Elizabeth Warren is so ridiculous. You’re using their bad faith arguments — like the idea that people *like* their health insurance plans. People may like their care. They may believe their plan is less worse than their friend’s/neighbors/random person on Twitter who’s now bankrupt despite having “Insurance” when they got sick.
It may be true that a single payer system is tough to imagine passing in a congress that spends more time fundraising than legislating. But not wanting to continue paying the most for the worst outcomes in the developed world is a noble goal and likely to require systemic, not incremental change.
To claim that advocating for a single payer system is elitist or that having a detailed policy ambition and plan for this and other significant goals somehow makes you a know-it-all is lazy and disingenuous.
Most importantly, the thing the Republicans (especially in the Trump era) want more than anything else is bad faith in-fighting in the primary. They will take even the tiniest, most insignificant bad faith example and turn it into months of non-stop Fox News segments. They will say “we told you so” and “everyone does it”. It’s an important tool for effective propaganda — some truth somewhere as a foundation for distortions and dishonesty.
Humans are facing existential threats — from AI to climate change. America can provide world leadership and forge deep meaningful partnerships to solve or at least mitigate these challenges. On these and other profoundly important issues, we are approaching the points of our return — points where it will take exponentially more resources to preserve our way of life. Bold isn’t risky, it’s necessary.
I’m scared to death about the future of our country. My 3 year old daughter will either grow up in an authoritarian fascist state or a democracy. That’s really what’s at stake. It’s not hyperbole. Read or listen to Sarah Kendzior if you don’t believe that. Or, talk to @madeleine Albright. That’s the urgency. We have a nice republic if we can keep it.
Stop these stupid, bad faith arguments now. Please, please, please! You are a better person than this.
We need record time voter engagement and turnout to overcome foreign interference, a million Hail Mary passes they’ll make to stay in power, outright cheating, voter machine irregularities, a stacked Supreme Court, well-tuned and better funded propaganda and a Media ecosystem that thirsts for Trump’s insanity. We need inspiration and zillions of gallons of perspiration to secure the future for my daughter and her generation.
