Post-Mortem
The Republican party's dead, the Democratic party's worse (and a way out)
January 6, 2021
This is the day the Party of Lincoln died. The decline of the party heralded by its very incapacity to manage its presidential nomination process in 2016. Americans wanted outsiders, and two people who were not part of party establishments both put on very strong showings. Sanders was unable to overcome HRC’s decades of insider dealings that made it “Her Turn” all the way back in 2012, once Obama was reelected. But the Republicans — the BUSHES — were not able to hold the party and what had once been their fringe now was their base, and they wanted to hear messages of rabid racism, parochialism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, tribalism, and anger, built atop a pile of fear and financial uncertainty, and blessed with the loving heart of an evangelical Jesus. They made this monster; it was the deal they accepted in order to have a shot at winning, after Watergate.
Two parties (well, one corporate party with two franchises), both in disarray in 2016. Winning puts you in charge, but it also highlights factions. Losing builds bridges among those with some shared interests. By winning the White House, there was no means by which the Republicans could find a common ground amongst their various factions and subsets. In fact, Trump would not allow it. They were to rally behind him, or he would punish them. The organizing principle of the Republican party since 2016 has been Donald Trump’s ego. That is it. And now that is no longer in play.
But he’s not giving up control. This is the other monster the Republicans created, when they enabled him to escape repercussions for his impeachment by refusing to hear any evidence. And now he is killing the Republican party by generating a spur, not just from the grassroots like the Tea Party did, but by actually getting sitting Senators and members of Congress to decisively split with their own party members over the meaning of the constitution and the practice of democracy, because that is what the new Base wants.
A good 15% of the Republican base wants nothing to do with the Party as it was, anymore. Pull out that chunk, and elections will not be close for more than a decade.
But that will teach the Republicans. No one stops Donald Trump from playing with the toys he wants to play with, and if you try to, he will break it before he turns it over. It’s his freaking life story. Everything he touches turns to shit.
January 6, 2026
Five years post-Insurrection, and neither the Democrats, nor the few remnants of the Republican party, have lifted a finger to address the root causes of why both of those parties failed in 2016. The Republicans could not keep Trump from scorching their establishment (whatever became of JEB!?) and the Democrats had no clue the People did not want HRC either. The should have had an idea, as Bernie Sanders grabbed primary after primary, but the Democrats had grown fat on Neoliberalism and believed themselves invincible.
For decades, their candidates had run on a foundation of what other choice does a self-respecting (woman, racial minority, immigrant, homosexual, laborer) have? Note that this still runs through Democratic National Committee messaging—of late that Kamala Harris would not have taken the extreme steps Trump has in his second term. Not that she would have done anything to fix the problem, either. The best she could come up with was vague promises of holding Trump accountable, because Biden was never going to; otherwise she made promises to essentially STAY THE COURSE!
Keep the country running until Trump dies and then the Republicans can fix themselves, is the new Democratic wait-and-see. Remember when Joe Biden said the Democrats needed Republicans and he toyed with the idea of nominating Republicans to his cabinet? Biden believed we needed to repair the hegemony of “competing” parties (that represent but one economic philosophy).
Meanwhile candidates who campaigned on utilizing the state to mediate social class conflict—and who have been winning—have had to fight establishment Democrats as much or more than Republican opponents.
The first primary Joe Biden ever won happened after Barack Obama stepped in and got Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to cash in their Presidential dreams the weekend before Super Tuesday, 2020. Biden was never popular on his own, what he became was not Trump after Trump’s first four years, which was enough. Biden, who thought he had retired and it was Her Turn, got pulled back to save America from Bernie Sanders. Biden made a stupid promise that his primary qualification for his running mate would be her sex, because What other choice do you have? Plus, she looks like you. Kamala Harris won the Vice-Presidential nomination, but still has never won a Democratic party primary.
If the DNC had held real primaries in 2024 it is possible Harris would have been the nominee, but it is also possible a more appealing and stronger candidate would have emerged. The point of competitive elections is that it should result in a general improvement of the governing body, through having better ideas and new candidates challenge incumbents to adjust, or be replaced. But the Neoliberal DNC is a machine that has yet to discover it irreparably broke down, in 2016.
Attempting to fight extremists from the “center” inevitably moves that center toward the extreme. You don’t kill Fascism with Diet Fascism. You either build alternative economic and political forms that will look quite different and directly challenge Fascism, or Fascism remains. Non-hierarchical, mutual aid communities built around shared sentiments—what look in some ways like social movements—are one approach. And that is what I hope to achieve with The Floral Society, which is most simply explained as a membership organization BY cannabis consumers, FOR cannabis consumers; people with shared interests, who join together to gain mutual benefits.
I have observed and participated in a culture of resistance to marijuana prohibition for most of my life. I know the power pot smokers have exercised over policymaking—and that was when most all of them were in the closet. Consumers in legal states have the resources that can make it so no one has to hide; it is a matter of community-building.