The further we get away from the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the more I become convinced that Michelle Obama standing on that stage saying, "When they go low, we go high," was a death knell. By now, she's realized it. In the brief period of this past election cycle in which the Democrats were trying to win, calling Donald Trump and JD Vance "weird," she backed away from the statement on the convention stage. But then just as suddenly, Democrats backed off their line of attack. Why try something new, to seeming success, when you could run the same old playbook to failure?
The reason that phrase sticks in my head is because it was a failed strategy from the get-go. If your opponent is "going low," following the rules will not help you. You will not be given a gold star by the teacher. In fact, it will only give your opponent more space and opportunity to play dirty. The Republicans (who are winning politics, currently) know that they are in a competition, and that the Democrats are their opponents and enemies. They behave like it. Democrats, over and over again, seem to be trying to prove that they are not actually in a feud with Republicans. In their efforts at peace-keeping, they allow violence to reign. They are unable or unwilling to fight.
There are a thousand examples of this, but let's pick a recent one. 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 mandate the government detain all undocumented immigrants charged with smaller crimes like shoplifting and minor theft. It would also allow states to sue the government for federal decisions related to immigration enforcement, a change that would have ramifications long after Trump is out of office. The bill will require billions of dollars in additional funding, and 12 Senate Democrats voted to pass it, giving the Trump administration its first easy win of what is sure to be a long four years.
This is part of a longstanding pattern of Democrats believing that their cooperation will be returned; that in exchange for passing this, Republicans will help Democrats pass their own bills somewhere down the line. This will not happen. When a Democrat sits in the White House, Republicans balk and cry and cheat to make sure nothing is accomplished. When a Republican sits in the White House, Democrats fall over themselves to "compromise." Democrats have gotten so worried about what will get them elected or keep them from being reelected that they've stopped working for the people who elected them, and are instead working as collaborators with the people their electors despise.
Think, as I often do, about the stolen Supreme Court seat. After the death of hellion Antonin Scalia in March 2016, the Republican Senate Majority bitched and moaned and delayed and refused to hold a hearing or a vote for Merrick Garland's nomination. Garland was nominated for 293 days before Trump took office and nullified his appointment. Then, in stark opposition, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in late September 2020, Senate Republicans shoved Amy Coney Barrett through before Trump could leave office. They stole a seat, and then proved that it was stolen by making sure the Democrats couldn't do the same the other way.
It's bullshit, yes. It's also … how the game is being played. It is not new that politics runs on bullshit. What feels new is that elected Democrats continue to pretend that it is not happening. When you hear Democrats in power talk about events like this, they sound appalled and astounded despite constant evidence that this is established and common. "So much of liberal politics amounts to yelling 'Moooom! Daaaaad! He's cheating,'" Colette Shade writes in her new essay collection Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything. "But even as a child myself, I could see that no one was coming to save us."
There are two ways to lose against 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 who inevitably will not care or does not exist, or quit the game entirely. The Democrats do not want to quit their plushy jobs with their nice hours and comfortable lives, so that's not going to happen. Instead, most often, they choose to report and whine. This never works, and it is not about to magically start working. Even if it did, they will have spent an immense amount of time and energy complaining about the cheaters and trying to get "justice" in the game they were presumably playing instead of … actually playing the game. While they kvetch about the cheaters counting the spaces incorrectly, the cheater continues to count spaces incorrectly. They move forward. Instead of spaces, the things being stolen are rights and freedoms and futures.
The only way to possibly beat a dirty player is to play dirty right back.
I can hear the whines already. Do we want to live in a country where people cheat to win? Do we want to stoop to their level? Do we want to ignore the standards and made-up rules that everyone agreed to abide by? The problem with these questions is that they do not reflect an ethical situation that exists. One party is already doing this. As a Texan, I have watched Republicans win through shady back-alley methods my entire life. They managed to shut down most of the abortion clinics in the state in a mere three years by playing quick and dirty and smart. Meanwhile, the Democrats have mostly watched, and insisted upon norms. Those norms have not reopened those clinics.
The successes of the Democratic Party in my lifetime (and there have been some!) have not ever felt like the party is fighting for its supporters with its whole chest. I want a party that has skin in the game. I want a party with members that risk their own comfort and status for the wider good of the people they represent. I want a party that will play dirty if it has to in order 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 declines to follow. And I want a party with a fucking strategy. I want candidates with actual beliefs, and policies that actually matter, and plans on how to achieve them. I want a party that views 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 stacks of healthcare bills on everyone's tables and make sure that every kid has food and an education, and I want that party to put the ends before the means. I want a party that fucking cares.
And if the Democrats are not 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 choose defiance. The first rule of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny is "Do not obey in advance." He writes that "most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do." This, of course, is floating around again in regards to the Trump administration. But perhaps there is also something to be taken from it in regards to how we respond to all power—even that of the opposition party we voted for.
Maybe, as a party, Democrats are not capable of adjusting to the new rules. They just lost a big, important election because of their commitment to civility, and refuse to acknowledge that they may be to blame for the loss. A party that will not win is not a party I want to represent me. We cannot make our own choices about our future based on how we think the Democratic party is going to respond, and we cannot show them they can keep winning their blue-state seats by doing the bare minimum. We may have to do this without them.
Some of this has been happening forever. Mutual aid—caring for each other inside communities and outside of modern institutional structures—has always existed. Other, more offensive-minded manifestations of it, like heckling Ted Cruz out of polite society, are relatively new to the modern American political landscape but don't go nearly far enough. The people who run this country should not lead comfortable lives while the rest of us suffer. If decorum is dead, let it be buried.
In some ways, this is a liberation. The rules are now irrelevant. The game is being invented anew. There are ways to skew this in our favor, if we are willing and strategic and brave. We can run for office without party backing, build our own communal ways to survive and thrive. We can light things on fire and demand action and find sneaky, smart ways to achieve what we want. It will be difficult, maybe even impossible, to cobble together a new system. But the old system is obsolete. We can destroy what's left and build something else in its place.
