By Bruce L. Brager
The Democrats, particularly the Hillary Clinton camp, have to remember a few things. In 1988, Doug Williams, quarterback for the Washington Redskins, was asked what it feels like to be the first Black quarterback to start a Superbowl. He said he was more concerned with not being the first Black quarterback to lose a Superbowl. His team won the Superbowl, by concentrating on the basics of scoring more points rather than worrying about glass ceilings. There is a lesson here, of focusing on the substantive job one has to do – first win the election, then govern well. Making history with the vice presidential pick, or even the Presidential pick, is really not a major part of the equation.
For Democrats, the Republican presidential campaign has been fun to watch. But there is one thing we have to remember before Democrats take too much pleasure. “Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake” is a quote famously attributed to Napoleon. Logic holds that when the enemy can do himself damage – let the enemy do your work for you. An outside menace can focus the enemy’s attention, and unite feuding, if not actually fighting, factions. So let your enemy do the job for you.
Also . . . A victory over your opponent based on his errors is a victory, but it may not last as long as a victory based on your skill. Another often misunderstood reality, also from military history, is that when your enemy stays together they can surrender en masse, not break up into small groups that need to be hunted down at great cost. Democratic best case results this November do not include being able to govern without Republicans at all. They need reasonable Republican leadership, and individual Republicans open to the core element of politics and government, compromise.
And remember, also from football, “on any given Sunday” any given team can beat any other team on the same level. Beating Trump is by no means a certainty.
The Democrats cannot just wait for Donald Trump to do his thing—I think the term I heard is get all Trumpy—and hand the election to Hillary. The Democrats need to come up with good ideas, not just ways to spend more money. They need to be less lobbyists for every interest group, no matter how justified the interest, and more lobbyists for the national interest. For example, they need to find better use for local tax dollars than moving Confederate statues. Perhaps the money for a little much needed history education, to give people some needed historical perspective, on the Civil War, slavery, the dumb disloyalty of secession, and on the period when most of the statues were built – decades later, as it happens.
The Democrats need to remember the brilliance of the Founding Fathers in writing the First Amendment. Maybe James Madison needs his own musical. Expression and distribution of ideas can lead to discussion and debate. A few good radical ideas, such as ending slavery—the antebellum South tried to suppress even discussion of ending slavery—and giving women the vote, can come to pass to the great benefit of the country. Particularly dumb ideas say a lot about the expresser. Trying to curb the public statement of these ideas, so as to not hurt people’s feelings, is all too likely to make idiots martyrs to the First Amendment.
The Democrats need to figure out why so many people seem to like Trump. What is lacking in current political leadership that they look to such an unlikely outsider. They need to do this soon, in the next few weeks, before the party will have to update its “what went wrong” election postmortem.
Fundamentally, after the immediate problem of The Donald, the Democrats need to find ways to convince the country to move away from the current Tea Party, that social Darwinian font of bad at best, dangerous at worst, ideas, totally out of keeping with the American spirit, to the spirit of the first Tea Party, to “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
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