How the Left Can Stop Eating Itself
In the short term, let’s vote. In the long term, we must cultivate trust.
This week, amidst news that the Senate had voted to confirm a serial perjurer to the Supreme Court, the New York Review of Books published a timely essay by Holocaust historian Christopher R. Browning. In it, Browning draws several comparisons between the Nazi party’s rise to power and our current political moment (including an erosion of the judiciary as a check on executive power), and points out a key difference (namely, a campaign of misinformation and distrust of the news in lieu of direct censorship, at least thus far).
Among other things, Browning’s piece outlines how long-term trends like voter suppression and gerrymandering have made the rise of Trumpism possible. The result of these erosions of democracy—or as I’d put it, erosions of the semblance of democracy for some but not others—is a persistent trend in which Republicans are able to win national elections with a shrinking minority of the popular vote. Because of this manipulation and suppression, says Browning, “it is estimated that the Democrats will have to win by 7 to 11 points (a margin only obtainable in rare “wave” elections) in the 2018 elections to achieve even the narrowest of majorities in the House of Representatives.” Such a victory is, quite frankly, our only…
