The Republic and Its Enemies
There can be no compromise on our founding principles of freedom, equality, and fellowship.
The anti-Trump coalition in the United States is broad, spanning the political spectrum from establishment conservatives and libertarians to social democrats, progressives, liberals, and those who prefer to avoid politics altogether. The breadth of this coalition is both its strength and its weakness. A coalition against the current president and administration has the numbers to win any national election, just so long as everyone votes together. But the same coalition can be easily divided over policy: over tax rates, over how to rein in ICE, over policies to address racial inequality, and anything else.
In other words, the anti-Trump coalition is a negative coalition, defined by what it opposes rather than what it supports. A negative coalition can be an effective source of resistance. Anger and outrage against the current administration is mobilizing Americans in collective defense of their neighbors, as in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles and in countless small towns across the country. Anger and outrage are also drawing Americans to the polls, which Democrats see as an optimistic sign for elections in November.
But a negative coalition cannot be the foundation for a durable political order that will outlast the current moment. The Biden-Harris administration exemplified the problem of holding together a coalition defined by what it opposes. Despite its message of national unity, and Biden and Harris’s sincere belief that the United States is stronger when Americans solve problems together, their administration quickly succumbed to disagreements over policies and priorities. Such policy disagreements are inevitable in any democratic system. But when facing an immediate authoritarian threat, democracy’s defenders need a strategy to manage these disagreements without opening the door for malicious actors who exploit them to tear down the American constitutional order.
The solution is…
Continue reading this article by Thomas Pepinsky, “The Republic and Its Enemies,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic-and-its-enemies/