The other day candidate Joe Biden said he's open to choosing a Republican running mate. I said I thought this was a good idea. Now to be clear, he won't choose a Republican running mate. That would be crazy, wrong, too risky by a lot. #
I'm sure Biden would want a close relationship with his VP, and you just can't have that close a relationship with a member of the other party. #
Biden is old, and his running mate is important because they are more likely to become president. A Republican in the White House, no matter how inspired a choice, just won't work. #
Despite all that, it was a good idea, to say it, not to do it. We're at a pivotal point for the future of our republic. The current president has been caught violating the Constitution in the most egregious ways, not just in his dealings with Ukraine. It's clear that Trump doesn't understand the Constitution and has no interest in learning, or being limited by it. He's going to do what he wants to do, the same way a monarch would. This is what the Constitution protects against in a myriad of ways. #
We need a two-party system where both parties agree in the rule of law and the Constitution. Where we're Americans first, and partisans a distant second. Not just voters, but the people who lead the parties. Right now we barely have a two-party system because the Repubs are working on behalf of a foreign enemy, and against the Constitution. #
To get back on solid ground, we need to split along respect for the rule of law. One party supports the rule of law, the other party doesn't. That means Democrats, the name of the rule-of-law party, must welcome people who believe in conservative policies that the Repubs used to stand for, but also believe in our system of government. A huge tent. Then, a landslide election, so that the Democrats have control of Congress and the White House and 3/4 of the state legislatures, overcoming Russian/Republican hacking, and so we can pass new amendments to the Constitution to close the loopholes that they have taken advantage of. To codify what previously were just norms.#
I hear you saying, cynically, that'll never happen. Then my answer to you is this -- we've already lost the republic. There may be elections in the future, but only Republicans will win, the same way only Putin wins elections in Russia. I said in an earlier piece, that some friends took issue with, that the Democratic Party would be annihilated if that happened, and this is what I meant. There might still be an organization called the Democratic Party, but if they can't win elections because of corruption, well it's not really a political party is it?#
To win such a landslide, the Democrats will need a lot of votes from people who voted for Trump in 2016. That means compromise. Which is fine because our form of government requires compromise, when it's working. So Biden saying he would consider a Republican running mate is signalling to people who voted Republican that they are welcome in the new Democratic Party. And in order to work, not only will the Republican Party have to be annihilated once and for all, so will the Democratic Party, and further, journalism will have to be annihilated too. What journalism has morphed into, where they only know about horse races, both-sides-do-it and Watergate, has led us to this place. If they continue to rule our discourse, as they have, we can't get out of the hole we're in.#
Once all this change has happened, then we can go back to a two-party system. We can decide what "conservative" and "liberal" mean all over again, because today I feel totally like a conservative even though my beliefs and policies are what we used to think of as liberal. I want to turn the clock back to Eisenhower and JFK, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton, where the US was fucked up for sure, but we respected ourselves and each other, at least somewhat, enough to accept the result of elections we lose. #
Almost everyone has buried their heads in the sand and think oh well nothing has changed, when in fact everything has changed. We no longer have elections that work. Without that, without confidence that the person holding an office was actually elected to that office, we have a monarchy, and autocracy not anything like the system of government the founders designed. #
Last update: Wednesday January 1, 2020; 8:09 AM EST.
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