Our By-Standing Days Are Over

"The Guns of Navarone," the 1961 eponymously-named film adaptation of Alistair MacLean's novel, has stuck in my head decades after I first saw it.  Beyond the stars and the special effects, what has stayed with me is the clever way that Carl Foreman, then fresh off the Hollywood blacklist, managed to weave a strong anti-war debate into the dialogue of what was otherwise one of MacLean's by-the-numbers, resolute-men-getting-the-job-done tales.  When the demolition expert in the team, made with rage about having to leave an injured comrade in the care of a Nazi hospital, exposes one of their number as a saboteur, he declares his wish to wash his hands not only of the mission, but the entire war.  He goads the team leader to shoot the saboteur, and almost succeeds in doing so before the saboteur's friend and compatriot shoots her first.  

Afterwards, the leader lambasts the demolition expert for what he considers self-serving grandstanding.  And he does so in no uncertain terms:

You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son ... your by-standing days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck!

My play-by-play description of this scene really doesn't do it justice.  If you can find a clip of it online, or watch the whole movie, please do so.  It's worth the time and trouble, especially if you're looking for things to do while quarantining in place.  In fact, if you have not seen it, I'd recommend you do so before reading the rest of this post.  It may make it more meaningful for you.

So, with that disclaimer, let me explain why I'm starting with a classic-film reference.

Democrats have just come off of what was, for them and for all of us, a terrific election cycle, their best in 12 years and one of their three best in the past 40 years (including 1992 and 2008).  This gives them one of those increasingly rare and precious opportunities to reshape the character and direction of our politics and the nation.  That opportunity is all the more real and profound in the wake of the four-year dumpster fire from which we have just escaped.  More Americans than ever are hungry, even desperate, for real and substantial change.  The fact that President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID bill is not being swamped by the predictable, and hypocritical, efforts of Republicans to flip-flop on deficit spending, but instead is being supported by poll majorities should be all the evidence anyone needs of this.

I've been hearing a lot in recent days about how Democrats in Washington need to act like they won an election, and use the power that the voters gave them.  I'm all for that.  Yes, compromise is how things get done in a democracy, but compromise is always the end result of a negotiation, and negotiation is in the first instance a question of positioning.  One of Barack Obama's biggest failings is that he tended to negotiate by starting at the 50-yard line and expecting not to have to do anything to move the proverbial ball.  Unfortunately, that tendency fed the appetite of an opposition that lives to demonstrate how much they can grab in plain site.  

So, instead of getting to the end zone, Obama ended up fighting to get into field-zone range and then bragging about his ability to occasionally get 3 points.  That mindset not only cost him two midterm elections, but also may have set the stage for Donald Trump's by-a-nose victory over Hillary Clinton.  Field goals, and even the occasional touchdown like the ACA, don't turn out your fans.  Fighting for every victory even when victory seems hopeless does that.  In hindsight, Trump's victory seems less improbable when you remember that Republicans voters turn out with the relentlessness of the 2000 Baltimore Ravens defense, to extend the metaphor a little bit.

So, yes, Democrats in Washington need, as the cliche goes, to go big or go home.  Happily, they all seem to have gotten that memo, read it, and are heeding its advice.

But what about the rest of us?

Well, there's a bit of a problem there.  To extend the metaphor yet further, while Democrats have had a tendency in the past to start negotiations on the 50-yard line, their voters often refuse to show up unless their team has reached the end zone four times before the referee starts the game clock.

OK, I exaggerate a bit.  But only a bit.

Look at the history of elections in the modern two-party era.  Democrats win with turnout.  Even in the last election, when the Republican candidate received more votes than any prior winning candidate in American presidential history, Biden still beat him by 7 million votes.  And, even in a deep-red state, even after the other U.S. Senate elections had largely been fiascos for Democrats, Democrats flipped not one but two Senate seats and control of the Senate itself, simply by showing up.

Simply by showing up.  If I thought it would make a difference in turnout and elections, I'd type that phase a thousand times, make that alone into a post here, and repeating that post day in and day out for the rest of my days.

Do you want to know why, in the past 40 years, the vast majority of my adult life, Democrats have only controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for four years?  Despite the fact that polls show more support for Democratic positions on most issues than Republican ones?

Simply put, we are frontrunning fans.  We show up on those rare occasions when everything looks absolutely perfect for ensuring victory.  Republicans show up whether victory is possible or not.

In saying this, I am mindful of the realities of Republican games with the voting system.  That's a whole post all by itself.  For now, I'll just say this about that.  The Democratic base of the future is being born every day, while the Republican base of the past is dying every day, all the more so because it refuses to believe in a virus that doesn't care about what it believes in.  This is why the Republican Party no longer has any faith in democracy, if it ever did at all.  This is why it has to rig a system in which its ability to compete is shrinking each day.  

And nothing in that last paragraph changes an important and distressing fact:  Democrats are political perfectionists.  If they don't get exactly what they want, when they want it, they think that they'll get it by holding their breath until the rest of the country turns blue.  Or, to put it in practical terms, not showing up until perfection is guaranteed to us.

Leaving aside the question of the achievability, or even the nature, of perfection (yet another blog post), this mindset has an important defect.  Elected officials can't be elected unless people show up at the polls.  And if certain categories of voters don't show up at the polls, and in fact make a habit of failing to do so, guess what?  Those voters, and the things they care the most about, get forgotten.  And, if those things are in fact things that affect significant numbers, most, or even all of us, those people affected are losers.  As is the nation.  As is the world, in its increasingly interdependent state.

This is why so many elections feel like a choice between a Republican and a Republican.  If you feel that way many times, well, you aren't entirely wrong.  Because that's what happens when Republicans are the majority of the voting pool.  As badly as the system is rigged, there has been, and going forward will be, more real choice when the folks running for office have a choice when it comes to potential voters.

These insight are hardly new ones.  In one form or another, I've used this forum to make basically the same points many times before.  So, why do so again?  Especially in the wake of the turnout success in 2020?

To be frank, the reaction of a lot of Democratic voters to the outcome of the second Trump impeachment trial is what has set me off.

No, Trump was not found guilty.  No, there was no vote on barring him from office.  So, almost immediately, there was a kerfuffle in the press and social media about whether or not Democrats (who, by virtue of their hard-won Senate majority, controlled the trial this time) should have called witnesses.  That angst obviously has it roots in the response to the first Trump trial, when Republicans were in charge and went out of their way, with the help of Chief Justice John Roberts, to bury the mountains of evidence that House Democrats had unearthed.  I get it, up to a point.

And then, I think about the fact that a witness statement from a House Republican was entered into the written and spoken record.  The fact that, instead of a lone vote to convict from Mitt Romney, his vote was one of seven Senate Republicans to convict, on top of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach.  There is the reality that the 43 other Republican Senators, as much victims of the insurrection Trump instigated as anyone, weren't going to be moved by anything short of a written confession Trump was never going to give.  

And, almost unbelievably, there was the speech given by Mitch McCONnell, in which he speciously tried to justify his vote to acquit on procedural grounds (of his creation, no less) and otherwise done what he should have done years ago:  throw Trump under the bus.  That speech could have been given by any one of the House managers at the trial; in one form or another, it essentially was.  Better late than never to the party, I guess.  All the more so, given the fact that his speech will make Lindsey Graham's efforts to derail the confirmation of Merrick Garland as Biden's Attorney General a lot harder.  To say nothing of any efforts Graham might make to derail any investigations and prosecutions Garland may launch in connection with the insurrection.

On top of that, there are the polls, which by decisive majorities support both the fact of the trial and the goal of convicting Trump.  And the multiple investigations against Trump and his cronies in New York, the District of Columbia, and Georgia.  And (yes, there's more) the prospect of using the Fourteenth Amendment to bar Trump from ever again serving in public office.

And there's the whole matter of focusing on an Administration to staff.  A government that Trump turned into his own personal swamp, one that needs to be drained as quickly as possible.  A pandemic to end.  A policing crisis to end.  An economic depression to end.  And a planet on fire.  And, to address all of that, a filibuster rule to repeal, a goal toward which we may have been pushed at least a little bit further by the ranting and raving of Joni Ernst over the Democrat wish to have witnesses at the trial.  If that doesn't due it, perhaps the fact the the Republican Party is now a playground run by delinquents will.

To borrow a phrase, do you get it now?

If you've been spending a lot of time sitting on the sidelines, not wanting to get your hands dirty with compromise, well, you no longer have the luxury of keeping your fingernails clean and polished.  Your by-standing days are over.  All of our by-standing days are over.

And, if it's any consolation, I've got the same message for Democrats in Congress, and Democrats in Washington generally.  Their by-standing days are over, too.

I've got some questions for them.

Do the Democrats in Congress understand that the violence of January 6 happens to people in the United States every day?

In one form or another?  Did it have to become that personal for them to show the kind of toughness and steely-eyed resolve that they should hitherto been showing the Republicans, the American people, and the entire world every day?

Do they even understand what it means to engage in "public service"?  Perhaps the police officer who was killed could have explained it to them.  Perhaps his sacrifice could explain it to them now.

They say that a conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.  Well, we've all been mugged by reality now.  Serving the public isn't about being in the headlines while lining your pockets.  Serving the public is about serving all of us, no matter what it takes.  And, if the worst thing is losing your job, so be it.  I've lost any number of jobs, but I've never been tempted to keep one by selling my soul.  And if you hold a public office, and keeping your job is more important than keeping faith with the American people, you don't deserve to keep your job.  Period.

The trial will be over.  The fight will go on.  What happened on January 6 was not a one-off; for most of the people who attached the Capital, it was a kind of dry run.  Those people are still out there.  If anything, they're multiplying in great numbers.  If you're an elected Democrat official, in Washington and elsewhere, and you don't do everything you can to make sure you and the people you are responsible for are ready, get the hell out of the way and make way for someone who is.   We need more AOC's, and fewer chickenshits like Marjorie Taylor Greene who is at best a publicity hound and a terrorist at worst—but who will never be anyone's idea of a public servant.

Regarding buried soldiers, Trump wanted to know what was in it for them.  What was in it for them was their country.  Trump will never understand that because he stands for nothing but himself.  If our political class is nothing more than a cabal of Trumps, no one  needs to take us prisoners; we're already dead.

Congress needs to do better.  All of us need to do better.  Putting others first usually hurts.  It's always worth it.  For those who care about being a Christian, that shouldn't be hard.  Don't tell me what you believe.  Show me.

Okay.  Both sides have gotten an earful from me.  Or, rather, a screenfull from me.

No more bystanding.  Get out there and stay out there.  I'll be there, no matter what.