By Chris Satullo
One week ago, I offered the first half of a package of a dozen tips on how you – yes, little old you – can do something meaningful to help America avoid the MAGApocalypse in 2024 and keep Donald J. Trump far from the Oval Office.
I began that last one by saying: If you’re not petrified, you’re not paying attention.
Somehow, in the last seven days, Trump has managed to make the landscape look even more dire.
Consider:
— His lawyers in the federal criminal case over Stop the Steal told a federal appeals court panel that Trump could order the assassination of an American political rival by a Navy Seals team and be immune from prosecution for the crime – if Congress didn’t bother to impeach and convict him for it first.
— Trump shared on social media a fan-made video that suggested God had anointed him at birth as a savior for the United States.
— Trump, despite being warned repeatedly by the judge in his civil fraud trial in New York not to turn his closing statement into a stream-of-consciousness tirade, proceeded to do precisely that, indulging in a hissy fit that forced the judge to tell his lawyers “control your client.“
— Despite all this evidence that nominating this clearly unhinged person is a faulty plan, the nightly clown show staged by his remaining competitors for the Republican nomination makes it clear that – absent an unlikely intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court – Trump’s name will be on the ballot in November.
So, yeah, we’re probably not going to elude the unpalatable. That realization turns the next 10 months into an all-hands-on-deck proposition. To prevent Trump from putting his hand on a Bible next January and sweating a perjured oath to uphold the Constitution, we’re all going to have to step outside our comfort zones.
You can look at last week’s first six tips in detail here, but, briefly, they were:
1) Renounce Progressive Depressive Syndrome.
In other words, the progressive penchant for describing America as a hopeless hellscape of injustice, inequality, racism and manmade weather disasters, while pooh-poohing Joe Biden’s very real first-term accomplishments. PDS does Trump’s work for him, while fueling the media pile-on vs. Biden. It’s dumb politics, not to mention counterfactual and a genuine cause of depression among young Americans.
2) Do bone up on your history – American and world – and share what you learn
A little more knowledge and perspective about how today really compares to times past is a great antidote to PDS.
3) Do not wish-cast
Except for a sudden death, no event – and no one – is coming to spare us from the choice of Biden vs. Trump. Fantasy is not a useful strategy.
4) Do not throw your vote away
Maybe you don’t like Biden. But if you’d still prefer him to Trump – and how can you not? – understand that if you stay home in protest or toss your vote to a fringe candidate, you are casting a de facto vote for Trump. If the MAGApocalypse sweeps over us, it will be partly your fault.
5) Do be clear: Beating Trump is Jobs 1 through 10; don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
The time to air your quarrels with other segments of the broad coalition that Biden will need to win in November comes after Trump is beaten. Until then, stow it.
6) Do get over your reluctance: Talk politics
No, I don’t claim that chatting with committed MAGA voters will suddenly cause the scales to fall from their eyes. But recognize that Biden will win or lose based on the decisions of three other large groups of voters: 1) progressives who are fixing to make their perfect the enemy of the nation’s good 2) so-called “swing” voters – millions of them – who’ve vacillated from Obama to Trump to Biden over the last two decades and 3) sane Republicans who despise Trump, too, but may not be able to bring themselves to pull the “D” lever. My piece last week gave detail on how to go about having a useful dialogue with members of each group.
Now for the rest of the tips:
7) Do seek out and read the truth-tellers
One classic PDS gloom move is to lament the decline of journalism in traditional outlets like newspapers, claiming “There’s just no good journalists left.” The decline of local journalism is real – and personally very painful to me – but to stop there is to miss the flowering of excellent political-and-issues journalism in online publications and blogs.
I have an ever-growing list of smart, fair, thoughtful, fact-friendly writers whom I rely on each week to help me make sense of politics, legal matters, economics, social trends and global events.
My personal list includes people such as Jonathan Last, Charlie Sykes and Kim Wehle at the Bulwark, David Graham, David Frum and Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic, the wonderful David French of both the New York Times and the Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg, also at the Dispatch, the smart lawyers at the Lawfare blog, Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Matt Yglesias of the Slow Boring blog, Bret Stephens, David Leonhardt and Nick Kristof of the Times, and economics bloggers Noah Smith, Claudia Sahm and Paul Krugman. That partial list leaves out many sound voices you can discover for yourself. With the Internet at your fingertips, few excuses exist for being ill-informed, misinformed or befuddled.
Make sure one person on your list is someone who brings different values to bear on issues you care about passionately, but who does it in a way that leaves you saying, “Hmm, I’ll have to think that over some more.” French and Goldberg have long done that for me.
8) Wield your wallet, wisely
It’s true: American elections hinge too much on money. But can we save the seminar on how to change that until after November? Because if this Election Day goes the wrong way, this may be the last fair election we see in a very long time, if not forever.
I know inflation’s a pain, but it’s time to pony up to save the Republic. Store up whatever pennies you can and spend them on the defense of democracy. Give to candidates who meet two criteria a) They have sworn to defend democracy and the rule of law, no matter how many nasty tweets and disturbing voicemails it brings them and b) They have a chance of winning.
Do not waste any of your precious dollars on candidates who sound good as MSNBC hosts fawn over them but actually trail fatally in the polls. Visit 538.com, the Cook Political Report or Real Clear Politics regularly to track their evidence-based estimates of which races are winnable. Do not waste your money on sure losers.
And reconcile yourself to this: The candidates vital to pro-democracy majorities in the House and Senate are trying to win in purple territory where the crucial swing voters they need to win over see some issues quite differently from you.
9) Quietly let your allies know when they’re full of it – and don’t repeat their dumb slogans out of “solidarity.”
In the wake of the George Floyd murder, I can’t count the number of liberal friends who endorsed “Defund the police” to me, then hastened to explain that the slogan didn’t really mean “defund the police.” Swell, except: The activists who popularized the phrase really did mean that – and in doing so disregarded the vast majority of Blacks in urban neighborhoods who actually want more police (better-trained and -behaved, for sure, but more). I’m convinced that the popularity of this dumb slogan during the summer of 2020 cost Joe Biden the no-doubt blowout victory he’d previously had in sight.
“Abolish ICE” is another one of those overwrought, scare-the-centrists mottos that, when chanted for TV cameras by impractical activists, garners votes for Trump. In this season, please also steer clear of Latinx, the “gender-neutral” terms for Latinos favored by elite academics that is disliked by a vast majority of actual Latinos, and actively hated by some. Wonder why Trump somehow is gaining support inside the ethnic group whom he refers to as “vermin” and “poison”? Unforced errors like Latinx – as well as secular liberals’ habitual mockery of religious values – are part of the reason why.
10) Do read, or reread, On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder
This slim, powerful volume will terrify you, but in a way that will also inspire you to keep fighting the good fight any way that you can manage, all the way to November. Keep it close at hand, as an antidote both to wish-casting and despair.
11) Do schedule some vacation in October and November
But not to book a flight to somewhere sunny where they serve drinks with umbrellas. Your time will be needed here to help get out the vote and protect the vote right where you live.
12) Do vote.
Just once, but with fervor, and in a way that preserves democracy, shames racism and drives the authoritarian virus away from our shores.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia