Red Dog vs. Red Fog vs. Blue Bog vs. Purple Haze: Where do we go now, Never Trumpers?

As a Bulwark+ subscriber, I have access to the publication's weekly Thursday Night live stream. It's essentially a Zoom meeting typically featuring some combination of Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Mona Charon, Sara Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan Last, and Amanda Carpenter discussing the week's political news from a center-right, Never Trump perspective.

I wish I could link to last night's video on YouTube because the show was a helpful one. It clarified some things which were ambiguous to me before. As I've mentioned previously, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, and others at The Bulwark have seemed lately to embrace the notion of Never Trumpers becoming what Tim calls "Red Dog Democrats." 

 But maybe not. Tim maintains that as a practical matter, we're all "Red Dogs" already. Bill Kristol apparently only favors cooperation with the Democrats, a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. And Charlie Sykes came right out and said last night that he, for one, was not going to become a Democrat and felt no inclination to do so; he was reveling too much in the freedom of having escaped from one "tribe" to join a new one any time soon.

I'm glad that they cleared the air.

Kristol and the others seem to be addressing the question of whether we should go beyond merely "calling balls and strikes" and become active and committed allies of Joe Biden and the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, at least temporarily. After all, America is facing a historic crisis. The Trumpified Republican Party has become an active threat to the Constitution and democracy. It has attempted to overturn a fair and free election and has even attempted a coup! The danger posed by Trump and his supporters to our democracy, they maintain, is grave enough to override policy differences with President Biden and make a kind of "popular front" necessary.

Well, yeah. I absolutely concur. In fact, I thought we were President Biden's allies already! After all, I joined most Never Trumpers in voting for him! Nor do I completely dismiss the "Red Dog" idea. I'm just skeptical about how welcome we'd be in the Democratic Party and how open it would be, for example, to our suggestion that it be friendlier to freedom of religion while still upholding the principle of non-discrimination. And I believe that eventually, there is going to have to be a major center-right party again. The GOP will never resume that role, and a healthy democracy sort of requires such a party. And a two-party system certainly requires two credible parties; at the moment, the Democratic Party is the only one we have.

Seth Hill has an excellent article on that subject in the public portion of this morning's Bulwark. He has some useful insights from the experience of the last successful "third party" in America, the Republicans. The GOP, he observed, didn't form overnight. Instead, it waited until an aggregation of abolitionists, former Democrats, and former Whigs had developed regional working relationships and only then united as a national party prepared to pick up the Whigs' fallen mantle. He documents that process through a table showing the House of Representatives' makeup in the years leading up to Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 and even after that.

The "Americans" listed in the table above were members of the nativist American Party, also known as the  "Know-Nothings." They were a bigoted white, Protestant, anti-immigrant bunch that might be seen as the Trump movement of its day,

The lesson seems to me to be clear, and it's precisely what Bill Kristol has been arguing; I only wish that it had been distinguished from the "lets-all-run-out-and-join-the-Democrats" option sooner and more clearly. It will take time for a new party to develop,  and the process can't be forced or rushed. In the meantime, we'll have to improvise. Charlie Sykes articulated the point well last night, and Sarah, JVL, and the others agreed: some of us will choose to remain independents; Charlie made it clear that he would go that route, and Sarah seemed to agree. Others- perhaps Tim- will formally become "Red Dogs." The important thing is to replicate the pattern that led up to the formation of the Republican Party: an issue-oriented coalition of generally like-minded Americans (namely, centrist Republicans, Democrats, and Independents opposed to authoritarianism, racism, Nativism, "Christian Nationalism," and the other -isms embodied by the Trumpist movement) that puts country ahead of the party and the Constitution above our disagreements over policy. A joint legislative program should be part of this. This might help everybody. We might convince the Democrats to re-write the HR 1 election reform act in such a way as to actually get it passed. A more focused bill- what Amanda Carpenter called a "skinny" version last night- would have a far better chance of attracting Republican support.

Maybe some version of the Equality Act might be forged that isn't a blatant attack on freedom of religion and actually tries to distinguish between discrimination against others and the freedom to conduct one's own life in harmony with the teachings of one's own faith. There could be no question that there are Republicans in the Senate who cannot support the current version of the bill but might be persuadable if it didn't go out of its way to antagonize them.

 If we can influence the more partisan Democrats to follow President Biden's lead and be more inclined to seek support across the aisle, that in itself would be a good thing. And the conditions necessary for the formation of a new party would have time to develop. I'm glad the people at The Bulwark clarified their point. To me, what they suggest is a no-brainer. An uncomfortably large percentage of the American people remain in thrall to a lying demagogue, believing any ridiculous thing he tells them while dismissing any evidence that doesn't reinforce their not-particularly American prejudices. Trumpism is cancer in the body politic and potentially fatal to our freedom. It's the greatest threat to our system of government since at least the Civil War. We have no ethical or patriotic alternative but to work with Joe Biden.

But not everybody sees the danger. That's why those of us who do can't afford to remain aloof from the struggle to save the things about America we agree about despite our differences. I continue to see a third party as both inevitable and necessary. But not right now.

Some of us will become "Red Dog Democrats." Some will choose to remain politically homeless or even continue what I believe to be a hopeless struggle to somehow save a Republican Party that doesn't want to be saved. But a centrist president like Joe Biden needs and deserves our support. We should rally and get behind a legislative program that serves the democratic American values we agree on and frustrates the un-American agenda of Donald Trump and his cult. 

Again, it's a no-brainer. Parties and labels don't matter right now. The Constitution matters a great deal. So does democracy. So do the values of tolerance and charity. And the stakes are simply too high for us not to unite behind President Biden and work with him. That does not mean that we shouldn't differ from him on matters on which our consciences demand it. Nor does it mean that we shouldn't criticize the ideological top-heaviness and overreach of HR 1 in its present form or the anti-religious prejudice that ruins the Equality Act as currently written. But it does mean that we need to work together with him to prevent the Trumpists from disenfranchising people in large numbers and the authoritarians from denying gay, lesbian, and transgender people the rights the Constitution guarantees them.