Any sensible person would be hesitant to write the following sentence: In our system of government, it is now left to the Democratic Party and its allies, temporary or permanent, to save the American experiment. Republican lawmakers in Washington, by aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s incompetency and criminality, have assured that the vilest person ever to occupy the White House has also become history’s most powerful chief executive – utterly unfettered by the American government’s system of checks and balances.
Heroic whistleblowers, prosecutors, FBI agents, judges, jurors and journalists may highlight Donald Trump’s singular cascade of anti-democratic transgressions, but only an election will remove him from office. And only removing Trump from office will save our character and form of government.
That’s been made harder to deny as the nation struggles through a pandemic with a president who, even his supporters must concede, is a compulsive liar. Does the fawning Mike Pence believe what Trump says? Would Pence follow Trump’s advice for his own family? Death is the growing cost of Republican submission. Embracing Trump is a suicide pact. As James Carville puts it: “the only thing standing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party.”
I’m not a Biden guy. I never have been. But with stunning speed, Democrats have spoken. Oddly, they’ve done so without any remarkable performance or interjection from Biden himself. He campaigns roughly the same as he did three or four weeks ago when he was placing in the dungeon. Congressman James Clyburn, and then South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri and Michigan Democrats spoke for him. I’m guessing they spoke, sensibly, more of Trump (and perhaps of Sanders) than they did of Biden. But they spoke powerfully nonetheless.
They said, without equivocation, that Biden’s the one. He’s not Obama. God knows they wish he was. But he’s sort of like Obama’s trusted uncle. He brings little of the skill or the inspiration or the excitement, but he’s part of the family, a beloved, even if loose-tongued, elder of the tribe. And we’re going with him, they declared. Anything else would be too risky. Too perilous for such times. Even if the pols and pundits don’t see it, we do. We’re focused like a laser on the task before us. We’re required to save our country. And, by God, we’re going to do it.
I’m become convinced.
It is strange to think of so crucial a mission falling on brother Biden. He hardly reminds one of Lincoln. But, of course, Lincoln hardly seemed like Lincoln at the outset. And there’s something righteous about it as well. Because it’s not Biden really. It’s not like we brought in a ringer to show us the way. It’s us. The regular folks, with arms locked, doing it for ourselves. Marching forward to secure our children’s future. Saying to the professionals – “all right, if you won’t deal with this nightmare, we will.” We’re not willing to surrender what it means to be America. We’re not willing to endanger our kids or our parents. Even if you are. And we’re certainly not willing to submit to a madman. That’s hardly the legacy of our forebears.
So the battle lines are definitively drawn. Struggle, uphill struggle, or cowardly submission. Regardless of where one appeared at the beginning of the dance, it’s time for all hands on to be on deck. Today. The fight can’t wait ‘til October. The Democrats, with Biden at the helm, are now our only hope. It’s important to act like we understand that.
Gene Nichol is Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and founded the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund in 2015.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2020
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