Democratic Blindness and Timidity Assist Republican Sedition

By GENE NICHOL

Neo-conservative scholar Robert Kagan published a much-noted essay recently entitled, “Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here.” There Kagan opined: “the US is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three or four years, of instances of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue state enclaves.” Meantime, national Democrats debate the intricacies of Senate etiquette.

Kagan explained “there should be no doubt” that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024; that he and his followers are preparing to ensure victory through “any means necessary,” moving past the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020; and setting the stage, at the least, for mass chaos as lawmakers of both parties claim victory and charge their opponents with vile transgression. There’s no reason to believe existing constitutional safeguards will contain the anarchy that will then ensue.

If Kagan is right, and I think he is, there is a wild discordance in the respective attentions to the upcoming battle. One side gathers troops into formation, while the other hangs out at coffee shops, salons and fundraisers, hoping things aren’t as bad as they seem.

The times call for a Lincoln or a Roosevelt. We don’t have one available. President Biden’s habitual “let’s all get along” misses the severity of the moment’s challenge. There is no common ground to be shared with seditionists. It makes one wish Nancy Pelosi occupied the Oval Office. Or perhaps Stacey Abrams – who has shown necessary skills of hand-to-hand combat on the Republicans’ toughest turf. Maybe in 2024 we’ll finally choose a woman president — to get someone strong enough to do the job. Assuming it’s not, by then, too late.

In state politics, the tenor is different. A little. Phil Berger remains the most powerful political figure in North Carolina. I don’t know Senator Berger. We’re not buddies. Still he’s never struck me as a consummate Trumper. I’ve even assumed he might wish the former president would disappear into the Florida sunset. I can imagine Berger telling Trump, “We don’t need instruction on dominating the political life of North Carolina.” Berger has been demolishing constitutional barriers here for a decade.

But Senator Berger and his colleagues have also shown no signs that they will stand, on the basis of any perceived principle, against the poisonous tide of Trumpism. Perhaps they feel they couldn’t, even if they wanted to. So they prefer to try to ride the wave. And tons of other Tar Heel Republicans clearly are bold enthusiasts in the former president’s big-lie-driven crusade. I don’t doubt they will remain so – whether folks like me readily understand it or not.

But that means it is crucial that all of us – Democrats, Republicans, Independents and otherwise – realize, with clear eyes, what is at stake. The American democracy is flawed. It has seen more of the tragic perhaps, than the inspirational. Its actual story is not much like that painted in civics books. Its brutalities have pressed most cruelly on the most vulnerable. And its joys have often been reserved, despite its homilies and testaments to the contrary, to the perpetually powerful and privileged.

Still, for me, and I’m hoping for the majority of us now, the American experiment is the most important we know. It is time, once again, to contribute a chapter. It won’t do to sit the battle out. Our forebears have the right to expect more of us. So do our children.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2021

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