Steve Innskeep’s column in the New York Times on Thursday is resonant of the piece I wrote on Wednesday on the conservative movement being identity politics for white people, but it comes with an additional warning. Innskeep recently wrote a book on John C. Frémont, the Republican Party’s 1856 candidate for president. In his article, he warns that the country is in much the same place today as it was then.
Progressives — and Republicans then were the more progressive party — confidently expected that population changes would help them win without having to compromise with conservatives. Conservatives — who then were proslavery Democrats — vowed to wreck the system if they could not reinforce it against the change they dreaded.
Fear prevailed over demographics in 1856. A Democrat won the election: James Buchanan, a Northerner strongly tied to Southern interests…
…Republicans persisted through another election, trying again in 1860 to win the presidency with Northern votes alone. This time their demographic gamble succeeded as their nominee, Abraham Lincoln, prevailed against divided opposition. Southerners followed through on their threat to destroy the system, firing the first shot of the Civil War in 1861.
Looking at the similarities, Innskeep says:
What are lessons for 2020? Expect a terrifying year. What drives Americans to extremes is not losing an election but the fear of losing for all time.
The mistake conservatives are making is thinking that they can thwart the natural movement of history by putting their finger in a dam. The mistake progressives may be making is in thinking that they can win this battle simply by waiting the conservatives out and getting the demographic electoral victory everyone knows is coming.
For now, the conservatives are “wrecking the system” in myriad ways, including changing congressional rules, extreme gerrymandering, aggressive disenfranchisement efforts, disempowering the Federal Election Commission and campaign finance laws, stacking the courts, and seeking foreign assistance. They’ve even attacked democracy within their own party by preventing challengers to Trump from appearing on ballots in their primaries or even eliminating primaries and caucuses entirely.
Kansas, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada have all canceled their Republican primaries/caucuses in order to throw their support fully behind President Donald Trump, citing the arguably unnecessary costs a primary election would entail when nearly 90% of the party approves of his presidency.
“With no legitimate primary challenger and President Trump’s record of results, the decision was made to save South Carolina taxpayers over $1.2 million and forgo an unnecessary primary,” said South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick in a statement announcing his party’s decision.
In Trump, the conservatives have their “Northerner strongly tied to Southern interests,” and they’re not interested in having anyone from within threaten his renomination.
But there is still something missing in this comparison between the elections of 1856 and 2020, right? After all, the progressives aren’t trying to abolish slavery. They’re not trying to add new states to the Union that will give them some decisive political advantage. So, what exactly are the conservatives so panicked about that they’ll blow everything up rather than accept the risk of defeat?
In reality, it’s the same thing most white Southerners were freaking out about in the 1850’s. The average white Southerner didn’t own any slaves and wasn’t exactly advantaged by having to compete with free labor. But they were afraid of what blacks would do to whites if they came to power, and they didn’t want to lose their privileged racial position under the law.
It’s not slavery that is driving conservatives now but fear of demographic change and the loss of power and privilege. In the 19th Century, they did not accept electoral defeat and chose civil war instead. In the 21st Century, their first line of defense is to rig the elections by any means available, but if that fails in 2020, they will have grave difficulties accepting the outcome.
We’ve already seen that they will defend the president against charges of seeking foreign interference. How much further will they go to prevent “losing for all time.”
I am afraid you are wrong that Democrats are not currently trying to abolish slavery. We are: both the wage slavery that goes under the name of Inequality, and racial and ethnic slavery in the form of virulent racism and suppression of minority voters. Moreover, American democracy cannot thrive unless important changes are made to equal representation in the Senate and the Electoral College. The stakes today are just as large today as they were in 1856 or 1860. Unfortunately, the potential for violence threatens to become as large.
Well, just take a look at a few things like the number of NICS background checks for gun sales, the explosion of ammunition sales, and the wave of efforts in states to create 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries as quickly as possible. I think that is pretty indicative of how the most hard core of them view the future, and how they plan to deal with it. I don’t think there is a very good chance that this genie is going to be put back in the bottle, and there are going to be some very severe situations in some parts of the country. I am not shitting you, I have some in my family who are literally readying themselves for armed conflict and civil war.
1856 is more analogous to 2016, perhaps. In 1856, Buchanan got 45.3% of the vote, Fremont got 33.1% and Fillmore – on the American or No Nothing ticket – won 21.5%.
So, if we’re drawing a lesson from 1856, perhaps it’s that we need to win over Stein and Johnson voters? The latter – Libertarian leaning voters – might actually be possibly in 2020. But it’s unlikely that Sanders or even Warren can capture their votes.
In the end, Lincoln won because the North changed in those four years, most notably because of Dred Scott in 1857. He only won 40% of the popular vote, but that was enough to win the northern states. Those demographics DID work for him, once Dred Scott changed enough minds in the North.
There seem to be two questions here: how far will the forces of reaction go to maintain their current democratically illegitimate hold on national power, and what precisely is “conservatism” fighting for?
The first question you have basically answered: “conservatives” will undertake every dirty trick they can implement to election-and-electorate rigging and manipulation, together with an inconceivable tsunami of lies on social media—because that is what the degraded electorate spends most of its waking time glued to, including while at “work”. We have seen the current “conservative” election manipulation model in the recent elections in GA and FL, those mechanisms will be the Repub vision in every state where they hold power. The phalanx of Trump judges on the US courts of appeal will ensure that the right to vote is infringed and they will not step in to protect voters or “democracy”, because they themselves are committed soldiers of the Army of Reaction—that’s how they got the job! So the courts will provide no succor.
The hapless Dems will continue to both act and speak as though the failed “system” still possesses some integrity and vitality. They cannot be made to apprehend the truth, but to be fair, neither can 80% of the citizenry.
Naturally foreign powers that are delighted to see the collapse of the US political system (such as Putin) will continue to aid the National Trumpalist movement, this time with the use of “deep fakes”, manufactured videos which cannot be debunked. The Repub party, led by the Gravedigger of Democracy McConnell, has made crystal clear that they endorse and welcome this foreign interference. Of course, Trumper himself will issue phony deep fakes, too. The befuddled electorate will not have the slightest grasp of the “truth” or “reality”, and never will again. Finally, we have seen in the past week that Der Trumper will use the US military to aid his domestic political position, and no one in the Pentagon will lift a finger to stop him. The Soleimani assassination proves this.
The second question–what they are fighting “for”– is somewhat less clear. The plutocrats funding the “conservative” (now National Trumpalist) movement are obviously fighting to keep the non-existent tax rates non-existent, to keep the federal government paralyzed and to have the legal foundation of government regulation of business and the environment declared unconstitutional. They are fighting for their toys, mansions, mistresses, and luxury lifestyles–the planet and future be damned. But the rich have always been a pathetic, loathsome and ultimately empty class.
As for the ordinary white imbeciles that provide 98% of the votes for Repubs, it would be amusing to hear what they think they are fighting for. White Evangelicals would likely say they are fighting for The Lambs, and (now) for their supposedly threatened freedom of religion (i.e. freedom to discriminate). They are fighting for the courts and the Supreme Court, a battle they have already won.
With the advent of National Trumpalism, many whites now feel free to say they are fighting to “save” the “traditional” America. Keep power exclusively in white hands, while acting as though the nation is still some sort of “democracy”. They likely would have a devil of time explaining what the actual problem would be if whites were no longer the absolutely dominant racial group in the country, especially since they (somewhat hilariously) tend to agree with Dem policy positions. Of course, many would still shy away from openly admitting they don’t like to see blacks and Latinos in positions of power (or even on the street). Aside from the many gun nuts (who are already two steps away from clinical paranoia), what today’s ordinary white Repub would say they are fighting for would be especially vague, just as it sounds now when the mic is put in front of their faces. They are motivated entirely by emotion, that is their personality type whether they admit it or not. Ultimately, they “know” (because the coaches of Team Conservative have told them) that Government By Dem is morally illegitimate and must be stopped at all cost.
2020 likely will be the one the worst years the country has experienced. outside of the years of our great wars and the Great Depression. It will be difficult emotionally, financially and physically to dislodge an American fascist movement from power. So winning will come at a high cost, and will certainly kick off years of simmering domestic white (gun) terrorism. Losing in 2020 means that an American fascist movement will have succeeded, and will herald the permanent end of the Old Republic. What will come in its place is unclear, and that will be the time that significant numbers of people who have the means to flee National Trumpalist America will do so—just like the Jewish diaspora after Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany.
I don’t believe there is any undemocratic action the GOP wouldn’t undertake to maintain power. They’ve already refused to pass laws to protect the election in 2020 against known Russian activity. As Mueller and others in our own intel agencies have said from time to time, the Russians are, as we speak, actively engaged in undermining the integrity of our election systems and processes. Actively. And yet, McConnell refuses to allow consideration of any bills that would address this activity. That is because he knows the result of this activity will exclusively benefit the GOP, just as it did in 2016. If the situation were such that say, France, Germany or Canada were actively seeking to goose the 2020 election to sink Trump, McConnell not only would have passed bill after bill to protect the election, he’d be publicly blaming democrats for it as well.
Its not just a risk for Trump, but others in the GOP know that if the democrats take the white house at least, or gain complete control of the elective branches of government, they are at risk of exposure to criminal liability for their actions where the statute of limitations has not expired, when the DOJ again becomes a functioning, professional entity and not a partisan tool of the GOP. Not only many in Trump’s administration, but also elected republican officials and particularly Trump family members are at risk of criminal prosecution.
There’s also the general fear among Trump’s supporters, for whom the maintenance of white supremacy is THE reason they support an obviously incompetent and failed president. Obama’s presidency scared the hell out of them, at least in their fevered, bigoted minds, apparently giving them a portent of what was to come. Their consuming, innate fear is, “they will do to us what we’ve done to them” so they will fight at all costs to prevent that from happening by allowing “those people” control of government, again. That’s the reason for all the civil war talk, buying guns and threatening to surround the white house to prevent Trump’s physical removal in the event he is convicted in a senate trial. But know that when Trump loses in 2020, and I am willing to bet he will, Trump will gin up his most rabid supporters to believe the election was “stolen” from them, and urge them to take the streets with their guns. I don’t believe the country as a whole would allow it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a coup on some non-violent levels were attempted in this event to justify Trump remaining in the white house past Jan 2021.
These people are desperate, and even though they “won” in 2016 this is why they are still mad because they don’t have the comfort or security of knowing their power is permanently entrenched. This is why they all are thrilled by the appointment of all these non-qualified, right wing nut “judges” because this goes a long way towards permanently entrenching them in power. This is why they all, from McConnell to the lowliest, brain-dead knuckle dragger on the street will point to the appointment of wingnut judges as Trump’s biggest achievement. Permanent power, at all costs, is the goal.