20

Thursday, January 21, 2021, 8:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

“No, I never vote,” the journalist Kathleen Kiersay insisted to the special guests of honor at the Washington Graduate School of Politics and International Affairs panel discussion.

The topic for this evening was “What Happened? How Did It Happen? What’s Next? The Election, the President, and the Parties.” Kathleen’s statement had come during a discussion of the role and responsibility of the media in the current political environment that had suddenly and unexpectedly made her a target. She hated being suddenly challenged when she was supposed to be chairing the session.

She looked across the stage at the others, all seated facing her on an angle in the front of the university auditorium, to gauge reactions. They were not long in coming.

A titter went through the sparse, socially-distanced, masked audience at her answer. Two members of the panel scoffed.

“We can look that up, Red,” Ban Wilson said.

“Be my guest,” Kathleen said.

“And you seriously expect us to believe that you have no opinions about the major issues of the day? Which presidential candidate should be elected? Who’s a nasty person? Who’s a sweetheart?” Ban said, sneeringly.

“I feel a bit sick,” Jim Hasselblad, journalism professor, said. The other three people on the panel seemed to edge away from him.

“I feel a little ill, because I have to side with Ban on this one,” Jim finished.

“Maybe I feel a little ill,” Ban said.

“I hope you do,” Jim said, grinning. “I think that a journalist without opinions is like an airline pilot who can’t tell the difference between a cloud and a mountain.”

“I think a journalist without opinions is a unicorn,” Wilson said. “And a journalist who says they have no opinions is a liar.”

“You can think whatever you want,” Kathleen said. “I do not vote, and I try not to have opinions on any of the issues that I cover.”

“That’s impossible!” Ban shouted. “You may think you have no opinions, but your opinions are clear on the page.”

“I disagree there,” Jim said. “I think your entire party is a living testament to the truth that human beings are quite able to warp their minds into thinking almost any sort of nonsense.”

Ban grinned at this. Jim continued.

“Where I agree with you is that the New York Record, for instance, definitely has a bias, no matter what Red here says. That bias, however, is definitely in favor of your side.”

“You’re nuts,” Ban snapped.

“Quite possibly,” Jim replied. “But I’m right about this. This insane delusion that she and other reporters have to show no favoritism to any side, when one side has gone completely off the reservation, morality-, sanity-, and extremism-wise, simply guarantees that the more insane side is going to be normalized. The New York Record is the Vossische Zeitung of the twenty-first century. Ban knows what that is, I bet.”

“I do indeed,” Ban said. “That rag showed the essential impotence of liberalism in the face of evil.”

“Once again, I’m gagging a little, because I agree with you – to an extent. The Vossische Zeitung was a liberal newspaper in the 1930s in Berlin. Its reaction to the rise of the National Socialists was to decide to do what Kathleen says she does – pretend that it could simply act as a pass-through for whatever political ideas happen to be popular at any given time. It had been published since 1704. So, they decided, hey, this Hitler guy is goofy, but he is good for our business! Let’s play along, give him a forum! So, they gave him a forum, and they hired some Nazis to write for their paper, and when that didn’t quite do what they so desperately wanted – to become a paper that Nazis would see as on the level and fair – they went ahead and fired some of the Jews who worked for them. And they lived happily ever after! No, I’m sorry, they didn’t. They were shut down by the Nazis in 1934. Because they, like the New York Record – ”

“Jesus Christ,” Ban said. “You’re blowing the shit out of Godwin’s Law here. Now Republicans are Nazis. So you’re saying the President is Hitler?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well thank you.”

“Hitler was intelligent and articulate.”

The audience half-gasped and half giggled at this.

“Well it’s nice to see a liberal come out openly as being in favor of Hitler. So our guy is Hitler. If you were in Berlin in 1933, what would you have done, if you had a clear shot at the guy? Would you have killed him?”

“Hypotheticals.”

“No, seriously. You seem to be saying that our guy is leading us to something evil as a nation.”

“I do. He already has.”

“So, if you had a clear shot at him, you would take it?”

“Now you’re just trying to get me arrested.”

“No, be man enough to answer the question.”

“Boys,” Kathleen said.

“I will say this,” Hasselblad said. “Given the mass disenfranchisement in the election, the blatant use of the virus to terrorize the Democratic voters in swing states out of voting, the refusal to allow mail-in or early voting, and the complete fraudulence of inaugurating a guy who did not even win 270 electoral votes, I would put it to you that what your party has done may be worse than the offenses that brought about the American Revolution.”

“So, you would take a shot at him, or not? It’s a simple question.”

“What good would it do? Make him a martyr? And his vice president is an amoral fake-Christian sanctimonious theocratic fraud.”

“So, seriously, you are saying that the only reasons not to shoot the President are tactical political ones? So, you wouldn’t shoot Hitler in 1933. We got it. You aren’t man enough to back up your opinions with action.”

“To be serious, I don’t know if he’s Hitler. I do think he’s the closest we have ever come to Hitler. I do think that Hitler was more intelligent” – (Ban scoffed again here) – “which made him more dangerous. The sad truth is, the President’s lack of intelligence does act as sort of a limiting factor on the damage he has been able to do. But now that he’s stolen a second term –”

“Only losers talk about stolen elections.”

“Now that he’s back in for four years, there may be no limit to the damage he could do.”

“And yet you would not take action against him.”

“How?” Jim asked. “Your side has all the guns.”

“Can we hear from one of the other panelists here, and get back to the questions at hand?” Kathleen said. “Which are, namely, how did Democrats lose to a President who oversaw both a plague and an economic depression? And what consequences do you see coming out of this? We also have Professor Walter Jacobs, from the school that is hosting us this evening, the Washington Graduate School of Politics and International Affairs. His latest book is Where Fascism Comes From. Dr. Jacobs, where do you think we are headed from here?”

Jacobs leaned forward. “To be honest, I do not know. But so far, we have hit a lot of the mile markers already on the way to fascism.”

“Fascism?” Ban said. “That’s irresponsible.”

“I don’t know if it’s responsible or irresponsible. I just know that, when you compare it to previous situations in which fascism has arisen, Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s, Hungary in the 2010s –”

“Hungary’s not fascist. I know those people.”

Jacobs shrugged. “Yes, you do. You have worked with them and see them as part of your ‘alliance.’ And I have identified some parallels between Hungary and what’s going on here. They call their version ‘soft fascism.’ Hungarians have locked in a system where one party, Fidesz, can preserve power indefinitely, even as a minority. They’ve gerrymandered their legislative districts. They’ve enriched themselves from the public coffers. They’ve demonized migrants and minorities. They’ve closed the border and built a wall. They’ve demonized the professional media. They have shut down press outlets that were giving a more or less objective account of political events in their country, and now have an oligopolistic press that might as well be government-controlled. They’ve sabotaged opposition parties. They’ve suppressed voting in opposition strongholds. They’ve used crises to consolidate power. The leader constantly says provably false things, perhaps simply to get the people used to being lied to, and also in order to show his opponents that he can say anything and get away with it, and it only causes his supporters to hate the objective professional press even more when they fact-check him. He also more or less openly advocates violence against the opposition. Sound familiar to anyone?”

“There’s a big difference between being a successful political party and being a fascist one-party state. If you can’t get your way at the ballot box, then boo-hoo,” Ban said.

“But it must be said that, to date – to date – Hungary has gone a little farther than this current administration and our own ‘successful political party.’ They’ve redone their Constitution. As part of that, they expanded their equivalent of the Supreme Court, and stacked it with supporters of the regime. They took gerrymandering even farther than Republicans – or Democrats, though they are far behind in that race to the bottom – have yet dreamed of. For example, Hungary’s rural, conservative districts now contain far fewer voters than the urban liberal districts, which means conservatives are overrepresented. That would not be possible in the U.S. under the current Constitution – it’s why we have a thing called the Census every ten years.”

“So what is the concern, then?” Ban Wilson said. “It can’t happen here.”

“Except that we do have the Senate, which is an automatic gerrymander in favor of the Republicans. Senators representing just 17% of Americans – the 20 lowest- population states – can block all legislation. And we don’t need a constitutional change to pack the Supreme Court. Congress can do that. The Congress has also in the past created new states, specifically to advance the fortunes of the Republican Party. Did you ever wonder why we have two Dakotas? That’s why.

“So, to answer your question, where are we headed? I would say, we have come some way down the road toward fascism. Will we go the rest of the way? Well, as each guardrail of democracy is blown away, it becomes easier and easier to knock the next one down. In fact, it becomes more important for the party in power to press their advantage further and further, because they cannot afford to lose any election, any fight over this process, because the entire process will be imperiled, and the natural demographic change in this country does not favor their side. I would say the Republican Party has decided it is the white Christian party. That is a shrinking percentage of the population. So, their continued success – maybe their survival – depends on ever-more extensive suppression of the majority, very reminiscent of the Jim Crow South coming out of Reconstruction.”

“Or we could, I don’t know, continue to convince a majority of Americans to vote for us, as we have done to date,” Ban said.

“Well, the last two elections show that to be false, I’m sorry to say, even with unprecedented voter suppression of your opposition, most blatantly through the sabotage of the USPS to stop mail-in voting, which clearly was more popular with Democratic voters,” Jacobs replied. “As for the future, I would watch what happens with the Census, which has already been foreshortened and delayed. If we find, as has been rumored, that urban concentrations traditionally supportive of Democrats have been systematically undercounted, with the virus used as an excuse to avoid going in and counting every household, that’s another step down this road. If the government goes beyond staff and budget cuts, and goes through with plans to privatize or shut down National Public Radio and PBS News, again as rumored, that’s another step. If it is found that substantial amounts of the massive funds – the trillions – disbursed by the federal government have gone, as rumored, to businesses or interests identified with this President, his family, his company, or his party, that is another step. If the President goes beyond mere rhetoric and we see his political opponents jailed, if the Attorney General continues to abuse his prosecutorial power to intimidate the President’s opposition or anyone who dares to investigate him out of principle, while never prosecuting actual crimes of allies, another step. If we don’t hear at all about any of this, but only because Congressional oversight and the Inspectors General of the executive branch have been prevented from fulfilling their Constitutional and legal time-honored functions, then that may even be worse, because we will have lost our ability as a free people to see what is being done in our name.

“So where are we headed?” Jacobs finished. “I don’t know. But I am not optimistic. I see few rule-of-law guardrails left. If anything, it is worse today than I could have imagined in 2016.”

“All this pants-wetting over a normal political defeat,” Ban Wilson stage-whispered.

Kathleen stepped back in. “We also have Ned Durstine, Democratic strategist –”

“There’s a contradiction in terms,” Ban said.

“Took the words out of my mouth,” Jim said.

“— on our panel tonight. Ned, what do you think caused the Democrats to go down to an historic defeat last November, yet again, to this unlikely President?”

“Well, there were a number of factors that swung the election.

“First off, and in my view the biggest single factor, was that we expected, back in, say, January 2020, that we would have a huge advantage in turnout due to the exceptional motivation provided by this President. Then the virus hit. At first, in, say, Wisconsin, in April, our enthusiasm was able to overwhelm any fear associated with voting in person. That election, we thought, showed that the wave of Democratic anger was going to sweep everything before it. A lot of Democrats who had previously been panicking suddenly relaxed. In fact, that election caused Republicans, in turn, to panic, and to double down on tactics to exploit the virus and scare Democratic voters away from the polls. That factor has been discussed here. 

“Second, there was clearly a sympathy vote for the President because he and the First Lady contracted the virus in October.”

“Or did they?” Jim said in a stage whisper.

“The third big factor in our exit polling was that Democrats were seen to be the party that talked down to people whose lives were falling apart. They were the party of affluent ‘experts,’ who could afford to stay home and do their work on line. That fed into the pre-existing divide between college-educated ‘symbolic analysts’ whose work could be done without leaving the house or touching anyone, and the non-college-educated people who worked in jobs requiring physical presence and face-to-face interaction with other humans.”

Jim Hasselblad broke in again. “That was a huge problem for Democrats. They like to talk about how the Republicans hate and despise minorities or successful women, and that is true, I think, but a lot of affluent Democrats simply despise less-educated people and, say, Southern white people, and they can’t be bothered to conceal it. This virus really accentuated the difference between the people who could stay home and have their groceries delivered to them, and the people working for or running small businesses, who couldn’t. Those affluent Democrats were completely oblivious to the very real problems of those who could not stay home, and who were losing everything, simply because they couldn’t imagine not being able to be ‘responsible’ and stay home. They made it a moral issue, when it was a survival issue for a lot of those folks, who were a much larger group than the mythical ‘White Working Class.’ They had no answer when those voters asked, ‘WHEN can we go back? What is your PLAN?’”

“Stop saying things I agree with,” Ban said. The crowd laughed.

“Fourth, the demonstrations last year against police murders of African-Americans ended up severely harming Democratic electoral prospects. Every election that has taken place after a major instance of civil unrest since the 1960s has seen a huge upswing in white turnout and a win for conservatives. African-Americans were rightly enraged by the killings, and almost certainly dissatisfied with theDemocratic Party’s offered solutions, so their turnout was far below Democrats’ hopes. But their anger also scared many white voters into voting, according to our exit-poll analysis. The net result was favorable to the GOP.”

“It’s like I always say,” Ban said. “Get the Democrats talking about race, and the election is in the bag for our side.” Jim shook his head.

“The final issue,” Ned said, “is that Democrats were perceived to have run on too extreme a platform. In order to win in 2020, Democrats needed to regain their appeal to people who had voted against them in 2016, but who had voted for Okomo in 2012. The President hammered away at how ‘extreme’ the Dem program was, and exit polling showed that that message got through to swing voters. ‘Defund the Police’ was a particularly powerful negative for the white working class.”

“Damn straight,” Ban said.

“Ah,” said Jim. “The mythical White Working Class Swing Voter. The Great White Whale of American politics.”

“Well, how else could you get those votes you lost last time?” Ned said.

“You can’t,” Jim said. “They weren’t voting based on economic interest, they were voting based on culture. Which is code for racism. Which is in turn code for ‘they were always going to vote for the President.’”

“That’s wrong,” Ned said. “How can you call them racist when they voted for Okomo in 2012?”

“They were anti-elitist voters,” Ban Wilson said. “That’s why they stuck with Okomo in 2012. The other guy was even more elitist than Okomo was, which is saying a lot. It’s what you were just saying, Jim. A lot of people don’t like being talked down to.”

“So how would you have run this campaign?” Ned said to Jim.

“Well the biggest mistake by far, I would say,” Jim continued, “and this plays into your discussion about experts and the like, is that you missed an opportunity to go big with your solutions, and to make the sale in all fifty states, without apologies. Republicans stood in the way of any serious effort to spare the American people these dual disasters, medical and economic. How could you miss the obvious opportunity to run – IN FIFTY STATES – as the big government party, in the biggest crisis this country has seen since the Second World War? Democrats have been so defensive for the past fifty years or so about being the big government party. Well, along comes a crisis that puts the lie to the ‘small government conservative’ outlook. It all got completely out of hand because of a lack of big government, and it was being screwed up further by a continuing refusal of Republicans to acknowledge the true scale of the disaster, and their refusal to bail out the median American household and small businesses.

“You know where the sweet spot was? Small business! Those people were the biggest backers of the President, and the biggest haters of the Democrats. For the first time in almost a century, Democrats had a chance to grab them, simply by running on a one-sentence Big Idea: ‘Make People Whole.’ That’s your plan for re-opening, right there. The shutdown could continue, and the ‘experts’ could betolerated, as long as we made everyone whole. No small business goes bankrupt; no one gets evicted; no one loses their home or their rental unit. We always were going to have to bail out big businesses – that’s the dirty little secret; we can’t survive without the big guys. But putting the full faith and credit of the United States behind small business and homeowners and renters – that is a Big Idea that was never tried. Imagine if it had been! Republicans would scoff and say it was impossible. Let ’em! Let ’em try to run against that program! For decades Republicans have been putting the Democrats into double binds, one after another after another. And Democrats kept putting their heads into the noose, over and over and over. Imagine forcing the Republicans to run against doing anything substantive to save American businesses and American workers. It could have been beautiful.

“But instead you went small again. You watched the President and his party lie and cheat and slander you, and bankrupt everyone in the country, and let tens of thousands more die – more than in Vietnam every three months! – and you decided to shackle yourself to ‘common sense.’ God forbid you should propose something that got a bad rating from the Club for Growth or the Heritage Foundation! My goodness, they might not endorse you!

“Your candidate was too nice a guy to choose an enemy. He went for all the votes, all the endorsements, instead of drawing a line and saying, ‘I’m for these people who have been getting the shaft forever, and I am against these people over here who have been shafting them.’ Remember what FDR said in 1936? ‘The rich are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.’ FDR was a real leader in part because he chose his enemies. If you try to go along and get along, no one will ever be passionate about your cause. The current President – well you can’t say he tries to get along with everyone.”

Jim finished his oration with, “Ned, you saw the pie as it was. The times demanded that you think bigger. Imagine a bigger pie. You needed true imagination and genius, a Big Idea. And courage! You needed to really go for it. But the whole party has collapsed for lack of that kind of imagination and courage. And the whole country may follow the Democratic Party down because of that lack of courage and imagination.”

Some of the audience applauded politely.

Kathleen tried to wrest control of the discussion back. “Ban, why do you think the Democrats lost?

“I’ll tell you exactly why the Democrat Party failed,” Ban said. “It’s because the Democrat Party abandoned their historic role as representative of the average American, and decided to become a party of minority grievances.”

“Oh boy,” Jim said. “And you are trying to tell us the Republican Party is the representative of the struggling workers of the U.S.?”

“More than the Democrats,” Wilson shot back. “Let me tell you, you guys –”

“Not my guys,” the journalism professor replied. “I am not a politician. I play it straight.”

“Sure you do,” Wilson said. “Sure you do. Your views on everything just happen to slot right in with the Democrat Party all along the line.”

“When one side has gone completely insane, racist, reality-averse, science- resisting, misogynist…”

“There you go,” Ban snorted. “Gosh, that’s not political at all.”

“…pro-Russian, pro-dark money, vote-suppressing, incompetent at governing…”

“Let it all out,” Ban said. “Let America see how straight you really play it. Did you memorize the DNC platform?”

“Hey, I might spout the RNC Platform, if they ever translated it out of the original Russian.”

“Still with the Russia Hoax.”

“Gentlemen,” Kathleen said.

“I want to get back to your curious idea that you as a journalist are not permitted to hold opinions on affairs of public import, Red,” Jim said.

“I have to suspend my opinions while doing this job of reporting,” Kathleen said. “I have to play it straight.”

“I’d like for you to consider, first, the issue of the death toll from this virus,” Jim said. “You report the official statistics from the administration, which have shown no growth of cases or deaths since the beginning of last fall. They claim it’s because deaths reported by the states and hospitals are misclassified, and the real causes of death have been whatever underlying conditions the patients had when they came in because of the virus.”

“That’s right,” Kathleen said.

“But every respected epidemiologist or expert in this field says that the official numbers have been vastly undercounting the number of deaths due to the virus since it came back in the fall,” Jim said.

“And we report that too,” Kathleen said.

“But do you go out and research these numbers to see who’s right and who’s wrong? Or do you simply say, ‘He said, she said,’ and throw up your hands?”

“We do some research on it.”

“And what does that research reveal?”

“Well,” Kathleen said, “there’s a difference of opinion…”

“You can’t even say it, am I right? You can’t even say the obvious truth, that the outside experts are right, that the government is fudging the numbers to make the Dear Leader look better.”

“That’s not fair…”

“Life isn’t fair. Don’t you realize, when evil people understand that this is the way you’re going to report things, that all they have to do is become so outrageously dishonest that you can’t possibly say that they are being outrageously dishonest, because by the expectations you have set up, merely to report the fact that they are outrageously dishonest will be seen as ‘partisan?’ So their very extremism and evil becomes something you can never report on!”

Kathleen simply shook her head.

“And Kathleen, what you are trying to achieve here, with your mind-emptying total lack of opinions, whether it is achievable inside your head or not, is doomed to failure. Because I hate to break it to you, but the Republican Party is never going to see the New York Record as ‘fair and balanced,’ okay? They don’t want you to be a better, fairer paper. They want you to be a dead paper, like the Vossische Zeitung. They want you to be shut down so they can fill the airwaves with pure right-wing propaganda à la Wolf News. But to the extent you do stick around, you are kind of doing them a double favor. Because even as you legitimize and normalize these extremist, proto-fascist clowns – ”

Ban scoffed loudly at this.

“ – as I say, even as you do them this giant favor of allowing them to lie on your pages with impunity, and of smearing the shit out of their Democratic rivals for offenses that barely register on the Richter scale of scandal, while their side has been a 10.0 cataclysm that has wrecked the United States government and left its remains a stinking, decrepit, corrupt knocking shop, they get to turn on you every time and say that you are biased against them. Look what you did to the Democratic candidates in the last two presidential elections! You were an arm of the President’s re-election campaign! Even after the experience of devoting your entire front page to a completely bogus report of a ‘scandal’ about ‘new emails!’ ‘rocking the campaign’ of the 2016 nominee, even after it was proven that there were no new emails at all, you went ahead and boosted yet another fake ‘scandal’ about her successor nominee – once again, just before the election! Why am I yelling? It’s so obvious why your paper does this time after time. It’s because you were rewarded richly for what you did to drag this country through the mud last time. Your on-line subscriptions – what did they do, triple? Quintuple? Decency and good government just is not a boffo story, is it? Chicanery, having a rodeo clown as President who completely mismanages a pandemic, starves and invades states that didn’t vote for him, and then allowing him to claim complete success on your front page – that will bring you the eyeballs.

“Getting health care for every child in this nation?” Jim continued, on his feet now. “Or handling a virus so well that it’s not a story? Well that’s just borrring. It’s just not good business. So, you let these disgusting reality-TV fascist clowns play you, over and over and over. Hey, it’s profitable! Lay back and enjoy it! Tell everyone you’re going to hypnotize yourself into complete and utter credulousness, and play it ‘straight down the middle,’ and let the bad people just move the goalposts out of the stadium, ratchet the lies up by a thousand percent, and watch the relatively more decent people balk at matching their indecency, and what do you have? A recipe for gigantic profits – and the triumph of indecency. The complete prostitution of everything the Founders stood for. You know what? I take it back. The Vossische Zeitung got shut down after a year or so because they eventually refused to play the Nazis’ game. You guys – you’ll be here in forty years, if the world lasts that long, because you are an essential element of these guys’ strategy. You’re playing along beautifully. Why would they ever need to shut you down, the way they are shutting down NPR?”

Jim had been standing up, pointing directly at Kathleen. Now, as he slowly sat back down, a large portion of the audience stood up and applauded his explosion. He waved it off disgustedly.

“If you guys who are applauding right now had gotten out and voted, I wouldn’t have to say these things,” Jim said.

“Are you done? Can I speak?” Ban said.

“Sure, why not,” Jim said, waving his hand dismissively from his seat. “Knock yourself out.”

“Can I speak?” Kathleen said, in cold anger.

“I yield my time to the lady from New York,” Ban Wilson said magnanimously.

“Notice how happy he is to cede his time to the ‘Fake News,’” Jim said disgustedly.

“Now I have sat here and taken this abuse all night,” Kathleen said. “And that’s fine. But what I want the audience to take note of is how both sides have been bashing me and my paper.”

“Sure,” Jim said. “Both the Nazis and the Jews object to your coverage.”

“Now that is truly uncalled for,” Kathleen said. “Look at what the President is Tooting about us.” She read out a Toot:

–<() The Fake News is not protected by any Constitution! They should be (and will be!) jailed if they mislead Great Americans!

“Ain’t it awful,” Jim said. “You know, Wolf News is a scourge on this land, infecting millions of minds. But if journalism dies in this country, it’s not going to be on them. It’ll be because of this blithering – but very profitable – attitude of total naïveté you have put on, guaranteeing you’re going to play it even between truth and lies. You’ve completely abandoned your sacred Constitutional role, which is to convey a basically accurate big picture view of reality to the minds of the electorate.”

“That is our responsibility? Not the politicians’?”

“Politicians cannot be trusted to do that. That is your job – it’s all of our job, all of us who call ourselves journalists, to convey that accurate view of reality, not simply to act as a pass-through for various fools and knaves and, yes, criminals. And our role is more critical for the republic than it has ever been, because politics has changed. Politicians have been spinners forever. They have always distorted. Democrats still distort. They take a fact, and they either minimize it or exaggerate it, depending on whether it helps or hurts them. But Republicans today have discovered that there’s a more effective way, if they are willing to throw all pretense of honesty and integrity overboard. As most of them have, to one extent or another. And that new tactic is basically to forget about facts altogether, and just make shit up that will appeal to their side or smear the other side. It didn’t start four years ago. It really started with the 2004 election, when they had this problem, which was that their candidate had avoided the Vietnam War, and was running against a genuine war hero, a guy who had steered his boat to shore and jumped off the bow directly into enemy fire, and had pursued the shooter until he had killed him.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ban Wilson muttered.

“Almost,” Jim said. “So, Republicans couldn’t win by merely shading the truth the way they and Democrats had always traditionally done. So, their campaign strategist, who had made his bones in a state Supreme Court election by starting a false whispering campaign that a justice who had dedicated a lot of his life to helping underprivileged children was a pedophile, decided that what they had to do was simply go straight against reality, and just say that this war hero was not only not a war hero, he was a traitor.”

“He was a traitor,” Ban said loudly.

“See how effective it was?” Jim said. “Even this guy, whom Kathleen here has described as a ‘deep intellect’ or something, is still buying or selling that crock of shit. So his guy won, and it was official: honorable service in combat to this nation was a sucker’s game, forevermore. Because if you’re a Democrat, and you go risk your life and bleed or kill for this country, and you come home and dare raise your hand to try to have a say over where this country should go, you will be branded a traitor. And if you’re a Republican, why bother serving in combat? No matter what kind of coward you are, you will be ballyhooed as ‘the military candidate,’ so why serve even then? This noble innovation, just simply saying the opposite of the truth and ramming the lie through to the electorate through carpet-bombing TV ads, is now standard operating procedure for Republicans. It has worked over and over and over. And I lay its success, dear lady, right at the door of your organization, and the rest of the ‘lamestream media.’ Because you are supposed to be in the truth business. And these people” – he pointed again at Ban – “have been at war with the truth for at least 16 years. And what has been your response? In the great war between truth and lies, you have decided to remain neutral. You are Switzerland. You trade with both sides. Why not call the President a liar? That’s what he is. He doesn’t get extra credit for being so psychotic he doesn’t realize he’s lying.”

“Well I can see I’m not going to get a word in edgewise with these mansplainers here,” Kathleen said.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Ban said. “I haven’t said more than a dozen words tonight.”

“I’ll shut up now,” Jim said.

“Thanks,” Ban said. “Can I finally say why I think the Democrats lost?”

Jim held a hand up toward Ban, palm toward himself, as if to invite Ban to talk.

“Thanks. Okay, here’s why Democrats lose. They don’t know how to appeal to regular people anymore because they don’t know any regular people. At least, their candidates don’t. They’re all elitist technocrats, and they despise the people they claim to be for. If you want to know the real attitude of rich liberals toward the poor, watch what happens whenever they are asked to let smelly poor people move into their neighborhoods in San Francisco, say. They rise as one and block it.They’re hypocrites. People can tell if you think they are less than them. They can smell it.”

“But the President thinks they are ‘losers,’” Jim said.

“But they know he’s against the people they really hate, the snooty, better-than- thou liberals. They told everyone that the virus was going to kill 2 million people. Then when the administration started its efforts against the virus, they bashed the hell out of the President – while he kept the number of deaths down to a small fraction of that.”

“So you say,” Jim said. “From what I hear, the administration’s numbers aren’t worth the paper they are never printed on. And the virus is making a big comeback, in case you have not noticed.”

Ban went on. “Another elitist liberal always rooting against America. They are more concerned about illegal immigrants than about their neighbors, or the people who would be their neighbors if they ever let them move in near them,” Ban said. “You said it yourself. Democrats are the educated class now, the elite. They can’t even wrap their minds around the idea that someone might work with their hands, not on a computer, and can’t simply stay home and watch TV and ride out whatever year-long storm the experts have told them they have to ride out. And don’t get me started on the small businesspeople. Democrats simply seem to go out of their way to pour scorn – and taxes, and regulations – on them. I bet even if the Dems had done like Jim said, and tried to court the small businesspeople with bailouts, it might not have worked, because there’s so much stored-up hatred for the Democrats on the part of small business. It’s a cultural disconnect. Hell, even when the President got the virus, he could say it was because he was out working with people, unlike the elitist computer jockey liberals. That resonated.”

“Maybe,” Jim admitted.

“And national pride, patriotism. Liberals seem allergic to that stuff. Take the football players kneeling for the National Anthem. Put aside the merits of the protest for a minute. Everyone’s got a right to protest, blah blah blah. Okay.”

“Really? They do?” Jim said. “News to a lot of people last year. In Lafayette Park, for example. Or Portland.”

Ban ignored this, but turned toward Ned and Jim. “You go ahead and defend the players’ right to protest. Go ahead and run on that. I’ll take the opposite side every time. Because real Americans” – here Jim scoffed – “real Americans hate that shit. Real Americans love the flag. Real Americans get misty over the National Anthem. That, my friend, is a majority position your side cedes to us every time. Every damn time. And we’ll take that every time you give it to us. And it will outweigh all the economic arguments, and the mistakes, and the virus, and tax cuts for rich people and corporations. We’ll win. Because they see you as alien. As long as they do, I think we will win. We’re proud of being Americans. Are you, really? All I hear from you guys is all the stuff we do wrong. All the reasons to be ashamed of America. You know, no normal human being wants to be ashamed of his or her country. Least of all Americans. We aren’t Germans, who killed millions, who maybe should have felt some guilt over their history. We’re the people who beat the Germans.

“We should be proud of that,” Ban continued. “We put men on the moon, for god’s sake. When your entire party is increasingly devoted to this multicultural stuff, increasingly committed to endlessly rehashing how black people and Hispanic people and gay people and now trans people and god knows what will be coming next week, trans space aliens? have been mistreated by the majority white population, and how men are intrinsically evil predators and women are eternal victims and everyone deserves reparations, well how do you expect to win a single white vote?

“And I hate to say it, but white people are still the majority in this country, for now,” Ban said, pointing his finger out toward Jim, “and if you destroy the culture they, or their parents and grandparents, the one we call the greatest generation, created, what are you going to replace it with? Wiccanism?

“That’s what Baby Boomers did to this country,” Ban said, leaning back. “It was an endless war on their parents for the terrible crime of making them clean their room and grow up in a boring crime-free suburb. Oh my god, what could be worse than growing up in Thousand Oaks or Scarsdale or Arlington Heights or Long Island or Walnut Creek? How about virtually everywhere else on earth? So, this Baby Boom generation, of which I am a member, went to war on the culture. It ripped it all down. Because everything orderly or old or sanctified, anything anyone took seriously, well, that was square, man, and had to be burned to the ground. And nothing was put up in its place. No, it was destroy, destroy, destroy. Raze it to the ground! Freedom, license, without responsibility. So we have this culture of the lowest common denominator. No one dresses up anymore…”

This elicited some severe side-eye from Jim as he surveyed Ban’s attire. Wilson’s still-stained tan corduroy jacket was supplemented this evening by also-stained cargo pants and tattered hiking boots. Ban paid no mind.

“…Not even for church, not that anyone goes anymore, not on the coasts, anyway. There is no coherence, no line you can’t cross, nothing worthy of worship, no heaven, no hell, no good you can’t smirk at, no evil you cannot explain and excuse.

“So here we sit,” Ban finished, “listening to music without melody; looking at pictures without meaning; literature without any pretension to art; dramas without morals; politicians who don’t even aspire to anything beyond re-election, affluence, and plausible deniability of responsibility; ‘innovators’ who merely scavenge the inventions of a previous generation for personal profit, and ‘heroes’ – ”

“Heroes fighting bad wars in which their heroism is wasted,” Jim said.

“And there I might agree with you again, which is a large part of the reason why I am no longer employed at the White House. I wanted us out of those wars.”

“Seriously, I think you are conflating a bunch of unrelated stuff. I don’t think we have more wars, or worse ones, than before white culture started melting down. I don’t think Jim Crow makes for better art or music. By that standard Pat Boone is the good old days and the Beatles are the end of civilization. And every prominent young right-winger I’ve ever seen grew up in affluent circumstances, and they seem to be just as full of rage as any hippy. But if you want to really locate the end of American greatness, though, I think it was the adoption of the designated hitter in baseball.”

“Another thing we can agree on. I’m queasy again.”

“I’d like to say just one more thing,” Walter Jacobs said, raising his hand.

“Go ahead,” Kathleen said, happy to cut off Hasselblad and Wilson.

“I think we are all kind of missing the big picture here. It occurs to me that, beyond the partisan battles, or maybe partly because of them, the United States has been in a severe decline ever since the turn of the century, in virtually every measurable way. Think about it. We had just won a war by remote control in Kosovo; our economy had created 22 million jobs; we had achieved a fiscal surplus; we were unchallenged as the technological leader; we were the most admired nation by far, with alliances or friendly relations with almost every advanced country; and we were, at least by today’s standards, united and content as a people.

“Now,” Jacobs continued, “we are terribly divided, and many of us have been thrown into sudden poverty just before retirement. Militarily, we are far more vulnerable than almost anyone here today appreciates. Carrier battle groups are sitting ducks for new Chinese weapons. While Taiwan had just seven fatalities from the virus last spring, we had 120,000. We don’t even expect our government to solve our problems anymore, even as we watch other governments succeed in dealing with the exact same issues. Our alliances are in tatters, and we are hated around the world. And it feels like we all hate each other at home. There are literally hundreds of reports of neighbors attacking each other over political differences that would have barely rated a raised eyebrow thirty years ago. It’s even happening in old folks’ communities in Florida! This has not happened in our history, at least not since the Civil War. Is there any leader out there who has any sort of comprehensive, compelling program to address this profound national crisis? All I saw last fall was ‘I’m not him, vote for me.’ We are headed the way of the Ottomans and the USSR, people. As the Bible says, ‘Without vision, the people perish.’

“And one final point. Look at this stage. Who’s missing? It’s a bunch of affluent white men moderated by an affluent white woman. After the last year of protests, who does the New York Record bring onto a panel to pass judgment on what’s wrong with America? Us.”

The others greeted this with silence, staring forward and down. Kathleen finally broke the pall.

“Would you like the last word, Ned? Any other thoughts about why the Democrats lost, and about the future of the party?”

Ned sat as if puzzled, stroking his chin.

“To be honest, I may have worked my last national campaign, and based on what I’ve seen tonight, that may be a good thing.”

“You’re that demoralized?”

Ned thought for a minute. “I don’t get demoralized. I never was moralized, I guess. I’m a political consultant.”

“They say you advised the Democratic candidate closely, and a lot of people blame you for losing to the President,” Kathleen said.

“I was one of many. I didn’t get my way every time. Ultimately everything is the candidate’s choice, not ours. I’ve never seen a campaign in which the consultants, and the pundits, had such diametrically opposed views on the right strategy, and in which each of them was so completely certain that they were right and the other guys were culpably wrong. At a certain point, you almost have to ask yourself, ‘If I’m going to lose, how would I want to lose?’ Because there was no lead-pipe-cinch strategy for beating this guy. For every one that was proposed, there were hundreds of very intelligent and knowledgeable people who had fifty reasons why it would be the stupidest possible thing to do. ‘Go full-on socialist!’ ‘No, you’ll lose the entire middle of the electorate – do you really want to hand the election to the worst President ever?’ ‘Okay, go for the middle and say to hell with the socialists!’ ‘But the middle has no enthusiasm behind it – do you really want to compromise your principles and lose?’ ‘Run a black person! The African- American vote is the most reliable and important bloc!’ ‘Whoops… all the African-American candidates have already dropped out.’

“And just as we seemed to settle on a candidate, boom, the virus hit, and the campaign got more or less suspended, and then the BLM protests filled the rest of the news hole, and then when the general election campaign came along, it was total chaos. Universal vote-by-mail in Democratic states, where it bought us nothing; but restrictions on vote-by-mail, and mandated in-person voting in Republican-controlled states, including several swing states. Riots at polling places, shutting them down before many Democrats had a chance to vote. Then the President and the First Lady got the virus, and that threw everything for a loop, creating sympathy for this completely unsympathetic man. The overall result was reduced turnout in Democratic areas, apparently uncontrolled but unprovable – and un-investigated – hacking, and the whole thing generally bailing Republicans out right when they looked doomed. And the President succeeded in blaming Democrats for all of the economic devastation. He said ‘I was for opening up.’ And we obviously didn’t have an answer. It was like God pointed his finger at our party and said, ‘You are going to lose no matter what.’ Damnedest thing.”

“So, you feel no personal responsibility for, I don’t know, saving democracy or rule of law?” Jim asked.

Ned considered that for a moment, then said, without a hint of defensiveness, “I don’t think that was my job. There’s got to be somebody way above me for that.”

Walter Jacobs shook his head sadly at this.

“So, what do you think of this presidency? About what might be coming?”

“I think… I think he’s a transitional figure. I think he’s a way-station to something very different. He, or whatever made him, is like a mass-casualty extinction event. The dinosaurs won’t survive this. Only the nimble mammals who can live off the land and who can eat less will make it. We can’t stop him from happening, but we can choose how we handle him. I wouldn’t choose for him to be president, but maybe we can use him as a vehicle to get us to a future we’d rather have.”

“Those dinosaurs needed to be buried in their swamps,” Ban said.

“I think if he’s a transitional figure, it’s a transition to hell on earth,” Jim said, in a low voice.

Ban did not even bother to scoff at this.

“Even in hell, there are local and state elections,” Ned said.

“I think we’ll let that be the last word,” Kathleen said.