Archive
Creating Courageous and Robust Strategies, Part I: “Indivisible on Offense” and Galvanizing the Democratic Party in the Current Climate of Political Violence
First part of two-part article: 'Indivisible on Offense' and Galvanizing the Democratic Party in the Current Climate of Political Violence"
It is a response to the publication of Indivisible.org's new battle plan, "Indivisible on Offense: A Practical Guide to the New Democratic House."
Part 2 (due out next Monday): "Countering Acts of Political Violence & Domestic Terrorism"
"Today, in light of the electoral Blue Wave that caught most observers by surprise, and the release last week by Indivisible.org of its new activist guide (Indivisible on Offense: A Practical Guide to the New Democratic House), I want to offer several ideas about not only how to anticipate and counter political violence but also how over the next two years Democrats — and liberals and progressives generally — should confront Republican acts of intimidation.
"I want to argue that confronting the aggressive tactics of such remorseless opponents will require a transformation of the Democratic Party in terms of its self-image, public postures, and overall approach to political conflict in governmental institutions and the public media. As a Hungarian colleague, who has watched apprehensively as the U.S. has edged closer to the kind of legal authoritarianism or illiberal democracy already in place in his home country, put it, thanks to the Blue Wave, 'Democracy in America is now back on life support.'
"But absent changes in Democratic politics and a strategy for countering political intimidation and violence, the best efforts of Indivisible and other new activist organizations to “pave the way to the post-Trump era” (Indivisible on Offense, p. 2) may well founder."
We’ve Been Here Before: Political Violence’s Transformative Power
Author’s Note: Just as I was finishing this essay, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh occurred, one of the most violent anti-Semitic acts in modern American history.
In Plain Sight
As federal and local law enforcement agencies pursue their investigation of the multiple pipe-bombing attempts targeting Democratic politicians and Donald Trump’s critics, the horror of this act of domestic political terrorism shouldn’t make us forget that we have been here before and that the current crisis is one in a long series of threats and actual acts of physical violence going back many years. Politicians, the mainstream news outlets, and pundits are struggling to come to grips with the gravity of the situation and the necessity of developing concrete counterstrategies but the evidence that this exact scenario was in the offing has been in plain sight for some time.
References have begun to crop up in social media to the over 40 bombings of abortion clinics in the U.S. as well as to deadly LGBTQT bashings but apparently absent from public memory is the call to armed insurrection issued by Fox News host Glenn Beck and CNN’s Lou Dobbs right after Barack Obama’s January 2009 inauguration, for which they paid no penalty.