#NeverTrump

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

I’m a Democrat. Sure, I’m a centrist whose idiosycratic ideology doesn’t fit neatly into either party’s box – and I have many principled conservative friends, whose views I respect greatly – but I’m still solidly a Democrat. I have voted Democratic in every presidential election since I turned 18, and I’m highly likely to do so again this year.

I also believe that Marco Rubio is, by far, the most likely of the Republican candidates to win the general election. And I will, to reiterate, almost certainly vote against him in November.

Yet, last week, I made a $50 donation to Rubio – the largest donation I’ve ever made to a political campaign – and I’ve been trying to persuade my Democratic and liberal friends to do the same. (I’ve succeeded with several of them.)

Why?

Because Donald Trump must not become President of the United States – and indeed, must not even come close. Allowing him to become the nominee of a major party is far too dangerous a risk to take.

I believe Marco Rubio is the only remaining realistic hope to prevent Trump from becoming a major-party nominee for President of the United States, and I feel there is a moral imperative to resist Trump‬. Now. Today. So I’m with Rubio.

This unprecedented moment in American history transcends normal politics. This isn’t some typical us-versus-them debate about this or that policy. Don’t get me wrong: those debates are important. But this is much more important, because this is about the very character of our nation. This is about whether we will let this vile, vulgar hatemonger become a legitimized political leader. And don’t give me this nonsense about how “the other Republicans are just as bad.” If you honestly think that, you aren’t paying attention, and you’re part of the problem. Take off your partisan blinders and wake up to what’s going on here. Donald Trump openly spouts bigotry and misogyny (without even the decency of using a dog whistle!), gleefully advocates unquestioned war crimes (that would make Dick Cheney blush), threatens and intimidates anyone who criticizes him (Constitution be damned!), proposes banning entire religious groups in an indiscriminate fashion, caters directly to white nationalists, and generally presents himself as a wannabe authoritarian strongman who would “make America great again” through brute, quasi-fascistic force.

Trump isn’t a joke. He’s a menace. And he must be stopped.

Imagine, God forbid, there’s a major terrorist attack, or series of them, under President Donald Trump. Does anyone want to argue that internment of Muslim-Americans would be off the table as a policy solution? He’s on record as saying Japanese internment was maybe not such a bad idea. And he has proposed the previously unimaginable step of barring all Muslim immigrants. I’m not predicting Muslim internment would happen, but it’s conceivable under Trump, is it not? So again I say to fellow Democrats and liberals: wake up. Horrible outcomes that would be unimaginable under other Republicans are entirely imaginable under President Trump. This guy isn’t just another bad Republican. He’s way, way worse.

And to principled conservatives who opppose the Trumpian menace, I say: while we may disagree in eight months, today I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, and with Marco Rubio. We must fight Trump, and we must defeat him.

Among the many sane, principled conservatives I know, everyone is repulsed by Trump, but there is a difference of opinion on what to do if he’s the nominee. Some say they’ll never EVER vote for him, no matter what, even if it helps Hillary win. (A few even say they’ll vote for Hillary to stop him.) Others, by contrast, are noncommittal, or say they’d hold their nose and vote for him over Hillary, because they loathe the Dem policy agenda so much. Or, as Hugh Hewitt tweeted: “You must support whomever is the GOP nominee because of SCOTUS. Period. Full stop.” This is essentially the mirror-image argument of the liberal view that we should “root” for Trump to win the nomination because he’s less electable: Yes, Trump is terrible, but stopping him isn’t as important as making sure that OUR TEAM WINS.

Well, I believe the Republicans who say “no Trump, no way, no how” have the better of that internal argument, even accepting arguendo their worldview that Hillary is terrible and they hate the idea of her becoming president. I believe it is the correct approach to say: “You know what? Normal politics matters, and I want my team to win, because I think my team is superior to the other team in deeply important ways. But even so, some things transcend normal politics. The moral imperative of opposing Trump at all costs is one of those things. We will not be led down the ‘lesser of two evils’ rabbit hole into supporting someone who is literally proposing and articulating straightforward, honest-to-goodness evil.”

If I’m going to ask Republicans to put aside their ideological beliefs in favor of the common good of opposing Trump no matter what, I think it’s fair to also ask Democrats to do the same. And in our case, that means opposing Trump now, in the primaries, even though a Rubio nomination increases the chances of a Republican presidency. Because if Trump isn’t so abhorrent that we break out of the normal “my team vs. your team” mentality, is there any point at which we would? And if so, what is that point? What would it take for you to set aside partisan politics (even though partisan politics are really important!) and prioritize doing everything in your power to oppose a monster?

I’m not, of course, suggesting that Trump = Hitler, but just purely as a thought experiment, if it were Rubio vs. Hitler, would you “root” for Hitler because he’s less electable? Surely not, but then where, on the vast expanse between Trump and Hitler, do you draw the line? Personally, I draw the line on the other side of someone who spouts open bigotry, supports barring all members of a particular religion from the country, thinks Japanese internment camps were maybe not such a bad idea, promotes not just waterboarding but more severe forms of torture, thinks we should kill innocent family members of terrorists, wants to “open up” libel laws to intimidate and silence media critics, and on and on.

If you can explain – based on sound logic and facts, not mere assertion that “Rubio’s just as bad” (no, he’s manifestly not! PAY ATTENTION!) – why I’m wrong to draw the line at Trump, and if you can articulate where, between Trump and Hitler, you would draw the line, then fine. Agree to disagree. But you must at least think about this question, or you aren’t doing your job as an informed citizen, and you’re ignoring the unprecedentedly menacing aspects of Trump as a presidential candidate.

Faced with the dire threat of Trump, keeping the presidency in Democratic hands is the secondary goal for the time being. Yes, fellow Democrats, our policy goals are important, and so is the Supreme Court, and so is avoiding a return to Bush-era foreign policy. I agree with all that. But this is a unique circumstance. America has never had a proto-fascist hatemongering demagogue like Trump as president, and it must never have one. America survived Reagan and two Bushes, and it would survive Rubio. But there is no telling what our nation would look like on the other end of a Trump presidency. So while I will stand with you in the fall, fighting for the Democratic policy platform (and I will, very likely, ultimately make a larger than $50 donation to the Democratic nominee), that is not today’s fight. The primary goal today is to stop Trump.

We must not be lulled into the false notion that a Trump nomination would be good for Democrats. First of all, even if Trump loses in November, he will do tremendous damage to our polity in the process. Indeed, he has already done so, moving the Overton window of numerous policy debates such that stances which would have been unimaginable to utter in mainstream political discourse a few short months ago – e.g., ban all Muslims, kill terrorists’ families, etc. – are no longer seen as fringe views. They are now part of the conversation. Imagine how much more damage he can do in eight months with the megaphone of a national campaign, and a party apparatus behind him. Even if he loses the general election, a Trump nomination would mean that our politics will be changed for at least a generation, and mini-Trumps will pop up in future years’ primaries – in both parties – seeking to re-create his demagogic formula. The only way to prevent this is to make sure that he is repudiated now. Not in Novmeber. Now.

Secondly, a Trump-Christie ticket, if that’s where this is going, would be formidable. Yes, Hillary would probably beat them, but it’s by no means a certainty. They would shed many traditional Republican voters, and struggle with typical swing voters, but they would also attract a lot of people who don’t usually vote, from Perot voters (and the children of Perot voters) to white nationalists to, like it or not, some of Bernie’s voters who aren’t attracted so much by his liberalism as by his articulation of being fed up with the process and feeling that the game is rigged. (I personally know people whose top two candidates are Sanders and Trump. This is a real thing.) So Trump ain’t going down to a Goldwater-level landslide defeat, no matter how much we might wish it to be so. He’ll be broadly within striking distance. And then what if there’s a terror attack or an economic shock in the fall? What if Hillary runs an awful campaign, or has a big new scandal? In this day and age, any major-party nominee can potentially win, given the right circumstances – and a Trump-Christie ticket would scramble the map and the demographics in ways that are difficult to predict. No, no, no. Trump must be stopped immediately.

(Even if you think my analysis above is wrong, ask yourself: how confident are you? 90% confident? 95%? Is even a 5 percent chance of a hatemongering proto-fascist authoritarian demagogue bully who disobeys every norm of decency becoming President of the United States acceptable to you? It sure as hell ain’t acceptable to me. To me, it’s the political equivalent of a 5 percent chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth in a few years. I think/hope that, if faced with a go or no-go choice when the odds were 5%, we’d take action to divert such an asteroid, just to be sure. Same deal here. The time to act against the Trumpmageddon is now.)

I therefore urge my fellow Democrats and independents to consider doing what I’ve done – donate to Marco Rubio – or, if your conscience won’t allow that (which I respect), then consider another avenue of active resistance to Trump winning the GOP nomination, whether that’s donating to an anti-Trump SuperPAC (such as Our Principles PAC or the Stop Trump PAC), or calling your Republican friends and respectfully urging them to vote Rubio (especially important: if they’re moderates, urge them NOT to vote Kasich, even if they like him better, because unlike Rubio, Kasich has no realistic path to defeat Trump, and the overriding priority is that Trump must be defeated), or doing whatever else you can. That includes, if you live in an open-primary state, foregoing the Democratic primary to vote for Rubio in the Republican primary instead.

#NeverTrump.

P.S. Quoth Peter Beinart:

In deciding how much to appeal to the public’s most hateful and bloodthirsty desires, most politicians exercise a measure of restraint born in part from a respect for legal norms and individual rights. Trump calls this restraint “political correctness” and flaunts his disdain.

I doubt Trump is the first post-9/11 presidential candidate to realize he could rouse a majority of Americans—or at least a majority of Republicans—by calling for the murder of terrorists’ family members and by giving a full-throated endorsement of torture. But the others stopped short. Other Republican presidential candidates have demonized Muslims, but none ever called for banning every single Muslim from entering the country. Other prominent Republicans subtly questioned President Obama’s Americanism. Trump denied he was born in the United States.

The difference is shame. It’s vaguely possible to imagine another Republican candidate launching the canard about Muslims celebrating 9/11. But only Trump—despite a thousand fact checks proving him wrong—would double down on the claim. Other Republicans have played on the right’s hatred of the mainstream press. But only Trump calls for changing libel laws to make it harder for journalists to write critical stories about him. And only Trump openly threatens the donors who fund efforts to defeat his campaign.

It’s no coincidence that Trump has praised Vladimir Putin. Although Trump probably couldn’t get away with everything the Russian leader has done, a Trump presidency could move the United States in the direction of what Fareed Zakaria calls “illiberal democracy.” Americans would still elect their presidents, but those presidents, once chosen, would face fewer restraints on their power and be free to more severely curtail the rights of targeted groups. Many of those restraints, after all, are a matter of convention. We can’t know how robust they are until someone challenges them. Trump will challenge them in ways Rubio will not.

Also:

Once Trump is nominated, America will have crossed a line.

A man who does not respect constitutional limits and who preys upon vulnerable minorities will lead one of the two major parties. The consequences, though hard to measure, could be profound. A few days ago in Iowa, fans at a high-school basketball game chanted, “Trump,” at the opposing team, which comprised Latino, African American, and Native American players. They wielded the name of the man who could become president as a racial slur. Protesters at Trump’s rallies have been beaten. Last year, in Boston, two men beat a Hispanic man with a metal pipe while yelling, “Trump was right.” Just imagine what might happen if were Trump nominated or, God forbid, elected. In myriad ways, America would become an uglier, scarier place. … A Trump nomination would represent a leap into a terrifying political unknown.

Yes.