Broken eggs cannot be mended

That was Jamelle Bouie’s argument, quoting Lincoln in a recent column: “‘Broken eggs cannot be mended,’ Lincoln observed in a reply to August Belmont, a leading Democratic Party organizer and financier in New York, who had forwarded, to the president, the comments of an angry Louisiana slaveholder who wanted restoration of the Union ‘as it was.’ Not much later, Lincoln repurposed the quip in different form. ‘Broken eggs can never be mended,’ he wrote in reference to the fate of slavery as the war carried on, ‘and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.’ Fort Sumter broke the Union and with it, slavery. Whatever the nation was or would be in the aftermath of the war, neither the nation nor its Constitution would protect, support or sanction human bondage.”

Bouie’s point is that if Democrats secure power in 2026 and then 2028, they need to do more than undo the Toddler’s wreaked havoc. Republicans have been pushing the restoration of white male supremacy and a presidency that’s truly imperial, free of any constraints (unless the president is a Democrat). That gives them a vision of the future, even if it’s an ugly one that reduces America to a third-world banana-republic oligarchy.

The Democrats, Bouie says, are working on plans for 2029 and the ideas are good: “break up utility monopolies, support child-rearing, regulate social media and artificial intelligence, and curtail corporate abuse. But none of this reflects or represents a far-reaching or comprehensive idea of what the nation might be. There is no coherent worldview at work, nor does there seem to be any inkling or awareness of the obstacles — structural, political and institutional — that will confront, and likely stymie, all but the most threadbare and ineffectual Democratic agendas for governing.”

Bouie looks at the Republicans’ radical vision for Reconstruction as a template. Paul Campos says Reconstruction’s ultimate failure should be a warning: “It’s a platitude that the confederacy lost the war but won the peace. That platitude is also largely though not completely accurate. The attempt to roll back that latter victory that continues to be captured however vaguely by the phrase ‘the 1960s’ is a battle that needs to be fought again and again. America is now a white supremacist plutocracy; it has been and can be something else. That the latter sentence gives the entire Democratic consultant class a heart attack doesn’t make it less true.”

I don’t think that means concrete proposals like “curtail corporate abuse” are bad — specific plans for improving things, along with a grand vision, matter a lot. People who may not be into grand visions may still support programs that make their lives better. And definitely being against the Toddler, Republicans and the Heritage Foundation is good: show what they’re advocating and supporting, call them out and support the opposite. As Masha Gessen says of Orban’s defeat in Hungary, “previous opposition politicians had described Orban’s regime as “corrupt,” a relatively mild term suggesting some aberration from the government’s intended function. Peter Magyar made no such accommodation. Borrowing a term coined by Balint Magyar, he has called it a mafia state — a fundamentally criminal enterprise. Third lesson: Don’t mince words.”

I agree with Bouie, structural reform is a necessity: blocking the Supreme Court’s increasing support for white supremacy and its double-standard regarding Democratic and Republican policies, for instance (if you think the Toddler’s immunity from prosecution for “official acts” will apply to a Democrat — well, the Supreme Court will be amazingly flexible in defining “official”). The often proposed idea of adding Puerto Rico and DC as states would be good. There are other problems which will be tougher. As Campos points out, rural, sparsely populated Red states exert influence all out of proportion to their population because they still get two senators. I have no idea how we deal with that; I’ve not heard anyone who does.

I doubt there’s any reform that can neutralize the anti-democratic forces for good but if it takes them, say, 30 years to regain their current clout, that’s 30 years we can be thinking up further moves. As Bouie says, however, the opposition to radical positive change is huge. I don’t see having a vision will change that.

As far as a grand vision, here’s one: full equality for all: women, LGBTQ people, POC, non-binary, the disabled. immigrants and anyone else I’ve forgotten to list. Which will require an active commitment to change society and make it more equal; the Roberts Court’s position that they oppose any action to fight racism because anti-racism is racist is bullshit. Before the children of slaveowners and the children of slaves sit down together, we have to work to level the playing field they’re sitting on.

Another suggestion: end rape. As long as men can and do rape women with impunity there is no true equality. And I still think the words from Micah “everyone shall sit out under his vine and his fig tree and none shall make them afraid” could be a good road map (regardless of gender, obviously). I’m not as sure as Bouie that a big vision is necessary but it can have positive results. Framing these things as the end game shapes how we proceed forward and generates new ideas. Working towards them can produce good results; even cutting the number of rapes in half would be a blessing.

However…. having typed all that I find I’m also slightly annoyed. It feels like the same thing that happens time and again when a Democrat replaces a Republican administration. Republicans run up the red ink, deregulate disastrously and make things worse. Then the Democrats have to clean up the mess while simultaneously finding ways to improve on the status quo. And do it while bringing the budget back into balance because both Republicans and the media will suddenly discover reckless spending is a major problem. Biden did a lot of good work and got little credit for it. Given the constraints on him (Republican Supreme Court, hostile media) I’m not sure how much of a new Reconstruction he could have accomplished or whether there was much voter support for reconstructing — though the DOJ going after the Toddler for J6 and any other crimes would have been a good step.

I do think there might be more interest in radical change now. As one piece from The Bulwark suggests, swing voters are vacillating between “change” and “burn it all down” (I have not read the whole article yet so I cannot comment on its ideas beyond that). Of course the flip side to that is that, I don’t believe for a minute that everyone is enthused about radical change; lots of people would probably prefer specific concrete improvements to some grand reshaping, even if it’s necessary. Whatever reforms, sweeping or careful, that the Dems come up with, it won’t satisfy everyone — as witness Bouie’s dissatisfaction with those proposals he mentioned.

We’re a lot less united on the future we want than Republican fascists are. Repubs are united in their desire to annihilate us; as Bouie’s argument shows, we’re not united the same way. I think most of us agree stopping Republicans is essential but we don’t agree on whether “Republicans are evil” is the primary message or “We’re going to fix things” or “we’ll burn it all down and start fresh and better.” And, of course, calls for radical change guarantee the media will freak. Despite their supposed radical elitist leftism, they’d have freaked if the Toddler had been indicted for J6; they’ll probably do the same if it happens after 2028 (“Democrats criminalize policy differences! Are Republicans right about weaponized justice?”).

Take my talk of full equality. A lot of the media (and people in general) suffer from the delusion equality is not a midpoint (between white supremacy and black supremacy, between patriarchal tyranny and matriarchal tyranny) but the most extreme option possible, which makes its supporters radicals extremists. Why not compromise? Find a midpoint between the extremes of white male supremacy and equality? The right agrees not to lynch anyone, black Americans settle on “not second class citizens but for now we’ll be a little less than first class”? Then we’ll have peace and unity!

There will also be endless arguments in our big tent that even if the policies are good, we’re doing liberalism wrong. Not extreme enough. Not centrist enough. Not appealing to Republican voters. Focusing on the wrong issues. I read an argument on FB recently that lecturing a struggling POC trying to support a family about how they need to respect trans pronouns is a losing strategy. The “change or burn it down” article similarly says responding to anti-trans bullshit makes Dems look like their priorities are those of out-of-touch upper-class liberals not caring about anything but niche issues.

Neither argument advocated throwing trans people under the bus but they both leave me uncomfortable. The idea that Dems should let Republicans rant and vent trans hate because they’re shooting themselves in the foot (at least outside red states) — sorry, that’s wrong. Uncontested it normalizes that anti-trans discrimination is an unremarkable, acceptable position. Even if opposing that is not the center of the campaign, we need to stand up for equality. As for the FB argument — is anyone actually doing what the OP complained about? There is a large difference between a candidate supporting trans rights and using people’s preferred pronouns and lecturing the poor and downtrodden that this should be their number one issue; as the post doesn’t offer any examples of the latter, I suspect the people saying this only exist in the poster’s imagination. As someone put it in a recent Lawyers, Guns and Money comment, Democrats aren’t just fighting Republicans they’re fighting the imaginary Dems in people’s heads.

Fixing this country will take a shit-ton of work, whatever the right path is. If we want to live out our lives in a decent nation, and enable other Americans to do the same, it has to be done.