BETTER DEAD THAN DEMOCRAT!

Jennifer Rubin read the same New York Times symposium on threats to democracy that I wrote about last week, and she was very much taken with one proposal in particular:

Steven Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” advocates a “much broader coalition than we’ve put together to date” to combat the MAGA threat.... he called on the “Bush-Cheney network” to work with Democrats in common cause. “It means that lifelong Republicans have to work to elect Democrats,” he says. “And it means the progressives have to set aside a slew of policy issues that they care deeply about so that the ticket is comfortable to right-wing politicians.”

What would this mean? Among other things, Rubin says, it would mean that Democrats shouldn't merely tack to the center right, they should commit a few small suicides -- for the greater good, of course.

Consider the Senate race in Utah, where no Democratic candidate has a chance to win a statewide election. Instead, anti-Trump conservative Evan McMullin is running as an independent against increasingly extreme incumbent Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

In this and similar races across the country, Democrats should forgo running any candidate. That would allow Bush-Cheney Republicans, independents and Democrats to rally around conceivable anti-Trump candidates such as Evan McMullin. Yes, that means Democrats will need to vote for people who are pro-life and to their right on a great many issues. But the alternative is to throw their votes away on a sure-to-lose Democratic candidate and see incumbent senators such as Mike Lee (R-Utah) remain in office for six more years of MAGA sycophancy.

What's upsetting is that Rubin is probably right, and not just about the occasional race in a red state or district. The Democratic Party has such a terrible image right now -- an image it does nothing to try to improve -- that I can't imagine any Democrat winning the 2024 presidential race. Progressives don't like Democrats. Suburban moderates increasingly dislike Democrats. So do Hispanics. The Beltway media despises them, as always happens when a Democrat is elected president. (The media loved Barack Obama until he began trying to govern. The pattern repeated for Joe Biden.) I'm to the point where I think we might as well just give up and hand the ball to Liz Cheney or some other non-Democratic anti-Trumpist for 2024, because every possible Democratic candidate -- Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- will be mocked and reviled by the mainstream media, while the same press would swoon over Cheney or someone like her. I hate saying this, but I'm just being realistic -- the press won't let a Democrat win two years from now.

Rubin does expect some reciprocal sacrifice on the part of anti-Trump Republicans:

Most important, a pro-democracy coalition requires voters, donors and operatives to get over their allergy to supporting people from opposing parties. If, for example, J.D. Vance or Josh Mandel winds up as the GOP nominee for Senate in Ohio, pro-democracy Republicans of good will — such as former president George W. Bush, former Ohio governor John Kasich and their donors — should back the moderate Democratic contender, Rep. Tim Ryan. Republicans truly dedicated to unshackling their party from the MAGA bloc must be willing to put democracy over party.

George W. Bush? You mean the guy who twice protested Donald Trump's presence on the ballot in the most useless manner possible, by voting for none of the above in 2016 and Condoleezza Rice in 2020? Bush's VP, Dick Cheney, and daughter Liz appeared at a Trump fundraiser in 2020, after watching him in action for four years. Kasich, to be fair, endorsed Biden in 2020 -- but in 2016 Kasich also protested in a pointless manner, by casting his presidential ballot for John McCain. Anti-Trump Republicans might be ready to alienate their party-mates, but for the most part they're not prepared to commit the unpardonable sin of voting for a Democrat.

The most efficient way to save the country from the Trumpists might be to change the two-party system to two Republican parties. It would make Chuck Todd and the New York Times editorial board happy. It would mean that we wouldn't be relying on a pariah/doormat party to be our last bulwark against totalitarianism.

Or Democrats could get up off the floor, have a little self-respect, and beginning telling the country that they're right and the GOP is both wrong and dangerous, proudly and unabashedly.