OK, so, I hope he’s wrong. But I think Virginia, the primary focus of his piece, might prove him right (alas) but the bigger picture is exacerbated now by the Donna Brazile story which is stepping all over this critical election.
And, if we lose Virginia to a racist, bigoted campaign by Gillespie, it bodes ill for the future of the US. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.
There is a factor beyond our control which Sullivan mentions of course and that’s the tragic fact that FOX viewers and Breitbart/Jones/Limbaugh inhalers don’t see the same reality we do so they’re oblivious to things like Mueller’s investigation. Aside from that, we might be screwing things up by focusing on the wrong things, by running on our usual boilerplate as he calls it, etc.
Sullivan writes so well I’ll just add the link (it’s free.)
I am not sure I totally agree with him by the way. For example I think it’s right to point out the hatefulness at Charlottesville; Sullivan seems to think this is a mistake. He thinks our support of immigrants is a mistake. I don’t — I think it’s morally right to care for others. It’s obvious that the US is a nation of immigrants and we should be proud of that.
Regardless that was a key element of Clinton’s campaign too and it was part of Trump’s and Bannon’s and now Gillespie’s ugly GOTV appeal to white voters. Northam stepped on himself by trying to appease them, to make matters worse —
I would absolutely hate to think we must adopt an immoral stance to win elections. We must not stoop to that. BUT we must find ways to argue our case without portraying all white voters as bigots. In a Southern border state, the ad featuring a white man with a Confederate flag, scaring little kids, might not have been such a good idea?
It also doesn’t help that “the revolution” refuses to work on Northam’s behalf. Guys, this is dumb, so is Nina Turner going on CNN and ranting, etc. And I think maybe Alex Jones is funding Donna Brazile’s book. She is nuts to think she ever had the power to replace HRC with Joe Biden in the first place, because Hillary had pneumonia! And Seth Rich? She goes there?
Anyway — back to the bigger picture.
I don’t know what to say about the propensity of the Left to shoot at each other instead of the fascists on the right but it’s been a feature of politics since the revolutions in Russia, in some cases leading to actual violence between Left Wing factions and in others, leading to weakness that allowed people like Hitler to ascend. Regardless it’s profoundly stupid.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read this, it may provide some food for thought going forward. And please don’t get me wrong — I think heartfelt argument about policy is awesome, it’s intellectually challenging, it makes us all wiser.
But we must win elections or we’ll never have the chance to make positive changes.
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