As we’ve noted off and on, Andrew O’Hehir over at Salon has been going big on the meaning of Donald Trump to our democracy. As far as we’re concerned, everything he’s written since the election (and before, for that matter) is well worth reading for anyone interested in a perspective that assimilates history, philosophy, and pop culture into keen perspectives on our ongoing political and cultural meltdown. He’s been diving into a trio of recurrent and interrelated themes — 1) whether Trump’s election is a fluke or telling sign of a democracy and culture in crisis mode, 2) the battle for the soul of the Democratic party in the wake of the 2016 election, and 3) how the question of Russian meddling into the past election relates to these first two subjects. In his own words, here's a good summary of what he's been about:
“[T]he fundamental divide when it comes to understanding the rise of Donald Trump and the outcome of the 2016 election is about political worldview or even epistemology, meaning how we decide what is most important. Is President Donald Trump a fluke, created by Jim Comey and the Russians and a weird eruption of racial and sexual bigotry among a subset of white Americans? Or is he a symptom of a deeper long-term disorder, a phenomenon that was overdetermined by multiple factors and in some sense a product of America’s historical karma?
Beyond those questions, of course, lie the unquenchable questions that threaten to devour the electoral coalition of the American center and left: What is the path forward for the so-called resistance? Is the Democratic Party, which believed it represented a clear and growing American majority and was about to elect our first female president, in need of a major ideological overhaul or just some tweaks to the messaging? Does the road back to power for progressives (another term of art) require a strategic alliance with Wall Street finance and corporate capitalism — or something closer to open conflict with those forces?”
Lately, O'Hehir's been particularly focused on the idea that the overall concept of Russian interference in the election has become a “proxy” war between the Clintonite and Bernie-ite wings of the Democratic party. As he broadly describes it, in this conflict, the former group wants to emphasize the Russian factor as the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss, as a key part of making the case that her centrist policies were sound and sufficient for victory, which would have been hers were it not for Putin’s interference. Meanwhile, the more progressive wing of the party sees the Russia story as perhaps secondary, and as a distraction from more important issues like economic inequality.
In this weekend’s column, O’Hehir provides more clarity on this intra-party conflict, in part because it contains an interview with author and activist Norman Solomon, who is on the skeptical end of the spectrum of perspectives on the Russia scandal. Solomon sees the emphasis on Russia as a way for Clinton centrists to “[retain] control of the party and [beat] back the Bernie insurgency,” and states that “Blaming Russia is a way of not blaming the corporate elites of the Democratic establishment.” Solomon also points to reports in the recently published book Shattered that shortly after the election, “top operatives” of the Clinton campaign “decided to blame Russia for Clinton’s loss.”
The idea that Team Clinton and Democratic centrists have a heavy interest in casting Russian interference as the primary reason for their defeat is deeply persuasive. It’s also understandable that the progressive wing of the Democrats would not want to get rolled by this argument and have it used to discredit a move towards a more populist party. But it seems to me at this point, with the revelations of Donald Jr.’s emails coming on the heels of various other implicating reports, that the most important part of the Russia story is the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians, and that getting to the bottom of this possible collusion should rightly be at the top of all Democrats’ agenda. At the most basic level, we are faced with the most monstrous of possibilities — that a presidential campaign betrayed its loyalty to country for partisan gain, and has subsequently abused the power of the presidency to cover up that betrayal. The urgency of keeping up this focus is emphasized by the stakes involved — they might even be said to be beyond politics. In the short term, sure, this focus might redound to the benefit of Clinton-type Democrats — but who cares when the issues are so grave? Besides, settling the question of collusion is NOT the same as saying that the Russian factor is why Clinton lost.
Ultimately, anyone who believes in getting to the roots of economic inequality, racism, misogyny, and other basic issues needs to be able to argue for the primacy of those issues while defending the country’s basic security. But of course, politicians and party can indeed do more than one thing at a time. Indeed, at this very moment, the Republicans as a whole have presented another huge challenge, this one domestic, against which the Democrats need to push with all their might — the repeal of the ACA and its replacement with a grotesque new bill that would throw upwards of 20 million American off their health care plans. Though this would seem on its surface to be a much different issue than collusion with Russia, the basics are in fact deeply similar — the GOP is a party that can’t be trusted to serve the interests of the American people. It can be stated that simply. And on both issues, the Democrats need to fight for the public interest.
