Hecklers for Trump
By David Leonhardt
For at least a decade, the Democrats have been acting like the more mature, reality-based political party.
They have avoided damaging Congressional primaries that
give away winnable seats and
tear down their own stars. They have not engaged in big, silly conspiracy theories – about, say, skewed polls or global warming. They have been willing to compromise to advance their cause.
The party has much to show for it: a health-care expansion that had eluded the country for decades; L.G.B.T.-rights victories that came faster than once seemed fathomable; the first serious
attacks against climate change; a slew of new taxes
on the top 1 percent; and the prospect of the most liberal Supreme Court in a generation.
The start of the Democratic convention offers reason to wonder whether the party is in the early stages of a new phase – a self-defeating phase in which a large segment of liberals would rather lose than compromise.
Let’s be clear: The hecklers in Philadelphia are doing Donald J. Trump’s work. They are his allies, no matter how much they may believe otherwise and no matter how honest their passion. Their attempts to inject chaos into the convention will undermine the single best opportunity that Hillary Clinton has to make her case to voters.
Whatever their motives, the Bernie-or-Busters are actually working to keep Citizens United as the law of the land. They are working to cut taxes on the rich. They are working to take health insurance away from families that have only recently received it. They are working for Big Coal and against the climate. They are doing the bidding of a candidate who has demeaned prisoners of war and the disabled, described Mexicans as rapists, referred to women as barnyard animals, called for banning Muslims from entering the country and cozied up to Russia’s authoritarian president.
No doubt, many of the protesters come to their anger in good faith and are expressing it productively. (And, no doubt, others are mostly interested in calling attention to themselves – or, in fact, support Mr. Trump. “Maybe he wouldn’t be so bad,” one small-business owner at a pro-Sanders rally on Monday
said.) They are angry about inequality and about a nominating process in which the Democratic establishment sided with Clinton. But there is nothing new about a party establishment backing the favorite. John McCain, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown and even Barack Obama all had occasions to resent their party’s establishment.
This year, the race was simply not close enough to be decided by party maneuvering. Mrs. Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by
3.8 million votes – a whopping 57 percent to 43 percent margin. “Let me be clear,” Symone D. Sanders, a top campaign aide (but no relation) to Mr. Sanders,
tweeted yesterday. “NO ONE STOLE THIS ELECTION! Team Sanders we did AMAZING WORK. But we lost. It’s a hard reality for some.”
In other ways, of course, Team Sanders won. It moved Mrs. Clinton’s position to the left on trade, the minimum wage and college financing. The Sanders campaign “transformed” the political landscape, Ms. Sanders proudly noted in
another tweet yesterday. When Bill Clinton speaks tonight, I expect he’ll present an especially striking embodiment of the party’s leftward shift.
There is still plenty of work for Sanders supporters to do. They can pressure Mrs. Clinton to hold fast to her campaign positions. They can identify and campaign for candidates who believe in a more radical liberalism than the Clintons or the Obamas. And they can do everything within their power to prevent a Trump presidency – a presidency with the potential to be more damaging to the country than any in our lifetimes.
If Democrats need a reminder of the importance of principled compromise, they need look back only 16 years. Then, a few million voters decided that Al Gore was no different from George W. Bush and voted for Ralph Nader instead. Those votes
made it possible for Mr. Bush to win the White House.
How’d that work out for the liberal cause?
