Indivisible -- some further thoughts

Since posting this last week, a few further points have occurred to me.

To begin with, the enemy -- whether Republicans, Russian trolls, or the murky sludge of cynics, nihilists, defeatists, and ideological purists who plague us from within for psychological reasons I don't much care to speculate about -- are going to do everything they can to undermine and destroy the spirit of unity and common purpose which the Indivisible Pledge represents.  To the Republicans, that spirit threatens them with defeat; to the ankle-biters, it represents a distraction from the pointless yammering and hairsplitting and infighting they think we should be spending our energy on instead.

So they will attack it any way they can, and some of them (well, the Russians) are pretty clever.  One thing I expect will be attacks along the lines of "Candidate X whom you don't support has already violated the spirit of the Pledge by saying blah blah and doing blah blah, so it's dead and you and your candidate are being played for saps if you continue to stick with it."  That is, they will use the Pledge to attack the Pledge.  In most cases, whatever Candidate X did will actually be too trivial to justify such a conclusion -- but let's face it, we have over 20 candidates and inevitably a few of them will let personal ambition override that spirit of unity and purpose.  That's not grounds for the rest of us abandoning it.  At most, one might point out what Candidate X is doing -- but then return to the proper path and keep the Republicans, not the errant Democrat, in the rhetorical crosshairs.

And that's what works.  According to all available polling, Biden is the front-runner by a substantial margin (and no, it's probably not just name recognition -- see here and here).  He has consistently and ostentatiously focused his attacks on Trump, not at all on rival Democrats, and it's working for him.  Warren has been rising in most polls since she started calling loudly for impeachment.  As I explained here, impeachment is probably a bad idea right now -- but the point is, she's going after Trump (and McConnell), not her Democratic competitors, and it's working for her.

Trashing each other is what our enemies want us to do.

The vast base of our party, unlike a lot of the liberal blogosphere, is not much interested in ideological nuance or the fact that Candidate So-and-so said something bad two decades ago.  They just want to get the goddamn orange thug out of the White House.  Those who keep their focus on that goal will be rewarded.

Also -- as Pelosi recently emphasized, merely defeating Trump may not be enough.  We need to defeat him by the largest margin possible, not just in the Electoral College but in the popular vote as well, to crush any challenge Trump and his toadies might raise against the legitimacy of the result.  That one's for the "protest vote" crowd who claim it's OK for them to vote for the next Nader or Stein (and there will be one) because their own state is reliably red or blue and therefore their vote makes no practical difference.  It will still make a difference.

As I said before, the worst of the Democratic candidates, whoever you consider that to be, would be a thousand times better as President than Trump.  The worst of the Democrats would not sign an ACA repeal.  The worst of the Democrats would not call neo-Nazis "very fine people".  The worst of the Democrats would not cut your Social Security to pay for yet another tax cut for the obscenely wealthy.  The worst of the Democrats would not plunge us into unwinnable trade wars against most of the planet's other major economies out of cretinous ignorance about how tariffs work.  The worst of the Democrats would not denounce the free press as "enemies of the people".  The worst of the Democrats would not grovel before gangsters like Putin and Kim and Xi and hide the details from agencies of his or her own government.  I could go on in this vein almost endlessly.  You know I could.

Trump and the Republicans are the sickly miasma that must be lifted from this nation and removed from power.  Rival Democratic factions and candidates are people who share that goal even if they differ on the details of how to achieve it and what exactly should be done once it is achieved (and even just the obvious things that any new Democratic President would do are exhilarating to contemplate).  Our eventual nominee will be imperfect, because every candidate is imperfect.  But we must conduct the primary contests in such a way as to avoid any threat to our ultimate unity behind that nominee, whoever he or she is.

Let's get this done.