Why the country needs a Democratic landslide

I am not an activist; I do not hero-worship any politician or associate "joy", of all things, with the grubby world of political power-seeking.  That mind-set is incomprehensible to me.  This post is the viewpoint of an ordinary guy who approaches politics in a pragmatic way -- what, in practical terms, will make things better, or at least avoid making things worse?  How can I vote to best uphold the values which I consider most important?

From this viewpoint the mainstream media are mostly useless.  They desperately want a horse-race narrative and breathlessly trumpet every new poll -- Harris down one point in Wisconsin!  Trump up half a point nationally! -- as if it were a game-changer.  Their "coverage" is mostly just clickbait.  They provide no understanding of what a win by either side would actually mean for the country.

In reality, the practical differences between the two outcomes are vast.  What the country needs is the largest Democratic win possible, not only for the presidency but for Congress and in the states as well.

To begin with, there is the issue I pointed out in this post.  In recent years both parties, or at least their activist elements, have embraced a number of positions which are insane or dangerous or both.  But there are plenty of signs that the Democrats are beginning to pull back from their craziest ideas, while the Republicans are not (aside from a not-very-convincing retreat from anti-abortion extremism, in the face of massive evidence that that issue is a huge ballot-box loser for them).  In fact, the problem on their side is getting even worse, with widespread embrace of utter nonsense like Haïtians eating pets, Biden withholding aid from Republican areas impacted by hurricanes, or even Democrats creating those same hurricanes via some secret advanced technology (anything rather than face the reality of climate change, I suppose).  Most of this stuff no longer has any connection with reality at all.  It's pure fantasy, just as much as superhero movies or Harry Potter.  I have argued before that many of them, deep down, know that it's just fantasy, but they still act on the basis of it when it comes to voting, rejecting vaccination, and so forth.

We can't have this.  In the long run it's unsustainable to have some large percentage of the population (it's a sizeable chunk of the right wing, anyway) living in a bubble of truculent delusion.  It would be fantastically dangerous for the country to be run by leaders whose political base is committed to such delusions, even if they themselves are not.

I can't see anything snapping the Republicans out of it except a massive real-world defeat.  The right-wing leadership, at least, would realize that the crazy stuff is actually damaging them by making the party look unserious to mainstream voters, and would have an incentive to start trying to deconstruct it.

Next, there's the matter of specific policies the Republicans advocate.  Project 2025 would massively expand presidential power, trashing the Constitution's clear intent, while further consolidating the billionaire parasite class's dominance over society and the impoverishment of the workers (here's more, with screenshots of the actual text).  Republicans have repeatedly tried to destroy Obamacare, without which I couldn't afford medical insurance, and Social Security, without which I couldn't survive.  They want ever more tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and more and more cutbacks of anything that benefits the working masses who actually produce that wealth.  The very principle of redistribution of wealth back to its creators is anathema to them.  They are hostile to unions.  They have fought tooth and nail to destroy access to abortion, without which women and girls do not have effective personal and bodily autonomy -- and despite the recent changes to their platform, I will not believe that they have moderated on that issue until they start actually repealing forced-birth laws in the states they control.  At every opportunity they have attacked the separation of church and state, seeking to give the Christian religion special status.  Some of them want to roll back the legal status of same-sex marriage.  They reject all efforts to fight anthropogenic climate change, and even leaders who certainly know better continue to insist in public that it isn't even happening.

Trump personally is even worse.  Pretty much everything I said in this post for the 2020 election is still true today.  Putting him back into office would bring back the squalid corruption, the scapegoating of minorities, the fight-picking with fellow democracies and coddling of gangster-regimes, the nepotism and incompetence.  His obsession with tariffs, which he refuses to understand are a tax on Americans and not on foreign countries, would damage the US economy and the world's.  Trump already incited a violent insurrection attempting to overturn the 2020 election result.  There's every reason to think that as president he would work to sabotage democracy in order to stay in power for life; I don't believe he would succeed, but a person with such obvious disdain for democracy has no business holding any governmental office.  He continues to act as Putin's political catamite in the US, undermining NATO and kowtowing to Russian imperialism.  As president he would certainly backstab Ukraine, possibly leading to the Russian conquest of that country and facing the West with a full-blown September-1939-level crisis.  Beyond all that, there's a lot of evidence he has rapidly-advancing dementia (here's an example, but there's plenty more).  His reaction to covid showed that, even back then, he was too mentally rigid to respond rationally to an unexpected problem.  The man we've seen campaigning recently would be utterly unable to cope with the kind of sudden crisis that almost every president eventually faces.

Harris, by contrast, appears to be a "normal" politician, a fairly centrist Democrat much in the mold of Obama, Biden, or the Clintons.  She will respect the outcomes of the democratic process and operate within the norms and rules of the Constitution.  The fact that her mother was a scientist suggests a background of respect for science, evidence, and objective reality, a desperately-needed counter to the undermining of those things in our time of anti-vaxism, climate-change denial, militant religion, and other dangerous nonsense.  She has a long list of specific proposals which, while not flashy or radical, would actually benefit ordinary people.

Beyond that, only a strong and unified Democratic government offers any hope of the reforms and progress I believe the country needs.  Restoration of reasonable tax rates on the oligarchs; strengthening of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare; raising the minimum wage to be more in line with other developed countries; national laws to protect abortion rights and eradicate gerrymandering; statehood for Puerto Rico and DC; enlargement of the Supreme Court -- some of these things are Democratic policy, while some would take more guts than I really expect them to show, but none of them have any chance of getting done unless the Democrats win not only the presidency but also House and Senate majorities big enough to work around the inevitable timid thinkers and obstructionists (the filibuster, of course, would need to go in order to accomplish anything else).

There are some problems with the Democrats' policies, hostility to gun rights being the most obvious.  But look at actual history.  Democrats in power have never done more than nibble at the edges on that issue, probably because they know damn well what kind of reaction a serious frontal attack on gun rights would provoke.  This will continue to be the case.  (Also, Trump has supported unconstitutional confiscation, while Harris says she herself owns a gun.)  As for the left's other distinctive forms of foolishness, public opinion all over the West is inexorably turning against trans ideology, DEI-style racism, and the coddling of illegal immigration.  Those errors are doomed to defeat, regardless of what positions governments take.  At any rate, none of these issues is remotely comparable to the existential threat to freedom, pluralism, democratic values, and secularism posed by the current incarnation of the Republicans.

Even if you believe the Democrats are already on track to win, even if you live in a safely "blue" or "red" state, your vote for your Democratic candidates is still important.  Even though the presidency is decided by the Electoral College, the nationwide popular-vote margin of victory matters psychologically, enhancing the winner's perceived mandate and helping to quash challenges and stolen-election claims.  For the government as a whole and at the state level, the most massive possible Democratic victory will benefit the country, while the most massive possible Republican defeat may benefit the Republican party (and eventually the country) by setting that party on the long and hard road back to sanity and reality.  Vote accordingly.

[Note:  This is my "what I hope to see happen" post.  My "what I think will happen" post, with supporting evidence, will be next week.]