Over the weekend, I made the point that all the reanalyzing Democrats are doing is really wasted time and they need to start doing stuff, succeeding at doing stuff in 2025. I want to reiterate another point. I truly cannot imagine a bigger opening than the Trump Republican Party is currently giving to Democrats. A recent CNN poll shows the numbers of Americans who think the government “should do more to solve our country’s problems” as opposed to leaving it to individuals and businesses is higher than it’s been in decades. (There’s probably no better explanation of the deep instability of contemporary American politics than the deep perception of the need for change and deep distrust for anyone’s ability to make that change.) Meanwhile, we are greeted with a daily spectacle of cuts to government programs to pay for handouts to the ultra-rich. And we have just daily pageants of the most predatory and brazen corruption.
Last night, I was reading this Evan Osnos piece in The New Yorker about the sheer openness of the turbocharged corruption which, I think we have to say, is wholly without precedent at any time in American history. Most of the details in the piece are things you’ve probably heard of or mostly heard of. But I recommend reading it. It’s powerful and almost beggars belief how much he’s able to catalogue and organize together from just this last spring.
Could it really be a lot more brazenly and savagely corrupt than at any time in our history? American history is really long, a quarter of a millennium. And while we’ve got a pretty decent record of contested elections and, mostly, the rule of law and courts, corruption is a big, big part of American history, especially in the latter part of the 19th century when it comes to the federal level. But I can’t think of any record of corruption at the federal level (state v. federal is an important distinction) which compares to today. A central element of what is unprecedented is the simple openness of it. When you think about Teapot Dome or the various scandals of the Gilded Age, those were generally things that were found out, exposed. A ton of corruption was happening; some examples were found out; people went nuts. The things Osnos writes about in almost every case are just out there in public. It’s this ingenious Sun Tzu type move against muckraking reporters. You just do it completely in the open and the whole ecosystem of corruption and investigation is suddenly outwitted, exploded.
I don’t want to get too far afield capturing, illustrating the scale of corruption. It’s a Sisyphean task. But it does paint a coherent and unifying picture. The people with all the money have taken over the government and are using it to feather their own nests and they’re paying for it by gutting the programs that make life manageable for ordinary people. Some version of that is almost always true with governments of the right. But it’s seldom quite so dramatic, lurid and in your face. There’s a big opening for a party that says “our focus is fixing the things that are broken in American society and making things better for the average person.”
Now the rejoinder is, well, the Democrats lack credibility and trust to be that messenger, that party. And that’s true — Democrats’ own the pervasive mistrust that envelopes both parties. But polls show that while both parties are not trusted, voters generally think Republicans are effective at winning political battles and getting what they want. Voters see Democrats as untrustworthy and weak. Not great! But as is often true in our individual lives, you build trust by acting in a trustworthy way, by doing rather than saying. And that’s really my point. Republicans are giving Democrats just a wide open field for doing these very basic things and building that trust.