December 29, 2022

By Steven Day

Joe Biden has done some big things in domestic policy during his first two years in office — massive and long-overdo funding for infrastructure improvements, rebuilding a broken economy, helping to create the first major government response to climate change. This is the presidency he wanted — doing important things to make life better for Americans. And if a majority of Americans haven’t recognized his accomplishments, that’s okay. Someday they will.

But with the Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives (be it by the thinnest of margins), the days of Joe Biden helping to push through major legislation are over. He can continue preaching the virtues of bipartisanship all he wants. He won’t find a partner on the other side.

A number of pundits have argued that the thin Republican majority actually creates an opportunity for bipartisan legislation. Fat chance. Even if the new Republican leadership in the House wants to pursue bipartisan legislation, which they don’t, they won’t be able to. The microscopic size of the GOP majority has empowered the Crazy Caucus, turning the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, and Lauren Boebert into major players. There is no way these folks will agree to anything rational, let alone bipartisan. Instead, they’ll spend two years stalking Hunter Biden.

Like it or not, Joe  Biden won’t be pushing through major legislation during the remaining two years of his first term. He needs a new mission. And as it happens there is a new mission waiting for him that desperately needs his attention. Simply put, and very much contrary to his personality, Joe Biden needs to become a partisan warrior — to spend the next two years doing everything humanly possible to assure that Democrats win across the board in 2024 — hold the presidency, hold the Senate, recapture the House.

Put another way, it’s time for Joe Biden to embrace his inner Dark Brandon. This refers, of course, to the kick-ass liberal version of the Dark Brandon meme.

It is indisputable that today’s GOP is an existential threat to the survival of American democracy. What is particularly frustrating, isn’t that people of importance don’t see this. They do. What is missing is a sense of crisis that matches the degree of the threat. It is, frankly, amazing how widespread the recognition of this danger has become. It has even broken through with much of the mainstream media. Yet, the degree of vigor in the responses of the elite media and leading Democratic politicians has been tepid at best.

This is a five-alarm fire and they’re trying to put it out with a squirt gun.

This is where Dark Brandon comes in. The circumstances demand that Joe Biden dedicate himself to providing the leadership only the president, as leader of both the Democratic Party and the nation, can provide in the defense of our democracy. Without his intense personal effort, an across-the-board Democratic victory of the kind needed to save the republic will likely not be feasible (and to any right-wingers reading this, despite what the right often says, no, there can’t be a republic without democracy).

Winning is now all that matters. This was true in 2022 and will be even more true in 2024. No, the Democratic Party shouldn’t follow the Republican Party’s example by breaking the law in trying to win. But within the law, no political stone can be left unturned, and nothing left to chance.

If President Biden needs a role model, Harry Truman is his man. Just like Biden, Truman was hounded by poor approval ratings. Also like Biden, he faced a hostile Congress controlled by Republicans. At the beginning of the 1948 campaign, practically every smart political operative expected the Republican nominee,Thomas Dewey, to beat him handily. But “give ‘em hell, Harry,” threw himself into the campaign, turning the “do nothing” Republican Congress into a winning issue.

Joe Biden will face a strikingly similar situation. Following their drearily predictable playbook, the Republicans in the House will refuse to cooperate with the him on anything, believing that causing him to fail will make him or, if he doesn’t run, another Democrat, easier to beat. Based upon the Truman precedent, what they may actually be doing is painting a target on their own chests. But only if Biden makes giving ‘em hell his top priority.

The critical thing is for the Democrats to gain total control of the federal government, the presidency and both houses of Congress, before the Republicans do. Only with complete control can Democrats pass The Freedom to Vote Act, and other legislation to shore up our decaying election process.

On the other hand, if the GOP first gains complete control it’s most likely lights out. With only a few honorable exceptions, Republican leaders and office holders have made no secret of their readiness to chuck 250 years of democracy out the window if that’s what it takes for them to gain power. Whether it’s Donald Trump telling Brad Raffensperger that he just wanted to find 11,780 votes, the fake electors scheme, the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the election, or to the insurrection itself, they all paint the same hideous picture. In order to put themselves in office, Trump and the GOP were prepared in 2020 to destroy American democracy.

And we have no reason to believe this has changed.

And having the Republican Party steal an election isn’t even the biggest danger we face. Much worse, is what they may do to our democratic system the next time they hold complete power, whether legitimately or through theft.

This is how modern democracies die. As discussed in my novel, The Patriot’s Grill, this can happen when “one group, while they’re in power in a democracy, uses that power to change the rules in ways that give them advantages. In other words, pull up the ladder behind them. Change the rules in ways that make it hard for the other side to beat them in the future.” In countries, such as Hungary, where this has happened, there continue to be elections. There just isn’t any doubt as to who is going to win them.

And if you have any doubt today’s GOP will do this without a second thought, just check out what happened in Wisconsin.

We need the energy level of the response to match the level of the risk. As Senator Raymond Clark said in describing the danger posed by a threatened military coup in the movie, Seven Days in May, “right now the government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tilting right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a handful of men that can prevent it. And you're one of them.”

Dark Brandon, he’s talking about you.