The Nervous Breakdown Called 2016

Every once in a great while one of our major political parties has a complete nervous breakdown.

It’s useful. The breakdown is usually followed by the party getting some therapy, owning its past mistakes, and finding a way forward. That happened after Goldwater with Nixon. It happened after McGovern with Carter. It even happened after Mondale, because Dukakis at least made a race of it.

This is not just an American phenomenon. It happens in all democracies. You can’t start back until you hit bottom, apologize sincerely for what you did wrong, get off the ragehol, then create an alternative worldview to the party in power from the ground up, one people find compelling.

What’s most interesting about America today is how Republicans have yet to go through this soul-searching, just the breakdown. Democrats haven’t made them. Republicans have dominated two off-year elections now with their mix of Cheneyism, Palinism, and unbridled fear of the “other.” Democrats didn’t show up those years, leaving today’s Republicans (and much of official Washington) convinced that, despite all polls to the contrary, theirs is the dominant view.

So we have Donald Trump.

Trump is the Republican Party id. He is Sarah Palin, writ large, only with money. He tells Republicans exactly what they really want to hear, with the filters completely removed. Official Republicans hate him but can’t really express their disagreement on the issues, so they go after his style. But it’s his style that is his whole appeal, and so their efforts fail.

The problem for Republicans, however, isn’t in how Trump says what he says, but what he actually says, which is the rest of them say. On foreign policy they support war while the country cries for peace. On economic policy they pretend money is a noun, when it’s a verb. On crime they pretend that it’s 1988 and Willie Horton is under every bed. On social policy they are still punching hippies.

The only real way forward for the GOP is a “yeah, but” on Obamaism. Obamaism is now a thing, the dominant view of Americans from age 40 on down. It’s the rising tide, and if it weren’t for the fact that young people don’t think they have to vote every election, this fact would be obvious by now.

What would a yeah, but candidate say? Obamacare is great, but we can do it for less. Gay marriage is fine, but we don’t need all the drama. Our foreign policy should be focused on peace, but it has to be backed by a mailed fist.

This is what Woodrow Wilson offered in 1912, rejecting some tenets of  Bryan’s populism. This is what Dwight Eisenhower offered in 1952, a quieter, firmer, and cheaper version of the New Deal. It’s what Bill Clinton was all about – balance the budget, get tough on the poors, but do it all in the name of liberalism.

A "yeah but"candidate offers an Anti-Thesis to the prevailing political Thesis. The same thing, but with less drama. The same thing, but better managed. The same thing, but done cautiously. But at the heart of it is the same thing.

Thanks to their dominant off-year performances in 2010 and 2014, Republicans aren’t ready for this medicine. Many of their lunatics are now in office, and much of the lunacy they offered is now state policy. Never mind that it doesn’t work. Never mind that it energizes Democrats. Ball-busting, no-compromise, out-loud Know Nothingism works, so why should any Republican question it?

The only problem with this for Democrats is that, thanks to those off-year defeats, we have no bench. It’s a lot like the situation Republicans faced in 1980, only worse, because Republicans had at least won the 1978 mid-terms and had some themes they could use that were a little different – the Sagebrush Rebellion, Proposition 13, rising crime and the Iranian hostage crisis. Of course, Republicans back then were out of power in Washington. Democrats aren’t.

But this is sort of the way a Validation Election works. The candidate who follows the Crisis President is missing some ineffable something. He’s a disappointment before he starts. Grant wasn’t Lincoln. Taft wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt. Truman wasn’t Franklin Roosevelt. Nixon’s impeachment forced Republicans to re-boot, which is how we got Ronald Reagan.

I can explain this to Democrats very simply. Who is your Vice President? Remember, it’s usually a state-wide officeholder who fills some hole in the Presidential candidate’s resume. They should bring their state with them at the very least, and it needs to be a fairly state. George H.W. Bush at least had Dan Quayle, who had won twice in Indiana.

I’ll wait. 

Where is there a Democrat who has won their state recently, who has some excitement to them, and who can provide a demographic contrast to the nominee – even if that nominee is Bernie Sanders? Martin O’Malley lost his home state of Maryland when he left office. Jim Webb is just as old as Hillary. I was thinking of Amy Klobuchar, but she’s just a younger Hillary. Al Franken is 64 and his decade has past. Claire McCaskill?  The netroots would never wear her. Even California is run by 70-somethings, and you can’t run a lieutenant governor.

Julian Castro comes closest to filling the bill, but he’s never run statewide. He was relatively popular as Mayor of San Antonio, and has since gone into obscurity as Secretary of Housing. Maybe his twin brother Joaquin?  (Wouldn't that make conservatives' heads explode, to see America run by Castro brothers.)

If even one of the exciting new candidates Democrats had run last year had won, we wouldn’t have this problem. But every single one of them failed. Wendy Davis. Jason Carter. Kay Hagan lost her Senate seat. Charlie Crist got beat by a crook. They even lost f’ing Massachusetts!

Democrats have no bench. That’s not just Hillary’s problem, it is America’s problem. With Republicans busy having the nervous breakdown that is the necessary preparation for a return to the Presidency, America is stuck with a 69-year old woman whose husband is from another era. She should have won in 2008, then we could follow her with Barack Obama, but we needed Obama to face the crisis – we really needed him – so we’re left with a latter-day Taft whose political career, uniquely in our history, extends back to the Nixon Presidency.

Me, I blame longevity. I blame young people, who were so turned off by politics during the Nixon era that they have yet to step up to the responsibility of public service. I blame the nature of the Nixon Thesis, which was all about cynicism, division, and grabbing yours with no regard for the broader public interest.

Oh, things will get exciting. Whoever the Republicans do nominate will have the power of all those Koch billions behind them, all the power of Texas oil and Wall Street money, the big bullhorn of Fox News. Even if the nominee is Donald Trump they’ll have that. And the pundits will assume that’s a winning hand.

This could be a very depressing 16 months, unless Mrs. Clinton can find her inner Reagan, even her inner Harry S. Truman, and give America something we can believe in passionately other than her life story.