2018: Will the fact-users strike back? Why we need... colonels.

Out of this year’s sickening political news-maelstrom — with one party seeming inept and the other insane — what keeps hope beating in my chest? The thought that mere ineptitude can sometimes change. Indeed, there are early signs! I’ll get to that. But first, a basic question:

What strategy should reasonable, fact-using Americans take up — politically — across the next two years?  Democrats, the fact-focused professions, people of calm goodwill and their moderate allies must choose. They can do either sumo or judo*. 

Indicators suggest that Democrats, at least, intend to continue going chest-to-chest, grunting and shoving with Republicans across the same-old polemical divides. Angry activists on the Democratic Party’s left demand that the same notions be proclaimed, just a whole lot more forcefully. If so, and assuming that swing voters do grow sick of the Trumpites — (as suggested in trends measured by 538) — then Democrats might “win” the 2018 mid-term elections, retaking the House and even the Senate by thin margins. A small improvement that will nevertheless leave us in perpetual gridlock.

That condition of stalemate has endured since at least 1995, destroying all memory of ancient virtues like “deliberation” or “adult negotiation.” And make no mistake: gridlock has always been the principal aim of Rupert Murdoch and the GOP lords. A narrow Democratic 2018 win will mean crushing defeat for the republic.

If our aim is to leap past gridlock — to end this latest phase of the American Civil War — then far more vigorous methods are called for, resembling judo, not sumo. Use your opponent's momentum against him. Swerve around his expectations.  

While pessimists bemoan that Democrats are mercurial, today's Republican Party is the most tightly disciplined political force in U.S. history — with its “never negotiate” Hastert Rule fiercely enforced by both Fox News and Tea Party activists. Alas, liberals are like cats, impossible to organize. That is, unless you are a miracle-worker, like California’s Jerry Brown.

Indeed, pundits write of a looming civil war within the Democratic Party, between radical (“Bernite”) activists and their old, moderate bêtes noirs, sometimes called Clintonian 'blue dogs.' Others laud the ferocity of Sanders supporters. 

But the real issue is this: can Democrats avoid internal fights and make a broad, united front, taking this campaign deep into Donald Trump’s America?

Vigorous initiatives are underway that aim for a more judo-like approach. She Should Run is one of several national organizations encouraging women and girls of all backgrounds to aspire to public leadership and contend for office.  

And 314 Action is a campaign to recruit scientists - yes, actual scientists, over 400 so far - to run against the most toxic, anti-science legislators. (Here’s how to donate - as little at $3.14 - to electing more folks who actually know stuff.) 

Again, as Donald Trump continues to sully the GOP brand, hopes rise. Democrats need to win 24 seats to retake the House, a challenge that appeared insurmountable months ago but seems less so with each passing day. “Even Senior House Republicans Are at Risk in 2018,” read a headline in the Cook Political Report, a sign of how serious Republican woes are becoming.

But let me reply, yet again, that such a narrow win will only be a slightly-different colored calamity for the Republic, and for civilization.  Instead of 24 seats, the aim should be 124! Plus toppling Breitbart-parroting fanatics from at least half of the state assemblies and governorships where they now govern so execrably.

== How to win such a broad-front campaign? ==

Consider that:

1- The right's coalition depends on many forms of cheating, from gerrymandering and voter suppression all the way to highly suspect voting machines that are deliberately made impossible to audit. (And recent tales of Russian meddling in such machines only raise more suspicion.) But it is worth noting that these methods, though effective, are brittle. One Supreme Court decision could send the edifice crashing. 

Even better, if just ten million sane-sincere American conservatives can be drawn out of the Republican tent, then GOP demographics - already fragile - will collapse. Those sane, decent, intelligent conservative neighbors already know their traditional "side" has gone mad. Desperate to justify continued loyalty, they stay glued to Fox News, gulping down anecdotes about screaming Berkeley protesters while murmuring the mantra spread by Sean Hannity and George F. Will: 

"Liberals are even worse! Liberals are even worse! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Liberals are even worse!”

Sorry, Bernie-bros, those ten million desperately-needed sane conservatives won’t be wooed out of that carnival show by shouting progressive nostrums at them.

They might be swayed by meeting democrats who share some of their values -- the healthier ones -- while coaxing them to put aside toxic memes. 

Hold that thought.

2- Only fools seek the death of American Conservatism -- rather than salvation from its current bedlam. It can happen! Before they passed away, both Barry Goldwater and Billy Graham recanted the excuses they had made for earlier bigotry. Adaptability, in the face of evidence, used to be an American hallmark — and yes, a feature of grownup conservatives. 

We must make clear that folks like Adam Smith, Dwight Eisenhower and indeed Ronald Reagan would be welcome at the negotiating table, so long as they argue with facts, not lies. 

Some conservative intellectuals are finally making the hard choice between love of nation+civilization, on the one hand, versus a party that’s gone insane. David Brooks and Jennifer Rubin are among the former, while the Worst American — George Will — continues moaning that Trumpism betrays, rather than reifies, the trends that Will himself helped propel. The former should be welcomed. As for the latter —

— sharp polemical stakes must stab the undead-elephant that hijacked U.S. conservatism. For example: why did the recent Republican National Convention mention only one prominent GOP leader between Reagan and Ryan? No governor, president or senator — so ashamed are they of their record at governance.

And democrats, absurdly, never once mentioned that.

3- Confront a bald fact: of the 238 House seats now held by Republicans, and several thousand in state assemblies, only a few dozen are "swing", or conceivably accessible by a liberal politician. In those thirty or so teetering districts, activists are welcome to put forward their beloved Bernie or Elizabeth or Maxine-types, go for it! 

But the rest of those districts are represented by conservatives because that is the temperament of the district’s voting majority. 

Sure, let’s fight for impartial districting and to demolish other cheats. Still, if a district is inherently conservative, then send in sane, logical, fact-loving and grownup conservatives to challenge the (mostly) loony, illogical, science-hating and flaming-immature incumbents!  Why should that be objectionable? Moreover, let’s stop waiting for local conservatives to generate their own primary challengers to alt-right maniacs. Take this fight to the general.

Try a thought experiment: Suppose the democratic candidate in a reddish district supports a woman's access to full health care and wants background checks on gun sales; in that case, does it really matter if he also likes country music and goes target shooting? 

If she's compassionate and not paranoid about "dreamers" who came to this country as children, and wants to ease us out of the insane War on Drugs, can you put up with her support for a strong military that is stuck in fewer overseas quagmires? 

If the candidate we put up for a GOP 'safe' seat respects science and journalism and teaching and medicine and thinks we should save the planet for our kids, will you forgive his crewcut and erect posture?

Note: in the recent Montana congressional by-election, democratic candidate Rob Quist combined good-old-boy styles with science-support and appreciation for civil rights. He was outspent 5 to 1 by Republican Greg Gianforte, and still came closer to winning than any Democrat in decades. And this despite both candidates sporting some questionable baggage. Observers are calling this GOP win a screaming danger sign for the Republican Party.

Which brings up our concluding point:

4- Colonels. What we need is lots and lots of retired U.S. Army and Marine colonels and U.S. Navy captains. There are thousands of them out there. A great many are offended and fed up with the Republican Party's current insanity, its open warfare against every single fact-centered profession, its deceit, betrayals and utterly perfect record of bad governance.  

The thing to remember about senior military officers is that they notice facts and outcomes! They have to. Like the way Russia is building 12 new naval and marine bases ringing the fast-melting Arctic Sea, with blatant intent to make it theirs. Climate denialism is a clear and present danger to the United States of America.  

And so is the Republican Party - in its current (mad) incarnation. More and more military folk can see this.

== We’ve seen this can work ==

In my own congressional district, California's 49th, the infamous right winger Darrell Issa just had the scare of his political life, when retired U.S. Marine Colonel Doug Applegate took him on, in a contest that ran so close we didn't know the results for a month. And this happened despite Issa (the richest man in Congress, it is said) waging a scurrilous media tsunami of misleading advertising. 

How did Doug do it? By bringing his mix of liberal and moderate positions before this largely conservative constituency with both calm logic and the stern mien of a senior officer. A marine with a ramrod spine, he got attention from Republican voters who had never before, in their lives, actually listened to a Democrat.

Can this near miracle be enhanced and amplified, across the nation? Will Democrats be able to recruit great numbers of retired officers, many of whom spent large swathes of lifespan as Republicans?

Here we have allies, not just in Donald Trump, who seems bent on offending the U.S. military officer corps, but the entire confederate madness that has hijacked the American right. For example, he U.S. military led the way in American desegregation and it sees no benefit, only great harm, coming from a spuming rise of bigotry. 

Senior officers know that our power derives in large part from scientific advancement, in which America has been the leader. And hence, the mad right’s all-out assault on science is an existential threat. Moreover they know that the right’s latest, paranoid rhetorical salvo — attacking a so-called “Deep State” of conniving officers and civil servants — is aimed directly at them.  

Next time, in Part Two, I’ll discuss the basic, psychological, social and political reasons why this approach is the best way to take the fight far beyond normal “swing” districts, boldly invading the very heart of a madness that has hijacked both American conservatism and the country that we love.

Recruitment of retired officers should start right away, if not yesterday, if not last year! These men and women swore to defend our country against foreign enemies. 

It’s time to call them back into service against the domestic variety — those who would blind and bind our mighty, brilliant, scientific nation and use hot needles of radical dogma to lobotomize the last, best hope of humankind.

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Continue to Part II

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Addendum:
 Stephen Colbert's riff of mature solidarity - after the DC shootings - was moving and apropos. It was also an ultimate geek-out,  when he said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"  ...   a line penned by Isaac Asimov, in the novel Foundation. (It's an aphorism spoken by the first mayor of Terminus, Salvor Hardin.) 

Stephen must have known that it will puzzle a majority of his viewers. Yet, he stuck to applying the wisdom of his true tribe. This nod to science fictional wisdom proves, yet again, he is 'one of us.' An American above all. But also a citizen of wonder.

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* See  an earlier judo proposal I made, for short straw Democrats to exploit - rather than exacerbate - Donald Trump's character flaws.