Required Reading for Democrats and Republicans

David Brooks

Our democratic republic's politics are foundering as never before. Why? Here are two analyses. The first comes from New York Times columnist David Brooks and asks why today's conservative Republicans are light years apart from the conservatives whom Brooks revered a few decades ago. In "The G.O.P. Is Rotting," Brooks says:

A lot of good, honorable Republicans used to believe there was a safe middle ground. You didn’t have to tie yourself hip to hip with Donald Trump, but you didn’t have to go all the way to the other extreme and commit political suicide like the dissident Jeff Flake, either. You could sort of float along in the middle, and keep your head down until this whole Trump thing passed. 

Now it’s clear that middle ground doesn’t exist ...

Read the rest of the column to learn more about why Brooks, a center-right pundit, is in a state of despair.

Thomas B. Edsall

In "Liberals Need to Take Their Fingers Out of Their Ears," New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall offers his own despairing analysis of why liberal Democrats such as the ones I personally support aren't much better off:

For the moment, the left is both stunned and infuriated by the vehement animosity it faces from red America ... Many Democrats continue to have little understanding of their own role — often inadvertent, an unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior — in creating the conditions that make conservatives willing to support Trump and the party he is leading.

Edsall quotes Karen Stenner, author of "The Authoritarian Dynamic," who Edsall says is "no fan of the president," to the effect that:

... liberal democracy’s allowance of these things [such as unfettered freedom, diversity, multiculturalism, etc.] inevitably creates conditions of “normative threat,” arousing the classic authoritarian fears about threats to oneness and sameness, which activate those predispositions ... and cause the increased manifestation of racial, moral and political intolerance.

I admit I find some of the discourse that Edsall cites in this column a bit too nuanced for my full comprehension. Yet since Trump's electoral upset in 2016, I've found myself thinking a lot about what Stenner calls "normative threat." It's a good explanation for what's happened in our politics of late. However, it's anything but clear to me what we liberal Democrats can do about it without backpedaling away from our current commitments and constituencies.

*****

Roy Moore

Meanwhile, check out this Real Clear Politics polling aggregate page concerning tomorrow's special election in Alabama. There seems to be a lot of variability in the individual poll results between the two candidates vying to replace Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate. The Republican, Roy Moore, leads the poll aggregate by a whisker, +2.5 percent as I write this.

Doug Jones

His Democratic opponent is Doug Jones. Given that Alabama is a solid-red state, the fact that Jones is even close in the polls surely has something to do with the allegations several women have made that Moore, then in his early 30s, had inappropriate sexual involvements with them when they were teenagers a few decades ago. If Moore does manage to eke out a victory tomorrow, it will mean that many of his supporters simply looked past his misdeeds ...

"Movement" or "Moment"?

Gail Collins

Gail Collins writes in The New York Times of "The Great Al Franken Moment," in which there seems to be a tectonic shift going on. Women are claiming their power not to be sexually harassed by men without severe consequences for the men. A progressive Senate Democrat, Al Franken, is having to step down in view of his past transgressions. That's real change.

(Collins mentions the installation of a ladies' restroom in the 1860s in the A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store in New York City. Alexander Turney Stewart — who knew he was a progressive on women's rights — was an ancestor of mine.)

Christine Emba

But Christine Emba writes in The Washington Post today ("Real change is taking root on sexual harassment. Unless it’s not.") of how she worries this Al Franken "moment" is just that: a moment, and not a movement.

A litmus test will be the outcome of Tuesday's special senatorial election in Alabama. Will the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, be able to edge the Democrat, Doug Jones? Moore has been credibly accused of pursuing teenage girls romantically and sexually several decades ago, when he was in his 30s. But he has great credibility with religious and political conservatives today. Emba says, and I agree, that Alabama voters should deny Moore a Senate seat because of his sexual past. All eyes will be on this race this week.

Confession Is Good for the Soul, Pt. 1

As a 70-year-old male virgin (and how many of us can there be?) I want to make a public confession. When I was 20 and a junior in college in 1967 or '68, I committed what today might be called sexual harassment.

I had met a young woman at a university mixer. To my shame, I can't even remember her name now — so for ease of reference, I'll call her Karen. I asked Karen for her phone number and later called her for a date.

This was while I was a student at Georgetown University, and she was a student at a business college. The "scene" in the Georgetown part of Washington, DC, involved numerous bars and discotheques with live music and dancing. I took Karen to one of the nicer ones. We sat at a secluded table on a balcony overlooking the stage and dance floor, and we both had several drinks. When the urge struck me — again, to my shame — I commenced to grope her breast, sliding my hand underneath her bra.

Karen and I had one more date after that. It was a double date with my friend John S. and his girlfriend. We two couples ended up making out on the double twin beds in my dorm room.

My memory is hazy on what transpired between Karen and me after that ... until the Saturday afternoon when she called me at my family's home in Bethesda. She told me on the phone that she had recently attempted suicide.

Alarmed, I drove to her residence hall and picked her up. We sat in my car in front of the residence hall and talked about why she had tried to take her own life.

I regret to say that I remember little about our conversation. The reason for that was, I today think, that I was scared at potentially becoming responsible for, and to,  a suicidal girlfriend. I imagine I may have spoken words to that effect to her. After that, I never saw Karen again.

I imagine I also tried to console her, to a degree, during that last conversation. In addition to being one pathetic and immature guy, I was, after all, also empathetic. But never mind. I cut her loose.

Had her suicide attempt been a response to my having stopped calling her for dates? Regrettably, I don't remember. It may have been. If I maintain that it was, then I'm possibly guilty of inflating my own self-importance, no? But if I say it wasn't, I'm still guilty of having severed ties with a young woman who had phoned me for psychological support.

Karen, if you're out there and you recognize yourself in this story, I need to apologize. I hope you managed to find a long and happy life. I'm sorry I didn't treat you as well as you needed to be treated.