I really don’t know how long this disaster can last. Every day, the crisis and chaos expand, geometrically. If it continues like this—that is, gets worse and worse, in ways we can’t anticipate—it’s critical that we on the left do two things.


 


First, make the connection between Trump and the Republican Party. The GOP tied themselves to this man; do not allow them to slip out of the noose they designed for themselves. I don’t simply mean they embraced Trump. I mean that he comes out of 50 years of their politics, and we have to make sure everyone remembers that. Do not make the same mistake Clinton made in the campaign.


 


Which brings me to the second point: make the connection between Trump and the Democratic Party. The Dems lashed themselves to a candidate who was flawed not because she was a bad politician (I still believe she wasn’t) but because she represented 50 years of Democratic misrule, going back to Carter. The Dems gave us Trump, too, not merely because they nominated a candidate who seemed so emblematic of everything that was wrong with the status quo but also because even with two talented politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, they have presided over a dwindling party apparatus in the states, massive and widening inequality, almost sociopathic indifference to that widening gap (just go back to Jonathan Chait’s “liberalism is working” meme or Clinton’s “America is already great”, not to mention the absolute refusal since the election to confront the social rot that produced Trump), and the resulting social degradation and cruelty that we see all around us.


 


We need to make a realignment, and that means taking on and overturning not only the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party. That’s the way every realignment has worked: it’s not just one party that goes, but both parties that go in some way, shape, or form. I have no idea if the way forward is a third party, a reconstituted Democratic Party, or something more fundamental in the streets—or all three and something beyond all that, too. I do know that we on the left have to ensure that whatever comes out of this catastrophe is something more than a return to the status quo. Assuming of course we have time to turn it to our favor. Which I believe we do.