Endorsements

 I'm reading a book on the Republican Party of the 1960s and '70s, called Rule and Ruin. In it, the prominence of newspaper endorsements is the most "foreign" thing. The dynamics of a Republican Party fighting between its moderate and ultra conservative wings is slightly different from today, if only in the sense that the ultra conservative, actually reactionary, forces have so thoroughly won.

Given the widespread collapse in trust in empirical authority of any kind, the idea that an endorsement from the Times or the Detroit Free Press would matter seems silly and largely is. However, there is a new trend in endorsements that's very real: Astonishing numbers of people who worked with Trump refuse to endorse him. That number now includes Mike Pence, but it also includes almost all of his national security team and most of his Cabinet.

This ought to be the lead story in every newspaper in America. A significant number of people who worked most closely with Trump feel he should not be president. Both Dick and Liz Cheney - about the apotheosis of American conservatism - refuse to endorse him, with Dick calling him the greatest threat to American democracy in his lifetime.

And yet...

While you have to admire the actual courage that it takes to endure the inevitable death threats from MAGAts and the end of your political career that refusing to endorse Trump entails, almost none of them will endorse Joe Biden. Sure, the Cheneys and Pence and John Kelly have almost nothing in common politically with Biden, except their abhorrence of what Trump is and stands for. I get that a second Biden term could - gasp - lead to higher taxes on the rich and more regulations on business and maybe some more assistance for the poor and middle class. It could lead to a reversal of Dobbs, which would matter to someone like Pence, I guess, though that would require an unlikely number of Democrats in the Senate. 

If Trump is who you say he is, then you have to endorse Biden. Simply withholding your endorsement is words without deeds.

In 1864, the future of the American Experiment was in grave doubt. In response, War Democrats - those who supported a victory over secession and disunion - joined with Republicans to create the Union Party. The young Republican Party temporarily ceased to exist. Something like that needs to happen this fall. Hell, call it the Union Party. It's that important.