If you spend enough time in Democratic politics, you realize we’re less a political party than a large, intense, family Thanksgiving dinner ‒ with a predilection for Robert’s Rules of Order.
Democrats are like the snake cut into eight pieces in Ben Franklin's famous 1754 political cartoon, "Join, or Die."
We've got progressives, moderates, democratic socialists, labor Democrats, centrists, institutional Democrats, activists, policy wonks, people who want bold messaging, people who want careful, nuanced messaging — and people who mainly want meetings to end on time.
Disagreement is the norm ‒ Democrats have always argued. Indeed, if we all agreed on everything, I'd suspect someone had accidentally locked us in the wrong meeting or something had been
slipped into our food.
Before stumbling into the rumpus of local Democratic politics, I was a history professor. During a career studying and teaching European history, especially the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy in the 1920s and '30s, I quickly learned that democracies rarely collapse because the democratically inclined townsfolk wake up one morning and decide authoritarianism sounds more appealing. Democracies grow weaker and die when people who broadly agree on democracy become so vexed with each other that they lose sight of the tyrant quietly sawing through the floorboards.
Or to put it more plainly: When democracy is under threat, division among those who believe in it is a generous gift to those who don’t.
Every Democratic faction brings us something valuable
History offers us a powerful warning: Internal arguments become dangerous when we start treating our allies as our enemies, and our genuine enemies as but distant foes over the horizon (or under the floorboards).
In the years before 1933, for example, Germany’s four largest anti-Nazi parties spent as much energy battling one another as they did fighting the fascists who were systematically dismantling democracy itself. They convinced themselves that the people nearest to them politically were somehow the real opponent. And they assumed anybody who disagreed with them must be acting from sheer ignorance or wicked motives. That is the inevitable result of the old, destructive idea that anyone who is not fully on your side must somehow be on the other side.
The other, sometimes-annoying Democrats around us aren’t villains plotting the downfall of civilization in a dimly lit room, or cowards who rent out their principles by the hour. More often than not, they’re simply earnest people trying to solve the same problem from a different angle — and occasionally going about it in a way that greatly irritates us.
Truth is, every Democratic faction brings something valuable.
Progressives push moral urgency and remind us not to mistake caution for courage. Centrists help build coalitions broad enough to win close elections in swing districts. Labor Democrats keep us grounded in the struggles of working people, wages and economic justice. Institutional Democrats do the disagreeable but necessary work of building stable organizations sturdy enough to survive after Election Day, financially solvent enough to afford a vital voter database like VAN, and robust enough to survive three-hour committee meetings.
Sometimes our contentious groupings drive each other up the wall ‒ or, in my case, to increased bourbon consumption. But coalitions aren’t choirs ‒ they’re orchestras. Different instruments, different sounds, occasionally somebody plays off-key or starts a few beats too late. But ideally, we’re all still playing the same piece of music.
Or, if you prefer a more Michigan-appropriate metaphor: We are all in the same boat, out on a stormy lake, rowing toward the same shore. And when you’re in said boat, it’s generally poor judgment to start drilling holes simply because you dislike the fellow holding the other oar.
A cautionary tale from the other side of the aisle
There's a cautionary lesson for us in the recent Republican primaries in Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky and Texas, where Bill Cassidy, Brad Raffensperger, Thomas Massie and John Cornyn were defeated.
Republican voters didn't ask: Are they conservative enough to govern conservatively? They asked instead: Are they pure enough? Loyal enough? Did they deviate at the wrong moment? Those so-called “R.I.N.O.” officials could be deeply conservative and still find themselves denounced and ousted because they voted the wrong way once, criticized the wrong person, or failed some constantly moving test of MAGA orthodoxy.
Lordy, I hope we're never like that ‒ but it’s a temptation every coalition faces. The progressive sometimes thinks: "If only those mushy centrists stopped watering everything down…" The centrist thinks: "If only those wild militants stopped frightening persuadable voters…" The institutionalists think: "If only everyone understood how politics actually works…" And before long, we start treating disagreement as disloyalty, which is a short road to a very unpleasant destination.If we ever get to the point where a Democrat can't be considered a "real Democrat" because they're not exactly progressive enough, not moderate enough, not pragmatic enough or not pure enough ‒ then we've learned precisely the wrong lesson from the last decade.
Democracies survive when we agree they're worth defending
History tells me that coalitions fail when they grow narrower and narrower, until at last they are very pure ‒ and very small, and very ineffective. A perfectly pure, perfectly unified, perfectly tiny political party (think the Libertarians), is, in the end, just a very opinionated book club ‒ one that regularly loses elections, but with great moral satisfaction.
None of us is going to suddenly be converted to somebody else's faction. After this primary, the progressives will still be progressive. The moderates will still be moderate. Most of us will still think everyone else talks too long.
But we must all remember that disagreement is normal, and democratic. If you agree with everyone in your coalition, you're not in a coalition ‒ you're in an echo chamber with snacks. Coalitions only work when people choose to stay in them, and if we stay together, we'll all be the stronger for it.
Democracies don’t survive because everybody agrees. They survive because people who disagree decide something larger is worth defending together.
So let’s argue vigorously, vote honestly and, if necessary, sigh deeply and grumble privately after our meetings, with or without additional bourbon. But let’s not attack our fellow Democrats as though they were the true danger.
The greatest threat to this country isn’t Democrats disagreeing over tactics, tone or whether a policy should be phased in over two years or five. It’s an extreme MAGA movement that has shown contempt for our elections, our rule of law and our basic democratic norms.
Our fire should be aimed outward ‒ at those who threaten democracy ‒ not inward, at those standing beside you.
Join, or die. Unity is not weakness. It’s how democracies survive.
Gary Stark is a former chair of the Kent County Democratic Party and a history professor emeritus. A version of this guest column originally appeared as a video on social media. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it in print or online.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Democrats can fight each other straight into fascism | Opinion
