The prophetic, under-appreciated, and altogether invaluable publication The Liberal Patriot is shutting its doors, the funding having dried up like a Voice of America outlet in a land run by barbarians. In this case it’s our land that’s being impoverished, with one less source of truth to breathe life into the movement to defend American democracy.

Fortunately the political scientists who staff T.L.P. are still alive and well, and will (hopefully) continue writing elsewhere.

Ruy Teixeira, one of its founders, and whose work the last five years warned with remarkable prescience about how Democrats were hemorrhaging support from minorities, immigrants, and the working class, signs off with a summary of the ways the left continues “trading short-term gain for long-term pain,” failing to confront the identitarian madness that’s preventing it from building a majoritarian coalition that can win lasting victories.

In a sane world, The Liberal Patriot wouldn’t have been necessary; those who recognize the threat MAGA poses would never have lost sight of the moral imperative of winning elections. This five-year-old project will stay visible on Substack, as a kind of time capsule to remind us that things don’t have to be this way, if we find the courage to be honest with ourselves.

You can read Teixeira’s final piece here.

This July marks thirty years since the Srebrenica massacre, when ultra-nationalist Serb forces killed eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and teenage boys in a United Nations Safe Zone. Here’s my profile of Mevludin Orić, who dodged a bullet in front of a firing squad and played dead for ten hours before escaping: “The Legacy of Srebrenica, Twenty Years Later.”

Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, David Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, argued the conservative case for supporting Hillary Clinton, urging voters to see beyond the blinders of tribalism and realize the danger in their midst. “To vote for Trump as a protest against Clinton’s faults,” he wrote, “would be like amputating a leg because of a sliver in the toe; cutting one’s throat to lower one’s blood pressure.” Frum was adamant, that is, that Republicans not lose perspective, given that party-controlled outlets like Fox News Channel were clouding their judgment, and leading many to support someone who was neither conservative nor qualified.

By 2020, having witnessed the consequences of their inaction in 2016, hundreds of other prominent Republicans broke with their party for the first time and endorsed a Democrat. That fall, I published an assortment of their quotes, which were astonishing in their breadth and moral clarity. The arguments these Republicans made—months before January 6th—amounted to an extraordinary indictment of both Trump and the media ecosystem that had abetted his rise.

Now, in 2024, this unprecedented cross-party effort continues, with even figures like former Vice President Dick Cheney warning that Trump poses a greater danger to the republic than anyone in its 246-year history. I’ve again collected some of these endorsements, which, with the race essentially tied, have taken on a new urgency. As these arguments attest, a vital task of 2024 is to restore conservatism and patriotism to the G.O.P. by showing that embracing authoritarianism and lies—and pretending that the flaws of a candidate like Kamala Harris are remotely comparable—is the road to ruin.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney: “In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

More than 230 Republicans who worked for President George W. Bush, Senator Mitt Romney, or the late Senator John McCain: “At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions. Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies. We can’t let that happen.”

111 former G.O.P officials, including Congressmen, defense secretaries, C.I.A. directors, and other national security officials, in an open letter: “We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not… As President, [Trump] promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country's founding documents… Vice President Harris has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the ideals that define our nation—freedom, democracy, and rule of law… [W]e urge other Americans to join us in supporting her.”

A dozen Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush: “Returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country… [W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris.”

Liz Cheney, former chair of the House Republican Conference: “I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris… [The United States] faces a threat unlike any we have faced before… In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty.”

Michael Luttig, the eminent conservative legal scholar and judge: “America’s two political parties are the political guardians of American Democracy. Regrettably, in the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law… In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

Adam Kinzinger, former member of the House of Representatives: “The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself… As a conservative and a veteran, I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy. That—that is the soul of being a conservative. It used to be the soul of being a Republican. But Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party. His fundamental weakness has coursed through my party like an illness, sapping our strength, softening our spine, whipping us into a fever that has untethered us from our values.”

Seventeen former staff members of Ronald Reagan: “President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket.”

Geoff Duncan, the former Georgia Republican Lt. Governor: “If Republicans are being intellectually honest with ourselves, our party is not civil or conservative. It’s chaotic and crazy. And the only thing left to do is dump Trump… If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you're not a Democrat, you're a patriot.”

Bob Inglis, former six-term South Carolina Congressman: “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic… My party needs to restore its rationality to be the credible free enterprise, small government party again.”

Alberto Gonzales, who served as Attorney General under George W. Bush: “I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump—perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation—eyes a return to the White House. For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.”

Jeff Flake, former Arizona Senator: “In times like these, there is nothing more conservative than putting country over party.”

David French, conservative author: “How many Republicans would have predicted that voting for a Democrat would be the best way to confront violent Russian aggression and that the Republican would probably yield to a Russian advance? In many ways, the most concretely conservative action I can take in this election is to vote for the candidate who will stand against Vladimir Putin...

“I’m often asked by Trump voters if I’m ‘still conservative,’ and I respond that I can’t vote for Trump precisely because I am conservative... The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.”

Peter Wehner: “I served in three Republican administrations, including as a senior adviser in the White House under President George W. Bush, and voted Republican in nine consecutive presidential elections, beginning with Mr. Reagan in 1980. My political tribe was Republican; so were most of my friends. To see what the G.O.P. has become is mortifying. As someone who loves America, I find it terrifying... The Republican Party keeps getting darker. It has become anti-intellectual, conspiracy-minded and authoritarian, intemperate and brutish, transgressive and anarchistic. And there’s no end in sight. Mr. Trump is a human blowtorch, prepared to burn down democracy. So is his party. When there’s no bottom, there’s no bottom.”

George Will, conservative icon: “The restoration of normal politics will require two things: The removal of Donald Trump—that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast—from public life. And the rekindling of an irrepressible conflict. It is between progressivism, of which Kamala Harris is full to overflowing, and actual conservatism, about which Trump is contemptuous.”

Stephanie Grisham, former Trump White House press secretary: “I was one of his closest advisers. The Trump family became my family… He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth. He used to tell me, ‘It doesn't matter what you say, Stephanie. Say it enough and people will believe you.’ But it does matter. What you say matters and what you don't say matters… Now, here I am at a podium advocating for a Democrat, and that's because I love my country more than my party.”

Olivia Troye, former homeland security aide to Vice President Mike Pence: “I saw how Donald Trump undermined our intelligence community, our military leaders and, ultimately, our democratic process… Being inside Trump's White House was terrifying, but what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there.”

Mona Charen, author of the 2003 book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First: “The past few years have not only called into question some conservative dogmas; they have also caused me to reflect on what conservatives should be conserving. It’s not tax policy or small government or a vigorous defense posture. Those are important matters, but they pale in comparison to the overriding task of conserving the Founding. That means ensuring that the rule of law and the constitutional system we were bequeathed is preserved and handed down to our descendants. That goal, which conservatives should share with all Americans, is simply incompatible with voting for Donald Trump.”

Sarah Matthews, former Trump White House aide: “My sole reasoning is the Constitution. Donald Trump has shown us that he will not uphold it. We cannot trust him to defend it… That is why I'm casting my vote for Kamala.”

Mark Salter, former chief of staff to John McCain: “If he’s again elected President, he’ll lie every day he’s in office. When Russia conquers all of Ukraine after he cuts off support for brave Ukraine, and Putin turns his attention to the Baltics and Poland, and invades their territory, Trump will lie about who’s responsible and blame the victims, our allies. When Xi Jinping gives the order for China to invade Taiwan, he’ll blame Taiwan for not listening to him, and wash his hands of the affair, leaving Asia far more dangerous for us and unstable than it is now… I’m voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz… They know the difference between right and wrong.”

Greg Brower, a former Republican state senator who served as U.S. attorney for Nevada under President George W. Bush: “We can have policy debates, but we need to preserve our democracy in a meaningful way if we’re going to have those debates… It’s really just kind of a sense of right and wrong, and ethics, and decency.”

Two dozen current and former Wisconsin Republican officials: “To ensure our democracy and our economy remain strong for another four years, we must elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the White House. We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris. But what we do agree upon is more important.”

Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager and former Republican: “MAGA is fascism, and like all fascist movements, it is sustained by lies, deception, propaganda, grievance, and anger.”

Robert A.G. Monks, Ken Cole, and Ted O’Meara, former chairs of the Maine Republican Party: “We believe another Trump presidency would make our world a far more dangerous place.”

More than 700 national security leaders from both parties: “This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.” (The famed Army general Stanley McChrystal also endorsed Harris.)

Mark A. Milley, the army general whom Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “He is now the most dangerous person to this country—a fascist to the core.”

John Kelly, the former Marine general and Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff: “He certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Andrew Sullivan, conservative author: “Trump is not just toxic for America; he has proven toxic for conservatism at a moment when we desperately need its realism, its sobriety, and its core instinct for order and stability… [I]f a conservative future is possible, it will only emerge from rejecting and ejecting him and his despicable character.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson, and Sarah Matthews, former Trump White House aids, who warn about “the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy and the rule of law.”

Fred Upton, who served three decades as a Republican in the House: “I’ve never before voted for a Democrat for president, and I honestly never thought I would. But she’s a strong, committed public servant… It’s often said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. In this race, in this defining moment for our democracy, it’s simply not an option to do nothing.”

David Frum, in a piece that’s the apotheosis of his heroic work during the Trump era: “Something revolutionary has happened inside the Republican Party: If you placed your faith and loyalty in Reagan and Bush’s party of freedom, you need to accept that the party of Trump and Vance has rejected your ideals, discarded your heroes, defiled your most cherished political memories. This GOP is something new and different and ugly, and you owe it nothing...

“In 1860, Americans voted on whether to remain one country or to split over slavery. In 1964, Americans voted on whether to defend equal rights before the law. So also will the election of 2024 turn on one ultimate question: whether to protect our constitutional democracy or submit to a presidency that wants to reorder the United States in such a way that it will become one of the world’s reactionary authoritarian regimes.

“Some rationalizers for Trump want to deceive you that you face an unhappy choice between two equally difficult extremes. That is untrue. One choice, the Trump choice, deviates from the path of constitutional democracy toward a murky and sinister future. The other choice allows the United States to continue its cautious progress along the lines marked by the Declaration of Independence and the Fourteenth Amendment toward the aspiration of a ‘more perfect union.’”

Dan Wolf, a New Hampshire state representative: “To my fellow Republicans and independent voters in New Hampshire, I urge you to cast a vote on behalf of our democracy—a vote for Harris. You don't have to tell anyone, although you can. You don't have to speak out, although you should. But when it comes time to vote in November, let's do the right thing and stand up for our country and Constitution.”

Also noteworthy:

Eighty-two American Nobel Prize winners, in an open letter: “This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States. We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.”

The Economist, the center-right magazine: “Trump poses an unacceptable risk to America and the world.”

Jon Meacham, the historian, articulating something I’ve tried to convey to people close to me in North Carolina for many years: “To me it is beyond clear that people who revered Reagan, people who voted for the Bushes, who voted for McCain, who voted for Romney, this is not your guy, this is not your party. Don't just stay out of lassitude or some kind of old loyalty because it's not the same institution. Liz Cheney has argued it. So many people have argued it. Just believe the evidence of your own eyes.”

I’d like to sign off a little differently, with images rather than words. Here are a few paintings from young Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, whom I met during my reporting trips to Poland the last two years. They’d made these to thank Americans for their support, both militarily and with humanitarian aid. Some had fathers on the front line; some were orphans being raised by a grandparent. What America meant to these kids is something I’ll never forget.

I think of them whenever the topic of the election comes up, as the fate of their country—and whether America continues to be a beacon of light to the world—may depend on the outcome.

On a warm evening in 2019, the Brooklyn sky a fog of pink-gray as sunset neared, Pete Buttigieg stepped onto a stage in front of several hundred rapt supporters. It was June 28th, the Friday before World Pride Weekend—and 50 years to the day since the denizens of Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn decided that they’d had enough of the police raids and harassment, of the terror and discrimination they faced for being who they were, and erupted with a bout of riots that launched the modern gay-rights movement. Now, half a century later, Buttigieg had just become the first openly gay candidate to compete in a presidential debate, following a remarkable spring of surging in the polls. The atmosphere inside the concert hall was electric. The only time I’d witnessed as much civic joy was at Barack Obama’s inauguration, when a pall of reactionary ideology and cynicism lifted alongside the departing president’s helicopter and America seemed to affirm that truth and science—and one’s character rather than color—mattered.

Moments earlier, Annise Parker, the former mayor of Houston, had endorsed Buttigieg on behalf of the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Fund. She praised the historic ground he was breaking, and “his love-based interpretation of scripture,” while arguing that he was America’s best presidential prospect for reasons having little to do with his identity. “He speaks with the openness and forthrightness and transparency that is sorely missing in American politics,” she said. “He is, in effect, the anti-Trump: experienced, accomplished, a veteran, patriotic, thoughtful. Everything we want.”

Buttigieg thanked Parker and the other L.G.B.T.Q. officials who had paved the way for him, then declared that his campaign was “for everybody who’s been told that they’re less than—everybody who’s been on the wrong side of an equation of belonging in this country.” But the movement would seek to build strategic coalitions, and to unite Americans around a positive vision, rather than rely on identity politics and grievance. “We have a choice about what identity is going to mean for us,” he told the crowd. “We’re not going to allow it to turn into You don’t know me! We’re going to insist that it’ll turn into I will stand up for you, whether you are like me or not.” 

It had become disorienting, two-and-a-half years into the Trump presidency, to witness a potential President speak as Buttigieg did. To hear the truth plainly stated; decency embodied; the warnings of climate science respected instead of mocked. (He called on the country to “treat the next three, four, and five years according to their power to decide what the next 30, 40, and 50 are going to look like.”) The excitement in the crowd, that is to say, was tinged with heartbreak over the contrast between this leader and the status quo—roughly the difference between broccoli and arsenic. There was a palpable anxiety, at a moment of grave peril for our democracy and planet, about whether the country would wake to the promise of this campaign and realize that Buttigieg might just be the one best suited to answer the call of history. 

Six months later, Buttigieg led the Iowa polls. The improbable was looking possible. “Moral courage speaks with a certain clarity. Listen for it,” Kevin Costner told a crowd in December, when endorsing the candidate in the state where his film “Field of Dreams” was set. “You've heard it throughout history. You know what it sounds like. We know who got it right, and what the echoes would sound like today.” It seemed possible that, as in 2007, the country had lit upon a young leader whose candidacy would have once been unfathomable, and who, partly for that reason, was uniquely suited to the moment. But a different narrative was emerging in certain quarters of the left. 

That month, I was invited to attend a fundraiser for Buttigieg at the home of Kevin Ryan, the entrepreneur and founder of Business Insider. Ryan, who was named by the Observer as one of the 100 most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years, has long supported progressive and humanitarian causes, and has served on the boards of Human Rights Watch, Mercy Corps, and Doctors Without Borders. Just before 6 P.M. on a dark, frosty evening, about 80 people arrived at his Upper West Side townhouse, entering and checking their coats at the lower-level entrance. Ryan greeted guests in his living room upstairs; a beautiful array of hors d'oeuvres was laid out in the kitchen. After Buttigieg arrived and posed for photos with donors in front of the Christmas tree, he stood on the stairs and began to speak, his voice booming. Scarcely 30 seconds had passed before there was a loud commotion downstairs. A protester, an apparent supporter of Bernie Sanders, had entered the home and was demanding to be let upstairs, claiming to be outraged that the press was not allowed into Buttigieg’s fundraisers. “He’s running as a midwesterner, but he spends all his time in rich people’s homes in Manhattan!” he shouted. (In fact, a press reporter was in attendance, in accordance with the campaign’s recently adopted policy, and tweeted much of Buttigieg’s remarks verbatim.) Ryan rushed downstairs and confronted the man, then led him out the door before closing the security gate. (A Twitter user posted a video of the encounter, writing “That time I got thrown out of #WallStreetPete’s billionaire fundraiser.”) 

Buttigieg had continued speaking through the disturbance. “Think about everything that we’ve been through that’s brought us to this point,” he said. “We are not going to be able to move forward as a nation unless we can unify.” He spoke about his aim to reach diverse swaths of Americans, to invite voters of faith “to consider a future where they need not look at the White House and wonder whatever happened to ‘I was hungry and you fed me; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ ”

Outside, more Sanders supporters had gathered, and they began to bang on metal pots while yelling “Where is Pete? Where is Pete?” 

“By the way,” Buttieg said, his face lighting up with a smile, “one of the things you learn in deployment is dealing with distracting noises.” The room cheered. 

When Buttigieg concluded his remarks and took questions, a Broadway performer named Jesse Nager raised his hand. “I’m black, obviously, and I think the narrative that he’s not getting the black vote is silly,” Nager told the crowd. “They just don’t know who he is yet. When he goes and talks in black communities, people fall in love with him.” Buttigieg took questions about national security, about economics, about how to knit the country back together. He spoke about bringing farmers into the effort to fight climate change, about the need for a National Popular Vote, and for Constitutional reform to overturn Citizens United.

Outside, the protesters kept banging their pots. “Where is Pete? Where is Pete?”

He called for raising taxes on the wealthiest, for a 21st century version of the Voting Rights Act, for insuring that all Americans had access to healthcare, in a way that avoided the politically toxic path of forcing them off private insurance. 

“Where is Pete?” Clank, clank, clank...

“Remember, the president’s big theme is, ‘Tolerate the racial division, tolerate the chaos, and in return, I will give you growth somewhat slower than Obama did,’ ” Buttigieg said, describing Trump’s boasts about the economy as being “like the rooster who thinks he made the sun come up.” 

After thanking the group and encouraging them to spread the word with friends and family, Buttigieg briefly mingled with supporters who had swarmed around him. I asked Kevin Ryan what he made of the candidate. Ryan had met Obama before the former president announced his candidacy, he said, and left with the sense that he had just met a future president. Buttigieg impressed him similarly. “These are the two people in the last 15 years, who I’ve walked out [after meeting] and thought, ‘You know what, I think this person is just supernaturally intelligent, and just has a nice way around him,’ ” Ryan told me. Buttigieg and Obama are “different people,” he said, “but they’re friendly, they’re nice, they’re cool under pressure. You can imagine him getting the call at 3 A.M., you can imagine him having super smart people around him—and Obama did, too. And that’s what we’re looking for.”

Ryan was dismayed that a political protest was taking place somewhere other than outside Trump Tower, that Sanders supporters were turning their ire on such a promising progressive candidate. “That’s how you can lose, you know,” he said.

When I checked Twitter later that night, #WallStreetPete had begun trending. 

Soon thereafter, of course, despite Buttigieg’s winning the Iowa caucuses, Democratic voters consolidated behind Joe Biden, whom many considered the safest choice to defeat Trump. Yet the failure to nominate Buttigieg—and, consequently, his not being on the 2024 Democratic ticket, given that Harris already appears too far left to many Americans and needs a non-minority running mate, despite Buttigieg’s having correctly refused to adopt far-left policies that Harris embraced in 2019 that would have amounted to electoral suicide—continues to haunt many of his supporters as a historic missed opportunity. Rather than selecting the figure, in 2020, who was likely the most politically gifted, the most capable of galvanizing Americans of diverse ideology—and whose candidacy embodied both generational and transformative change—voters opted for a man whose age would prove disastrous for his prospects of a second term. As Buttigieg pointed out, every time a Democrat had won the presidency in the last 50 years it had been a nominee representing a new generation and a perspective from outside Washington. Buttigieg clearly met this criteria, even as he was dismissed as being too young, and portrayed by the far-left as “centrist” or in the pocket of fossil-fuel interests, when the heart of his campaign was based on a deeply progressive platform, with a vital focus on democratic reform. 

Amid the national emergency of the Trump presidency, and the growing chaos caused by its war on truth, Buttigieg emitted a preternatural calm. He spoke, and listened, when it seemed that most others were shouting. He was dismissed as “Obama-lite,” yet displayed a capacity for directness that escaped Obama. Buttigieg argued for policies more progressive than Obama’s, in language that was, ironically, more able to appeal to conservatives. Obama complained meekly about Fox News, speaking only euphemistically about its dangerous toxicity; Buttigieg went on Fox News, called out the hateful ethno-nationalism of some of its pundits, and did town halls that received standing ovations. For the first time in my life, as someone who hails from a conservative background in North Carolina, I saw a candidate capable of countering the ways that the network was cynically misleading millions and poisoning our democracy. Elizabeth Warren had masterfully summed up the outlet in four words, as a “hate-for-profit racket,” and refused (for understandable reasons) to participate in its charade. But the skill and boldness of Buttigieg’s head-on approach called to mind a remark that the folk legend David Crosby had made, calling Buttigieg “the smartest man I've ever seen in politics... He's smarter than all the rest of them put together. He's brilliant, and he's honest, and he's dedicated, and he's brave.” In an era when corrupt interests wanted voters to be confused about the truth, and to fear the left as socialists, a young progressive who spoke the truth most eloquently, and who knew how to reach vast swaths of Americans, was a force to be reckoned with. 

The epistemic crisis in which this country remains embroiled is a defining challenge of our time, and a danger to democracy—and Buttigieg was poised to counter the epistemic fragmentation better than anyone. For years, American democracy has needed a leader who can take on the propaganda and expose it as fundamentally unconservative and antithetical to American values. The young Sanders supporters who were busy spreading disinformation about Buttigieg on Twitter (and at his fundraisers and rallies) might, instead, have rallied behind his campaign, seeing him correctly as the champion for their values that he was, and thereby helped give rise to a nominee who was more progressive than Biden, more transformative, better positioned to lead this country for two terms in the prime of his life. But in a disquieting parallel to the right’s epistemic closure, the far-left’s echo-chamber perpetuated the impression that Buttigieg’s progressive platform was that of a “corporate shill” in the pocket of billionaires. (Billionaires comprised .0054% of Buttigieg’s donor base, and their contributions amounted to .16% of the funds raised, according to the campaign.) I had watched, with horror and heartbreak, to see relatives and friends follow Fox News all the way into Trumpism. It was almost as disturbing to see progressives, caught in their own ideological fever dreams, attacking this young leader for being something that he wasn’t. 

The banging pots at that December fundraiser were, for me, the sonic embodiment of our epistemic crisis. The distrust between, and within, our parties had metastasized; it had become a challenge to go through our days without the chaos overwhelming our senses and leaving us numb. Such is common in authoritarian societies, where citizens often grow resigned and apathetic, not knowing whom to trust, feeling that the truth is unknowable. Mayor Pete was uniquely equipped to counter this nihilism. His calm, soft-spoken demeanor masked a fierce intelligence, a keen awareness of the undercurrents of fear and confusion coursing through our politics, and a capacity to respond in a way that welcomed into the fight for democracy increasing numbers of, as he put it, “future former Republicans.” He displayed an unrivaled ability to speak to all Americans, to help us unite around values we share, and around truth itself.

On the night Buttigieg ended his candidacy, Peter Sagal, the National Public Radio host, joined those who were standing up, if belatedly, to the attacks on him, writing, on Twitter, “All the people On Here and elsewhere who insulted him, mocked him, for not being Democratic enough, for not being gay enough, for not being progressive enough, for being insincere and manufactured... you were all, every one of you, dead wrong the whole time.” William Saletan, of Slate, explained that the left’s critique of Buttigieg had been backward: “By sending signals of inclusion to moderates and disaffected Republicans, he made us comfortable with a candidate whose ideas were often well to our left,” he wrote. “I didn’t agree with him that the filibuster should be abolished or that justices should be added to the Supreme Court. But because those ideas were coming from him, I was willing to listen to them.” One of his supporters, a woman in her fifties named Deborah Knox, who had been inspired to politically canvass for the first time in her life, wrote on Facebook: “I often see him as somehow putting his arms underneath everyone, speaking progressive with a conservative accent to those who can hear that better, picking everyone up and saying, 'Folks, we do need to move forward, but we are going to go together and I’ve got you!’ ” 

As the current race marches on, and America continues to be afflicted by a party that has lost touch with its conservative values and turned away from democracy—having built an entire media ecosystem that keeps its audience addicted to the dopamine rush of resentment and tribal hatred—I keep thinking back to the giddiness in the concert hall five summers ago, when people from all over the world had descended on New York to mark the progress of half a century. As Buttigieg’s speech drew to a close, the applause built to a crescendo. “Will you help me bring about a new day in American politics?” he asked. “And as grim as this moment might be, will you help me find joy in that process?” The crowd roared, drunk at the thought of what might be possible.

Stating plainly that one of America’s two major parties, the party putatively devoted to advancing the ideas and ideals of conservatism, has now fallen into autocratic disrepute is unnerving for a magazine committed to being, in the words of our founding manifesto, “of no party or clique.” Criticism of the Republican Party does not suggest an axiomatic endorsement of the Democratic Party, its leaders and policies. Substantive, even caustic, critiques can of course be made up and down the Democratic line. But avoiding partisan entanglement does not mean that we must turn away from the obvious. The leaders of the Republican Party—the soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behavior—are attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly.

The legacy of Fox News, which goes unmentioned, nonetheless infuses the piece. Gellman writes:

Trump came closer than anyone thought he could to toppling a free election a year ago. He is preparing in plain view to do it again, and his position is growing stronger. Republican acolytes have identified the weak points in our electoral apparatus and are methodically exploiting them. They have set loose and now are driven by the animus of tens of millions of aggrieved Trump supporters who are prone to conspiracy thinking, embrace violence, and reject democratic defeat...

Democracy will be on trial in 2024. A strong and clear-eyed president, faced with such a test, would devote his presidency to meeting it. Biden knows better than I do what it looks like when a president fully marshals his power and resources to face a challenge. It doesn’t look like this.

Gellman's reporting in 2020 prophesied the looming attack on American democracy as well as anyone's. (Excluding the likes of Bill Maher, who'd warned consistently about a "slow-moving coup" for more than four years, while politicians and pundits alike laughed off his concerns.) Will people in charge finally listen?

In another vital piece that's part of the same issue, George Packer calls for

a civic movement to save democracy. In an age of extreme polarization, it would take the form of a broad alliance of the left and the center-right. This democratic coalition would have to imagine America’s political suicide without distractions or illusions. And it would have to take precedence over everything else in politics.

Citizens will have to do boring things—run for obscure local election offices and volunteer as poll watchers—with the same unflagging energy as the enemies of democracy. Decent Republicans will have to work and vote for Democrats, and Democrats will have to work and vote for anti-Trump Republicans or independents in races where no Democrat has a chance to win. Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration will have to make the Freedom to Vote Act their top priority, altering or ending the filibuster to give this democratic fire wall a chance to become law.

It will be no easy matter to defy the prevailing forces in American politics—those that continually push us toward the extremes, to the benefit of elites in technology, media, and politics. A cycle of mutual antagonism normalizes illiberal thinking on all sides. The illiberalism of progressives—still no match for that of the antidemocratic right—consists of an ideology of identity that tolerates little dissent. As a political strategy, it has proved self-destructive. Ignoring ordinary citizens’ reasonable anxieties about crime, immigration, and education—or worse, dismissing them as racist—only encourages the real racists on the right, fails to turn out the left, and infuriates the middle. The ultimate winner will be Trump.

The overriding concern of democratic citizens must be the survival and strength of the alliance. They will have to resist going to the mat over issues that threaten to tear it apart. The point is not to abandon politics, but to pursue it wisely. Avoid language and postures that needlessly antagonize people with whom you disagree; distinguish between their legitimate and illegitimate views; take stock of their experiences. This, too, requires imagination.

Finding shared ground wherever possible in pursuit of the common good is not most people’s favorite brand of politics. But it’s the politics we need for the emergency that’s staring us in the face, if only we will see it.

Trump and the GOP have in fact attempted nothing less than a kind of virtual secession from the American political system... Once restored, the Great Leader, unchecked by Congress or the courts, may be expected to pursue authoritarian, kleptocratic politics on a scale merely hinted at during his first four years in office... But more than that, the Republican Party, if successful, will be poised to secure what has been its supreme political goal for a long time, long before Trump, something that the southern Slave Power had hoped to achieve before the rise of the Lincoln Republicans drove it to disunion — a more or less ironclad system of undemocratic minority rule. That new system would block national action over any issue that the red state minority finds objectionable, from civil rights, abortion rights, and gun-safety to economic regulation and progressive income taxes. And by sustaining and reinforcing every undemocratic instrument the system affords, the Republicans could make that minority rule more or less permanent. Without dissolving the Union or amending the Constitution, or assaulting the Capitol, the Republican Party will have replaced American democracy with minority despotism...

With the Supreme Court majority firmly on its side, the minoritarian Republican Party that long ago became a hard right-wing outlier in our politics will have established a firmer a grip on American government — across the board, from top to bottom — than any other party in our history has enjoyed... The Republicans will have triumphed not by repeating Trump’s sedition but instead by manipulating and perverting the system in order to overthrow it. Right-wing Bolsheviks, they will have strangled democracy with its own rope...

Democratic majoritarianism was one of the breakthroughs of civilization, and the truest source of political legitimacy. The framers built on that breakthrough by creating a national government that was supposed to reflect a balanced national majority, vastly expanded today beyond what it was in 1787. Now we must worry about protecting the national majority from the minority. We must recognize a minoritarian danger. In a democracy, what is minority rule if not a subversion, and a seizure of power? In its severest test until now, Abraham Lincoln successfully defended the primacy of the majority principle as the nation’s last best protection from anarchy and despotism. Should we fail the same test today, historians will be left to examine the irony of how the Republican Party that Lincoln helped to found became the vehicle for democracy’s destruction.

The conservative Robert Kagan's piece "Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here" is also vital. "The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves," he writes.

Most Americans—and all but a handful of politicians—have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation...

While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life... German conservatives accommodated Adolf Hitler in large part because they opposed the socialists more than they opposed the Nazis, who, after all, shared many of their basic prejudices...

The Republican Party today is a zombie party. Its leaders go through the motions of governing in pursuit of traditional Republican goals, wrestling over infrastructure spending and foreign policy, even as real power in the party has leached away to Trump. From the uneasy and sometimes contentious partnership during Trump’s four years in office, the party’s main if not sole purpose today is as the willing enabler of Trump’s efforts to game the electoral system to ensure his return to power...

We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened, some people still wish to be good Republicans even as they oppose Trump. These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis.

Mirsada Burić ran her way out of a civil war. She was twenty-two years old and living in Sarajevo when, in 1992, she was chosen to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Summer Olympics, in Barcelona. It was an awkward time to be training for a three-thousand-meter race. The republics of the former Yugoslavia—among them Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina—were breaking out into war. Bosnia and Herzegovina had voted for independence in March, and, on April 5th, ultra-nationalist Serb militias, with the support of Serbian president Slobodon Milošević, bent on carving out a Greater Serbia from neighboring Bosnia, began the Siege of Sarajevo, which would send the city into a state of terror for more than three years. Snipers, stationed on the hills overlooking Sarajevo, picked off civilians at random. Shells blew apart thousands of homes. On one of Burić’s runs, near the stadium that had been used for the 1984 Winter Olympics, she narrowly avoided being hit when a barrage of shells landed around her. On another occasion, while stretching in a park, she heard a sniper’s bullet slice the air over her head and hit a tree. “It sounded like a whip,” she said.

The unravelling of Bosnia’s peaceful multi-ethnic society felt surreal. The fact that many of her neighbors were Christian Orthodox Serb, whereas Burić was Muslim, had never been an issue; marriage between different ethnicities was not uncommon. (Bosnian Serbs then constituted roughly a third of Bosnia’s populace; Croat and Bosnian Muslims constituted most of the rest.) But many of her Serb neighbors joined the militias, and the sight of them in uniforms and ultra-nationalist insignia stunned her. Her family’s home was shelled, and they spent three days hiding in her uncle’s house, in back rooms that were built into the mountainside, before escaping out a window at night, crawling on the street to avoid sniper fire. Her brother disappeared one morning and was never seen again. Shortly thereafter, less than two months before the Olympics, Burić spent two weeks in a concentration camp. Aside from that time, she still managed to train amid the violence. She resorted to the stairs of apartment buildings and an underground parking garage. By the time she made it to Barcelona, she was determined but tired, grieving for her brother and for her country. In her qualifying heat, she finished last. 

BBC featured her in a segment at the time, showing her running through war-torn Sarajevo and speaking out about her city’s plight. It was three years before the international community would wake to the full horror of the violence and ethnic-cleansing. In July 1995, ultra-nationalist Serb forces, backed by Milošević, overran the mountain village of Srebrenica and killed, through the use of firing squads, eight thousand Muslim men and teenage boys in a United Nations Safe Area, a survivor of which I wrote about in 2015. The massacre galvanized the international community, and the U.S. helped negotiate an end to the war later that year. (Milošević died in 2006, awaiting trial in the Hague for his role in the genocide, in addition to other humanitarian crimes.) 

Burić’s making the Olympic team changed her life in a way she could not foresee. On a connecting flight home from Barcelona, a journalist offered to help her secure temporary asylum in Slovenia, after which she was granted refugee status in the U.S. She found a new life in Prescott, Arizona, in 1993, and has lived in America ever since. Since the 2016 election, she has felt as if she has been watching a familiar horror unfold. Lies have spread through America as they had once spread through her nation. The morning after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, she posted on Facebook a photo of a pro-Trump rioter wearing a shirt that read “MAGA CIVIL WAR.” “Almost three decades ago I left my homeland and found a new life in this country because of people like this,” she wrote. “I never thought that I would witness similar insurrection in this country.” She added, “If none of the events over the past four years have been a wake up point, this one must be.” 

I reached out to Burić a few days later. (We met in 2007, when we were attending Columbia’s journalism school. She briefly worked as a journalist but has worked at a bank for most of the years since.) One memory in particular bubbled up as she pondered her experiences in Bosnia and America. She vividly remembers the day, in 1989, before the possibility of war had ever crossed her mind, that her family gathered around the television and listened to Milošević appeal to Serbian victimization in a nationalistic speech on the six-hundredth anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. “We were like, ‘How are you victims? What is happening? Nobody’s treating you any different than the rest of us,’” she said. She recalls seeing Bosnian Serbs at a pro-Milošević rally, dressed in military fatigues with ultra-nationalist insignia on their arms. “He delivered the speech as if he was not representing all of the people of the former Yugoslavia, but only the Serbs,” she said. “That was the beginning of the end.”

The appeal to victimization, to lost status, to grievance, to fear of the Other—Burić recognized all of these traits on the American right, and describes Trump as “the same garbage as Milošević.” And yet even she has been surprised to see how rapidly America’s leaders have gone from demagoguery to language reminiscent of war crimes. Lin Wood, a lawyer in Georgia who helped litigate on behalf of Trump’s efforts at overturning the results in that state, raged against the failure of Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results on January 6th. “Get the firing squads ready,” he wrote on Parler. “Pence goes FIRST.” 

Many conservatives, of course, have dedicated their lives to helping arrest the right’s slide into an alternate reality. David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, embodied this spirit when, prior to the 2016 election, he implored Republicans to be honest about the threat in their midst. “To vote for Trump as a protest against Clinton’s faults would be like amputating a leg because of a sliver in the toe; cutting one’s throat to lower one’s blood pressure,” he wrote. But such voices were no match for the impact of Fox News, its daily portrayal of the opposition as an existential threat that, as Trump has put it, “would turn us into Venezuela.” The effort to delegitimize the Democratic Party had long been a central goal of the right; to watch Fox News during the previous two decades was to witness a country growing more tribalized in real time, more vulnerable to an authoritarian demagogue. No matter the news on any day, that evening the pundits would assure their audience that the left was coming to get them—coming to get their guns, their values, their communities, their country. Our senses—our collective good sense—were being overwhelmed. Burić compares this onslaught of disinformation to the efforts to vilify Bosnian Muslims via a campaign of hateful propaganda in the early 1990s. She remembers hearing ultra-nationalist Serbs call into the radio, their language laced with hatred and invective about the threat that Muslims posed, about their plans to “steal” land that was rightfully that of Serbs. America was coming under a similar kind of siege, it seemed to her, where truth was under assault, ethno-nationalist hatreds were being nurtured, scientists were viewed with suspicion, and conspiracies flourished. Moderate policy ideas were being portrayed as “socialism.” Burić has waited for more Americans to stand up for the truth, for leaders to more clearly explain that the likes of Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are not representing Americans who are "unheard,” but rather are attacking our Republic with a dangerous lie. They are not defending us from "socialism"—that, too, is a lie told to help delegitimize the opposition, as if slightly higher marginal tax rates and recognizing the dictates of science to mitigate environmental catastrophe or a pandemic will turn us into a Latin American hellhole.

There have been promising signs. Increasing numbers of Republicans have broken with Trump, and ten House members voted for his impeachment. (Some G.O.P. members who voted against impeachment anonymously told the press that they feared for their lives had they not done so.) Forbes magazine, displaying a moral clarity that has been rare in business media in recent years, published an editorial denouncing the January 6th insurrection as being “rooted in lies,” and warning that, if firms hire any of the “fabulists” who have defended Trump, then “Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.” Dozens of major companies have likewise announced that they will stop supporting candidates who voted to overturn the election. This insistence on truth, on higher standards of respect and accountability, will be at the heart of any serious effort to rebuild our civic life. But it will demand a clear-eyed look at the sources of disinformation—a willingness to speak bluntly about and confront, rather than condone, outlets like Fox News Channel, which, even in its twenty-fifth year of existence, is yet to be sufficiently appreciated as the anti-democratic poison that it is. And institutions such as the Wall St. Journal’s editorial page, long a bastion of respectable conservative thought, demand more rigorous questioning for their role in defending conspiratorial, anti-democratic thinking. The imperative is not to oppose conservatism but to save it. 

On the evening of November 7th, when Joseph Biden was declared the winner of the U.S. Presidential election, Sarajevo projected onto its historic City Hall an image of him meeting in the 1990s with Alija Izetbegović, the late former president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “BOSNIA REMEMBERS” appeared above the image, with the Bosnian and American flags providing the backdrop. The sight was genuinely moving, recalling a time when the U.S. was near the peak of its power, more respected in the world, however belated its leadership in helping end the Bosnian war had been. (The Republican Bob Dole, in fact, was among the U.S. leaders lobbying for an earlier and more aggressive response, as Samantha Power documents in “A Problem From Hell,” a history of genocide in the twentieth century.) Bosnia remained deeply grateful to the America it had known. The vast majority of Bosnian refugees supported Biden in his bid for the presidency, Burić told me, though she knows a few who voted for Trump. “I tried to tell them, ‘Your family was persecuted by the same type of people that Trump is. How could you come here and, after thirty years, vote for the same garbage? Just because of your checkbook?’”

While living in Prescott, she felt a shift in the culture during Barack Obama’s presidency. At the bank where she worked, she began to notice customers casually using racial slurs, which her co-workers tended to ignore or laugh off. Prescott is in a relatively conservative county, but, she said, “Republicans weren’t like that when I moved there.” In 2016, she left for California, where she now works at a different bank, and feels safer and happier. But raising two children, working a nine-to-five routine, and watching the fabric of the societies in which she has lived be ripped apart has left her longing for a quieter life. “I would love to find some little house on the prairie, near a forest away from everything,” she told me. “Hiking, going back to running, planting things in my garden, harvesting fresh produce—not worrying about big things, you know?”

Burić fears for America—the growing tribalism; the way too many have looked the other way when their party was being overtaken by authoritarian demagoguery; the refusal to respect truth, science, and the legitimacy of the political opposition. The prospect of worsening violence strikes her as likely. “The genie is out of the bottle,” she said. “It’s not easy to put it back in.” She saw, early in the Trump era, that something like the January 6th attack was likely; the enabling of lies, the condoning of the President’s appeals to ethno-nationalism, the willing and cynical participation in the disrespect for democratic norms and common decency, the pussy-grabbing—all of this had a cost that would come due. She believes that Twitter’s termination of Trump’s account was a promising step toward accountability, but that the real problem lies with cynical leaders who know better, who continue to repeat the lies, and with networks, like Fox News Channel, whose impact on our culture is only beginning to be fully appreciated. “Severe measures” will be needed to save our democracy, she said. Thinking the danger will fade with Trump out of office is naive. “Post-truth is pre-fascism,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote following the attack on the Capitol, echoing Burić’s worries. Snyder, an expert on twentieth-century Europe, warned Americans that the coordinated effort to deny the legitimacy of the election constituted the kind of “big lie” that has wrecked the lives of millions throughout history. “The lie outlasts the liar,” he wrote, referring to America’s forty-fifth president. “The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish ‘stab in the back’ was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now?” 

Burić can hardly believe that almost thirty years have passed since she watched her city come under a deadly siege. For the last four years she has felt a familiar dread, the horror of watching lies overtake a vast swath of the populace—and watching too many condone or actively abet them. “From the first day that I came here, people were interviewing me about my experience, about what happened. The first thing I always told them was, ‘If it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone else,’” she said. “Thirty years later, here we are.”

In the tradition of leaders across history who stood up for truth amid the fog of tribalism—and who refused to be complicit in the face of evil—hundreds of prominent Republicans and conservatives are standing up for American democracy by endorsing Joe Biden. Please consider sharing their words with friends and family who may be reluctant to vote Democratic, but whose support America now needs.

More than 130 senior Republican national security officials, including former Senators and directors of the C.I.A., F.B.I., and N.S.A., in an open letter: "Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character and competence to lead this nation and has engaged in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as President... Trump has disgraced America’s global reputation and undermined our nation’s moral and diplomatic influence... Joe Biden should be elected the next President of the United States."

230 officials from the George W. Bush administration: "As a nation, we have lost our moral compass... We need to get back to basics: facts matter, there is right and wrong. We can do that with Joe Biden in the Oval Office."

George Will, the conservative icon, who warns that conservatism today has become "unAmerican" and has called for Trump's defeat in all 50 states: "Senate Republicans must be routed [too], as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration."

Garry Kasparov, the chess legend and democracy activist who foresaw the autocratic threat posed by Vladimir Putin: "Anything other than landslide victory for the Democratic ticket may lead to [a] doomsday scenario... Giving Trump any chance of surviving politically and staying in power would be disastrous for America."

More than 100 ex-staffers for John McCain: "President Trump’s inept leadership of the federal government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic has cost many more lives than it should have... His disinterest in American values, his tolerance for despots and his hostility to allies leave us uniquely vulnerable while our adversaries take every advantage of absent American leadership."

Cindy McCain, widow of John McCain: “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There's only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden.”

A group of nearly 100 Republicans and Independents, including Republican presidential candidate Bill Weld: “Donald Trump’s daily assaults on our nation’s founding principles pose an existential threat to the future of the Republic.”

Jeff Flake, former Arizona Senator: "It is because of my conservatism, and because of my belief in the Constitution and the separation of power... that I stand here today, proudly and wholeheartedly, to endorse Joe Biden." He adds, "Don't let anyone tell you that by casting your vote for Joe Biden you are not being conservative. This year, the most conservative thing you can do is put country over party."

Peter Wehner, who served in the previous three Republican administrations: "Conservatism places a premium on prudence, human dignity, respect for the law and institutions, commitment to truth and reality, and a reasonable and reasoning governing temperament. In all of these respects, and others, Mr. Biden is more truly conservative than Mr. Trump."

Bruce Bartlett, former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan: "This election is literally a matter of life and death. Voting for Trump or not voting is voting for death." He adds, "After the war, Germany underwent a process called 'denazification' to clean out all remnants of the Nazi Party in government and society. After Trump is gone, we will need to undergo detrumpification. We should study the German experience."

Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush: "With Joe Biden in the White House, you will never doubt that he will stand with our friends and stand up to our adversaries—never the other way around."

George Conway, Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson, advisors of the Lincoln Project: “This November, Americans will cast their most consequential votes since Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864… Publicly supporting a Democratic nominee for president is a first for all of us… The nation cannot afford another four years of chaos, duplicity and Trump’s reality distortion.” Galen, Weaver, and Wilson have also written that “the United States faces a… threat not from abroad, but from within. The Republican Party… no longer deals in principle, morality, or the pursuit of the common welfare. It is no longer a party driven by a commitment to the rule of law, the preservation of individual liberty, or adherence to the Constitution… It is a dark mirror of the authoritarian regimes we once fought.”

Tom Nichols, nuclear expert and professor at the U.S. Naval War College: "The time for sentimentality is over... The only decent, sensible, and conservative position is to vote against this Republican Party at every level, and bring the sad final days of a once-great political institution to an end... Trump’s few conservative achievements are meaningless when compared with his war on American democracy."

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's 2008 campaign manager: "The conman who said, 'I alone can fix it'... has birthed an era of death, suffering, economic collapse and total chaos across government at an hour of maximum testing and crisis for the nation... He is a disaster and lacks the capacity morally, mentally and intellectually to fulfill the duties of his office." Schmidt has also written, "I have spent much of my life working in GOP politics. I have always believed that both parties were two of the most important institutions to the advancement of human freedom and dignity in the history of the world. Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and values."

Evan McMullin, former C.I.A. officer and 2016 independent presidential candidate: "I'd rather deal with the fact that a Democratic president doesn't always agree with me than sacrifice all of my core principles and the health of the republic to support a dangerously incompetent conman because he happens to call himself a Republican. This isn't complicated."

Jennifer Rubin, conservative columnist: "Let's be honest: There is no conservative movement or party today. There is a Republican Party thoroughly infused with racism and intellectually corrupted by right-wing nationalism... For now, the objective remains removal of Trump and obliteration of a party that has grievously betrayed democracy and abandoned simple decency and honesty."

Andrew Sullivan, conservative author: "[Trump] has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being. If moderates have any chance of defanging the snake of wokeness, and its attempt to deconstruct our Enlightenment inheritance, we must begin with removing the cancer of Trump from the body politic... Removing it will not be enough. But not removing it is democratic death."

William H. McRaven, a retired four-star Navy admiral: "Our Republic is under attack from the president," whose authoritarian mindset is "the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio: "I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country."

Olivia Troy, former top aide and coronavirus adviser to Mike Pence, endorsing Biden on account of Trump's "flat-out disregard for human life."

Christine Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey: "This isn’t about a Republican or Democrat. It’s about a person, a person decent enough, stable enough, strong enough to get our economy back on track."

Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to three Republican presidential candidates: "We have to destroy the Republican Party in order to save it... America needs a sane center-right party. It doesn’t need an extremist party that undermines democracy, caters to White grievances, and rejects science and reason. The only way Republicans will come to their senses is if they see that the path they are on leads to electoral oblivion."

Rick Snyder, former Republican governor of Michigan: "President Trump lacks a moral compass. He ignores the truth. Facts and science matter."

Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of homeland security under George W. Bush: “I will cast my vote for Joe Biden...  [Trump] lacks the empathy, integrity, intellect, and maturity to lead... Our country has paid dearly in lives lost, social unrest, economic hardship, and our standing in the world.”

20 Republican former federal prosecutors, including a F.B.I. and C.I.A. director under Ronald Reagan: Trump is “a threat to the rule of law in our country.”

Peter Keisler, Robert Kruger, Alan Charles Raul, J. Michael Shepherd, and Nicholas Rostow, all lawyers in the Reagan White House: "Mr. Trump’s lawless, amoral and dishonorable ethos makes a mockery of the democratic accountability that is fostered through respect for law and our constitutional principles... Joe Biden can help reverse the un-American miasma foisted upon the country by Donald Trump.”

Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party: "Trump has destroyed the foundations of traditional conservatism and the American institutions upon which our democracy is built. He does not deserve your loyalty, and neither does the party that has allowed it to happen. The only way we can reclaim our principles and build a conservative future is to first defeat him... This I know in my heart to be true: If we do not stand together, cast aside our partisan differences and defeat a hateful dangerous president, we will live forever with the shame of having abandoned our principles, our democracy and generations to come."

Benjamin Ginsberg, who spent four decades practicing election law for Republican candidates: "This is as un-American as it gets... Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn’t about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes... My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him." 

Other notable efforts:

81 Nobel laureates, in an open letter: "At no time in our nation's history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy... As American citizens and as scientists, we wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President."

Scientific American, endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in its 175-year history: "We do not do this lightly. The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science... [W]e urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment."

780 retired national security officials, in an open letter: "our allies no longer trust or respect us, and our enemies no longer fear us... Joe Biden must be the next President of the United States."

The New England Journal of Medicine, breaking with a two-century tradition of avoiding politics: "When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."

More than 2,000 historians, in an open letter: "President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president."

The Atlantic, endorsing for only the fourth time in 163 years: "Trump has brought our country low; he has divided our people; he has pitted race against race; he has corrupted our democracy; he has shown contempt for American ideals; he has made cruelty a sacrament; he has provided comfort to propagators of hate; he has abandoned America’s allies; he has aligned himself with dictators; he has encouraged terrorism and mob violence; he has undermined the agencies and departments of government; he has despoiled the environment; he has opposed free speech; he has lied frenetically and evangelized for conspiracism; he has stolen children from their parents; he has made himself an advocate of a hostile foreign power; and he has failed to protect America from a ravaging virus. Trump is not responsible for all of the 220,000 COVID-19-related deaths in America. But through his avarice and ignorance and negligence and titanic incompetence, he has allowed tens of thousands of Americans to suffer and die, many alone, all needlessly. With each passing day, his presidency reaps more death."

The Economist, issuing perhaps the sternest warning in its history: "Donald Trump has desecrated the values that make America a beacon to the world."

Nature, the prestigious science journal: "We cannot stand by and let science be undermined. Joe Biden’s trust in truth, evidence, science and democracy make him the only choice in the US election."

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, two eminent political scientists, on the crucial asymmetric polarization of our two parties. (2016)

Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, two nonpartisan analysts, on the same topic. (2018)

Christopher Browning, a Holocaust historian, on our endangered democracy. A standout essay from the last few years. (2018)

My reflection on Fox News, for which I drew from my own heartbreak over a family fractured by lies and an interview with a seriously pissed-off Reagan economist. (2016)

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative, on the absurd state of affairs. (2019)

Max Boot, a former adviser to Mitt Romney, on the state of the party to which he dedicated his life. (2019)

Max Boot, on why he'll support any Democratic nominee for president. (2019)

Peter Wehner, who served in three Republican administrations, embodying what it means to put country before party. (2019)

David Wallace-Wells, with a crucial piece on climate. (2017)

David Wallace-Wells, with an equally essential piece spelling out why we must vote with the environment foremost in mind. (2019)

Eric Beinhocker, a former McKinsey executive and now an economist at Oxford, with a piece that should be read by every American. (2019)

Alan Weisman, reviewing two of 2019's most important books, David Wallace-Wells's "The Uninhabitable Earth" and Bill McKibben's "Falter." (2019)

Jane Mayer, on the unspeakable corruption behind climate denialism. (2019)

Joe Walsh, among the growing number of Republicans urging the president's defeat. (2019)

Anthony Scaramucci, another example. (2019)

Jennifer Rubin, a vital conservative voice in journalism today. (2019)

Mark Galli, who, in his final act as editor of Christianity Today, channels the values of Christ. (2019)

Stuart Stevens, who worked for five Republican presidential campaigns and models the courage that this moment demands. (2020)

Nicole Hemmer, on how the right-wing media complex is strangling our democracy to death. (2020)

Ezra Klein, on the asymmetric polarization of our parties and the imperative of democratic reform. (2020)

For further reading, Jonathan Chait is unsurpassed for his political insights.

2019 highlight: Pete Buttigieg greets supporters at a rally in Brooklyn on June 28th—fifty years to the day since the Stonewall Riots launched the modern gay-rights movement. The atmosphere was electric. The only time I've witnessed more civic joy was at Obama's inauguration, when an eight-year pall of ideology and cynicism lifted alongside the departing president's helicopter and America seemed to affirm that truth and science—and one's character rather than color—mattered.

The excitement as Buttigieg spoke was tinged, of course, with the heartbreak one felt over the contrast between this dignified leader and the status quo—roughly the difference between broccoli and arsenic. Between a Bach cello suite and a hippopotamus crapping into your ear. There was a palpable anxiety, in a moment of grave national and planetary peril, about whether the country would wake to the promise of this campaign and recognize that Buttigieg just might be the one best suited to answer the call of history.

Six months later, taking slings from left and right—and holding fast to his campaign values of respect, belonging, truth, teamwork, boldness, responsibility, substance, discipline, excellence, and joy—he leads the Iowa polls.

It is refreshing when relatives of people who have done immense damage to our world—undermining truth and science, spreading fear and division, delegitimizing the political opposition and eroding democracy, all in the nihilistic pursuit of power—step forward and demand better. Kathryn Murdoch, who is leaving her family's media empire to fight climate change, is an inspiration.

Something similar is happening in countless families across America who were caught up in supporting a dangerous and altogether terrible man in 2016—justifying their misjudgment with the fear and hatred that they sincerely (if irrationally) felt toward politicians whom Murdoch media had cynically and relentlessly portrayed as an existential threat. People like Kathryn—no matter how rich or poor, no matter their political persuasion—are speaking out against this madness, pleading with loved ones to confront the truth about the man whom the likes of Vladimir Putin, for obvious reasons, wanted badly to see elected.

Early this week, that man strode into the United Nations and made clear that he would continue to ignore the most serious crisis humanity has ever faced, a cause for which millions of young protesters around the globe had marched three days earlier. Moreover, he mocked the demeanor and passion of the autistic 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who had inspired those protesters with her courage, and who is as close to a Martin Luther King Jr. as this world has, for her efforts to confront the dire peril we face. Her sole message is “listen to the science”—her only goal being to remind us that there is such a thing as truth, and that we’ve been willfully ignoring it. She knows that, if we only acknowledged what we know, we would never tolerate leaders whose inaction ensures that hundreds of millions will be uprooted or face mortal hardship, that a million species could go extinct, that civilization itself could teeter. She is urging us to reconnect with our conscience, to act like adults, and there is no more important message now. Trump's mockery of her rips off the mask of the nihilism he represents. There is no longer any pretense that supporting him is justified for the sake of tax rates, that condoning his racism and corruption and abdication of leadership is in any way patriotic. Enough with the what-about-ism, the "What about Biden’s son and Ukraine?" Enough with the "I don't love Trump, but I could never vote for a Democrat." Enough. 

Matthew Dowd was the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. He is among the growing chorus of conservatives who understand that silence in the face of evil is inexcusable. Dowd responded to Trump’s mockery by writing to Greta: "You stand more for the ideals of America than nearly every member of this administration and nearly everyone at Fox News.” That is the voice of truth. That is what the better angels of our nature are telling us. 

Let’s hold onto our values, our identities, our faith, while being also on the right side of history. It is ok to admit wrong, to admit that perhaps George Will was right to have called for Trump's defeat in all 50 states, or that John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager was onto something when he called recently for the electoral annihilation of the party to which he’d dedicated his life. It is ok to change your mind. Future generations will be grateful that we looked around, like Kathryn Murdoch, and couldn't stand for what our silence would have abetted.

History tells us that mass social movements always have a moral argument at their core. The anti-slavery movement only took off once white people in Europe and America began to see people of African descent not as property but as people. The argument that won wasn’t over the economics of slavery, or whether slavery was in the self-interest of white people or not. The argument that mobilized the abolition movement, and eventually gave it political power, was that enslaving other human beings is evil and had to be stopped...

The climate change movement must become a Carbon Abolition movement. There will inevitably be a diversity of views on what a zero-carbon economy looks like and how to get there. But there must be absolute unity and clarity that the current carbon economy is immoral and must end, and that net-positive carbon emissions must be illegal in all countries by 2050...

Under slavery, white people benefitted economically and socially by harming people of African descent. Under the fossil economy, people alive today benefit economically and socially by harming, and perhaps even extinguishing, future generations. Pre-1970s we had an excuse, we didn’t know; and perhaps even as late as the 1990s some could argue that we didn’t know for sure. But now we do know. Carbon emissions are a moral wrong, they are destroying life on Earth, and must be abolished.

By defining the boundaries of conceivability more accurately, catastrophic thinking makes it easier to see the threat of climate change clearly. 

...[P]erhaps the strongest argument for the wisdom of catastrophic thinking is that all of our mental reflexes run in the opposite direction, toward disbelief about the possibility of very bad outcomes. I know this from personal experience. I have spent the past three years buried in climate science and following the research as it expanded into ever darker territory. 

...I know the science is true, I know the threat is all-encompassing, and I know its effects, should emissions continue unabated, will be terrifying. And yet, when I imagine my life three decades from now, or the life of my daughter five decades now, I have to admit that I am not imagining a world on fire but one similar to the one we have now. That is how hard it is to shake complacency. We are all living in delusion, unable to really process the news from science that climate change amounts to an all-encompassing threat. Indeed, a threat the size of life itself.

How can we be this deluded? One answer comes from behavioral economics. The scroll of cognitive biases identified by psychologists and fellow travelers over the past half-century can seem, like a social media feed, bottomless, and they distort and distend our perception of a changing climate. These optimistic prejudices, prophylactic biases and emotional reflexes form an entire library of climate delusion. 

We build our view of the universe outward from our own experience, a reflexive tendency that surely shapes our ability to comprehend genuinely existential threats to the species. We have a tendency to wait for others to act, rather than acting ourselves; a preference for the present situation; a disinclination to change things; and an excess of confidence that we can change things easily, should we need to, no matter the scale. We can’t see anything but through cataracts of self-deception.

What is needed is collective action—which is why the Republican Party, in its current corrupt form, focused chiefly on the redistribution of wealth upwards and the interests of the fossil fuel industry—must be electorally annihilated.

I highly recommend the whole piece.

I was thrilled to learn this week that the Holocaust Museum Houston is adding my photo of Mevludin Orić to their collection, as part of their effort to educate the public about the Holocaust. (The photo appeared in my New Yorker article "The Legacy of Srebrenica, Twenty Years Later.") Orić's story is extreme—he dodged a bullet in front of a Serbian firing squad and played dead while thousands of Muslim men and teenage boys were gunned down around him—but the lessons from Bosnia's war are timeless.

Nationalism is dangerous. People who inflame it, or condone those who do, are playing with fire. Today in the U.S., one of our two political parties is led by nationalist types who spread hatred and lies, while attacking the institutions of democracy. They are ripping apart our collective ability to agree on truth, without which we cannot hope to address challenges like climate change. It’s no hyperbole to say the fate of the planet may hinge on our ability to confront this madness.

I wish more Americans could meet Bosnians like Orić, whose society was ripped apart by nationalism, and whose relatives were raped or tortured or killed by men who’d been led to see them as the Other. I’m thinking especially of journalists and TV pundits who think of themselves as “centrists,” as above the fray of partisan politics. I imagine them lecturing Bosnians about how much they lament the region’s “divisiveness,” how “both sides” were to blame for the violence. How Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević might have been reckless, but was responding to the legitimate fears of average Serbs. I would like to witness the moment when the stare they received in response sent a chill down their spine.

"How are things?" he said upon entering.

"Dermatological things, or life things?"

"What's going on with you?"

I made a comment about the madness of having a president working to convince millions of Americans that journalists are the enemy. Twenty-five minutes later—other patients waiting with their own genitals exposed be damned—we're still in the midst of a concerted discussion about voting rights and democratic erosion, and what the Supreme Court's lurch to the right portends for the viability of the American experiment. There's a degree of passion and concern that I've never before seen on his Botoxed face.

Cancer is scary. By the time you realize it has spread—through a body, through a country—it's often too late.

Also worth reading is the invaluable Adam Serwer on this week's events:

Sometimes, when democracies die, they do so in grand gestures. But often there is no single event that heralds the end of the rule of law, but a slow, imperceptible erosion of the safeguards against political abuse of state power.

Any sense of civic obligation among Republicans is quickly fading: the idea that the opposition has rights, that judges and elected officials serve all of the American people and not simply their own party’s base, that the judiciary does not exist as a partisan fiefdom to further one side’s ideological agenda. In its place is a growing adherence to reflexive Trumpism. No objection the opposition could have is legitimate, because no opposition is legitimate. Those who support Trump are good, and those who oppose him are bad.

...As for Kavanaugh, every opinion he writes, every decision he joins, and every day he sits on the bench will be tainted with illegitimacy. As senators who represent a shrinking portion of the population prepare to confirm a justice more Americans oppose than support, who was nominated by a president for whom most of the electorate did not vote, the crisis of American democracy comes into sharp relief. Whatever their self-perception, Republican control of the three branches of government is countermajoritarian. With the guardrails of separated powers broken, the last remaining defense for American democracy and the rule of law is the electorate itself.

Finally, wash it all down with this comment from David Wallace-Wells, on the U.N.'s climate report. Amid the (un)American experiment in ethno-nationalism and would-be authoritarian rule, the most important story in the world remains neglected.

Her latest album, "Regina," throbs with the energy that's alive in our country nowadays, as citizens of all political persuasions—but especially women—stand up to defend our democracy. Women who are fed up with having their pussies grabbed, and with their fellow citizens' brains being grabbed by authoritarian pussies.

Also, don't miss John Cassidy on how this anti-democratic power grab threatens us all. Ultimately, this is about how, through the erosion of democracy, we're losing our essential representation—that is, losing our collective ability to address challenges like climate change:

As Kavanaugh prepares to make his way to the Capitol, and, most probably, to a lifetime appointment in the old courthouse behind it, we are witnessing the denouement of an outrageous power grab by a radicalized political party, its wealthy backers, and a rogue President. It is essential to remember this wider context... Democrats, Independents, and anybody else who cares about the functioning of American democracy have good reason to be sore. There is no majority of voters out there clamoring for a ban on abortion, restrictions on collective bargaining, roadblocks to legal claims against big companies, or the purging from the electoral rolls of voters who skip a couple of elections. These are the concerns of smaller groups, with strong ties to the Republican Party, whose interests will be disproportionately represented.

Voting remains absolutely vital for resisting this ongoing assault on our democracy—an assault that Fox News, Putin, and other corrupt actors will keep waging in ever more aggressive ways. But Americans need to understand that, in 2020 and 2022, they will be participating in an increasingly undemocratic system in which they're not being fully represented. The bracing reality is that the fight to save our democracy will last for decades.

"Abraham Lincoln's Warning," by Conor Friedersdorf

"I left the Republican Party. Now I want Democrats to take over," by Max Boot

May more Republicans join the fight to save our democracy, and the values of prudence and patriotism that they profess to hold dear. The initial discomfort of ripping off the shackles of tribalism—which in the past may have helped us feel anchored to our identities as part of a political party, but which now lead too many of us to act with unreason, to condone things we've spent our lives warning others about the risks of condoning—will be replaced with the more meaningful assurance that one is on the right side of history.

What must happen now is simple. Defeating the G.O.P. at every level—as George Will and many other prominent conservatives are calling for—is now a patriotic duty. Steve Schmidt, John McCain's 2008 campaign manager, exemplifies the courage necessary to eschew tribalism, precisely at a time (as is always the case) when tribalism is most powerful. "29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life," he recently wrote. "Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump. It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders." He went on to emphasize that the notion—popular among Trump apologists—that "both sides" are equally to blame is nonsense:

This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuses of Humanity in our history. It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated... The first step to a season of renewal in our land is the absolute and utter repudiation of Trump and his vile enablers in the 2018 election by electing Democratic majorities. I do not say this as an advocate of a progressive agenda. I say it as someone who retains belief in DEMOCRACY and decency.

On Ronald Reagan’s grave are these words. “I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” He would be ashamed of McConnell and Ryan and all the rest while this corrupt government establishes internment camps for babies. Everyone of these complicit leaders will carry this shame through history. [Their] legacies will be ones of well earned ignominy. They have disgraced their country and brought dishonor to the Party of Lincoln.

He concludes with the most important thing to understand about American politics:

I have spent much of my life working in GOP politics. I have always believed that both parties were two of the most important institutions to the advancement of human freedom and dignity in the history of the world. Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and values.

This Independent voter will be aligned with the only party left in America that stands for what is right and decent and remains fidelitous to our Republic, objective truth, the rule of law and our Allies. That party is the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, here are two pieces especially worth reading this week: "The Republican Court and the Era of Minority Rule", by Jonathan Chait, who writes: "The central drama of the Trump era is a struggle to defend American democracy against an authoritarian leader. The Republican Party’s comfort with the crude authoritarianism of its president, though, did not spring out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a party increasingly comfortable with, and reliant on, countermajoritarian power."

And a reflection from the ever-incisive Andrew Sullivan, "Anthony Kennedy and the Death of True American Conservatism", on how the Republican Party has become an enemy of true conservatism: "There is not an institution or custom or alliance or constitutional norm Trump won’t vandalize at a second’s notice. He cares little for the generations ahead of us (see the debt and the environment); nor respects the wisdom of the past (see his desire to obliterate the idea of an independent Justice Department or the NATO alliance); he is a lonely, maladjusted id, with Western civilization as a plaything in his hands. And Republicanism — in its shameful embrace of this monster, its determined rape of the environment, destruction of our fiscal standing, evisceration of our allies, callousness toward the sick, and newfound contempt for free trade — has nary a conservative bone in its putrefying body."

Other than that, and that five journalists were gunned down yesterday amid a climate of Stalinist rhetoric from the leader of the free world, happy Friday!