"If Democrats get control of Congress top of agenda is combing through Melania's immigration paperwork and sending a criminal referral to DOJ for any inconsistencies," posted Asha Rangappa on Bluesky on October 12. "Maybe Elon and others, too, while they're at it. FAFO."
Rangappa is the sort of person that the next Democratic president might tap as Attorney General, or at least a high official in the justice department. She's a former FBI agent, a dean and senior lecturer at Yale Law School, and a national security expert on CNN, among many other gigs over the years. But if the next Democratic president isn’t an enthusiast for political prosecutions and wielding the FBI and federal machinery for purposes of personal revenge, they should avoid appointing Rangappa and her like at all costs.
Asha Rangappa and her ilk take Donald Trump as their role model. She’s become exactly what she most vociferously repudiates, and she flatly promises here to violate her own most seriously-expressed commitments, for example to the rule of law. "Let's find something to prosecute Melania Trump for" isn’t reasonable law enforcement. Rangappa's one of many Democrats who’ve become the people they hate and are passionately advocating the very positions they most vociferously reject. Don't let this happen to you.
Yesterday, I early-voted in Virginia, though I’d intended to refrain this year. But there were several proposed amendments to the state constitution that I thought worthwhile or even necessary: a pro-choice amendment and an amendment restoring the right to vote to criminals who have served their time, for example. (After the 1992 cycle, after having done five years for armed robbery in the state pen, my brother Jim boldly slapped a "Don't blame me, I'm a felon" sticker on his car. And it's true, people who are prohibited from voting have, all things being equal, made fewer terrible ethical mistakes than good citizens who vote regularly.)
However, I left the ovals blank in the Congressional and Senate races, in which the incumbents are Democrats Suhas Subramanyam and Mark Warner. I really hate Trump. I hate the wars and the gross-ass corruption and vicious prosecutions of opponents and the overwhelming pseudo-macho stupidity and the anti-immigrant xenophobia and the Christian nationalism. Because of this, and despite the fact that I also disagree with basic Democratic-party politics in many ways (which I regard as untoward in its statism), I voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. I was hoping to stop Trump, though I hesitated specifically because the Biden administration was heavily arming Israel for the slaughter of Palestinians and Harris couldn't think of any reason or way to be critical of that.
I'm swearing off again. I will no longer repudiate an ongoing genocide, for example, and also vote directly to pay for it and make it more effective, as the Democratic party insisted that I must. Why did they insist I must? I think they thought the political price of quibbling with the slaughter would be too high. Maybe it would reduce contributions from AIPAC. I recall John Kerry, former leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, spending all of 2004 hemming and hawing, making sure anyone who opposed the Iraq war had no one to vote for and that every viable vote was a vote for killing. The strongest anti-war statement he gave across the year-long campaign went like this: "I actually did vote against it before I voted for it."
And why did he vote for it after he voted against it? Electoral strategy. After all, you can't end the war if you don't win the election. But then again, you have to win next time too, so it’ll be the same again and continuously. Also, taking definite positions makes you vulnerable to refutation, whereas if you just keep bobbing and nodding you can't be clearly demonstrated to be wrong. So through electoral politics there was no way to stop or even express opposition to the Iraq war. Cheney thought the war was right. The Democrats thought the war was wrong and voted for it anyway. Who's worse? The whole faction, including Biden and Clinton, should have slunk away in disgrace.
Here in Virginia, just this year, the Democratic party endorsed gerrymandering. Barack Obama and Abigail Spanberger were on my radio all the time, insisting that it was extremely important that I vote for something that I absolutely repudiate. More amazingly, Obama and Spanberger were pushing policies that they themselves repudiate. I propose never to vote for anyone who does anything like that, ever again.
Partly this happens because of a distorted, or flatly evil, conception of the relation of means and ends. Bad means might be necessary for good ends. And in order to stop Cheney, we might have to sort of vaguely become Cheney or at least resort to his level of skullduggery. To stop Trump, we need to get serious. We need to be just as extreme and insulting and wild as he is. That might lead you to some better rhetoric, or at least get you out of the Democratic habit of merely mumbling bureaucratese all day. What compromises, what monstrous positions, would one not make or take in order to win?
But as a strategy for developing policy, it just draws the two parties into identity or makes them continuously mirror one another. It makes the idea of an opposition party absurd. The Democrats are the mimetic party. They have no commitment except to victory and hence to their own aggrandizement. And they’re liable to lose the election anyway, having previously betrayed all their beliefs.
This idiotic path to evil is easy to avoid; just leave the ballot blank, write in Wile E. Coyote or stay home. You’re not morally obliged to vote. In a condition where both candidates advocate gerrymandering, genocide, or arresting their opponents' wives, you’re morally obliged not to.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell
