Call me Mr. Schadenfreude

Repug Party is red, Democratic Party is blue

Andrew Sullivan, who stopped blogging a year ago, re-enters the political fray by downloading a grotesquely long piece---7,500 words!---in New York magazine. He must be getting paid by the word. He was much better in the short form on his blog. 

An erstwhile conservative, Sullivan scolds those of us who are delighted at the implosion of the Republican Party and look forward to a landslide victory for Hillary and Democrats in November:

And so those Democrats who are gleefully predicting a Clinton landslide in November need to both check their complacency and understand that the Trump question really isn’t a cause for partisan Schadenfreude anymore. It’s much more dangerous than that. Those still backing the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders, might want to reflect that their critique of Clinton’s experience and expertise — and their facile conflation of that with corruption — is only playing into Trump’s hands. 

That it will fall to Clinton to temper her party’s ambitions will be uncomfortable to watch, since her willingness to compromise and equivocate is precisely what many Americans find so distrustful. And yet she may soon be all we have left to counter the threat. She needs to grasp the lethality of her foe, moderate the kind of identity politics that unwittingly empowers him, make an unapologetic case that experience and moderation are not vices, address much more directly the anxieties of the white working class—and Democrats must listen.

I have no need for German terminology. I am pleased that the moronic Trump is getting the Repug nomination and gleefully anticipate how Hillary and the Democratic Party are going to smash the racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun-besotted, militaristic American political party. After November, the Repugs will increasingly be relegated to the south, rural states, and gerrymandered congressional districts.

Hillary is supposed to be apologetic for representing the interests of non-whites, gays, and women? Nope. The historical process surprised everybody---including the gay Sullivan---with the widespread acceptance of gay marriage, and it will now provide the most pleasant surprise of all---relegating the reactionary Republican Party to the margins of American life.