America’s nightmare is two feral parties: The Democrats might decide that playing by the rules has got them nowhere

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Had Kamala Harris won the US election last month — and it was close, remember, despite the tone of the coverage since then — would Donald Trump have conceded defeat within 24 brisk hours? Would Republicans in Congress be preparing to certify the result in the new year? Would the party’s voters accept her as the legitimate president when asked in polls? On all three counts, there is enough doubt that posing the questions doesn’t seem exotic.

Without quite acknowledging it, American politics has arrived at an understanding. One side can ignore the rules of the game — to the point of challenging election outcomes without proof of fraud — and the other can’t, or at least doesn’t. In the language of the street, but also of game theory, the Democratic party is the sucker. If it were one of the two detainees in the prisoner’s dilemma, it would confess to a crime, the accomplice wouldn’t, and jail would beckon for the former. The prisoner at least has the excuse of ignorance. Democrats are aware of being diddled.

This isn’t tenable. The ultimate risk to the American republic is that Democrats give up their unilateral observance of basic norms. The system can survive, just about, one of the two main parties going feral. It can’t survive both. And so the story isn’t that Joe Biden has pardoned his son, having promised not to. (Even Jimmy Carter, tower of Baptist rectitude, pardoned the “first brother” and Libya enthusiast Billy Carter.) The story is what far worse behaviours it might augur from the Democrats in future, given the incentives they face.

Behaviours such as? Giving up on normal leaders and elevating a demagogue of the left: a Huey Long for our age. Or choosing which election results to honour. Or embracing a leftist version of deep state theory: a total rejection of the US system. The federal judiciary is now permeated with Trump appointees at district, appellate and Supreme level. The tech and finance sectors, which together run much of the architecture of modern life, are pro-Trump to a growing extent. And all this is before his second term, during which his tentacles will spread. Soon, it might be senior Democrats arguing that institutional America is against them, and that survival is not compatible with playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Here is a prediction. At some point, a Democrat of note will write a liberal version of Michael Anton’s “Flight 93” essay. To recap, Anton is the conservative who told his peers in 2016 that Trump, however potentially harmful, was preferable to certain doom for America under godless liberalism. For all its histrionics, the argument had internal logic. If you believe the entire constitutional order is compromised, and the other party unscrupulous, it would be mad to act as normal. Anton’s disgust was less for Democrats than Republicans: for observing the usual niceties, for nibbling on crumbs from the enemy and calling it half a loaf, for revering Burkean decorum when Leninist hardball should be the model.

The Democrats are ripe for a similar eureka moment. Even now, the trend of the party’s behaviour is alarming. Aside from the unpardonable pardon, the Democrats tried to sneak an obviously too old Biden past the electorate until a televised debate exposed their lie. (Might the nation have so much as a “sorry”?) With luck, this is a phase, not a trailer for the future. This column doesn’t suggest that Democrats should break the rules of the game. But their objective interests suggest they eventually will.

How might I be wrong? Well, game theory assumes that all actors are self-seeking. It doesn’t account for patriotism, or the capacity for shame, either of which might keep the Democrats in line. A liberal would say that Republicans haven’t played fair since Newt Gingrich untamed them in 1994, that none of the last three Democratic presidents were treated as wholly legitimate on the right, and that Democrats, despite all these provocations, have not retaliated in kind. Values guide human action, not just incentives.

To which I’d say: the incentives have never been as clear as now. Until a month ago, the Democrats could tell themselves that Republican rule-breaking incurs swift punishment from voters. 2018, 2020 and 2022 were proofs. All that changed in November. A man who tried to overturn a presidential election won the very next one. What reward is there for observing protocol, then? When does honour become a mug’s game? For now, the atmosphere on the left is one of tired acceptance. But in a reversal of the stages of grief, it might be that anger comes later, as a generation of liberals emerges that despises their elders as civilised to a fault.

Two reckless parties: it is unthinkable in a mature democracy. But so, just a decade ago, was the simultaneous debasement of Labour and the Conservatives in Britain. The culmination was Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, the Iran-Iraq war of elections.

It could happen in the US. In fact, the wonder of the Biden pardon is that Democrats haven’t done much worse, much earlier. Comparing Trump to 1930s fascists never captured the true nature of his threat. Those despots wanted such grandiosities as “one people, one realm, one leader” or “ . . . nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”. The danger for America is that Democrats succumb to a more banal motto, the eternal refrain of the cynic. “Everyone does it.”

The only constraint being how fast leopards can eat faces (TM) and how quickly the Democrats can act on that.

Okay, fair, but I really hope there is a behind the scenes conversation happening right now where Democrats are at least threatening to play by Trump’s rules unless the Republicans dial it down.

There needs to be a “Wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!” moment, because if the Democrats just continue to be the adults in the room with zero reciprocity we’re going to wake up in very, very bad place very quickly.

Because the thing with the prisoner’s dilemma analogy is it’s not just that the “sucker” goes to jail, it’s that the other prisoner gets away with zero punishment.

so the choice basically is: play by the rules, or make someone like Shoe0nHead a Huey Long-style nominee (and thus betray neoliberalism) in an uncertain bid for winning back the working class portion of Trump’s electorate

Jesus Christ, this is perhaps one of the darkest takes I have read so far on the election. I don’t think active rule breaking is the answer here. Democrats can engage in tit for tat tactics to a certain extent, but it would be serious mistake to abandon their image as a “law abiding” party. Especially after one of the primary reason for this debacle was them abandoning a commitment to transparency and covering up Biden’s aging.

I would argue Trump’s rule breaking is still heavily punishing him. This would have been a landslide in any other situation.

Democrats need to do a much better job marketing themselves. I liked a lot of what the Harris campaign did, but it’s pretty clear they inherited an antiquated view of media from the Biden campaign. They already have popular policies that even Trump voters approve of as long as they don’t know who it came from. This is purely an image problem that can be fixed with a creative approach to campaigning in 2028.

Democrats are well equipped without having to go down an authoritarian road. They just need to find the right pilot and crew.

As they should.

What is the vision that Democrats offer to blue collar workers and small business owners? Seriously, what is it? Fix this and then we can argue about tactics.