I’d like to offer a modest attempt at healing the new pulse of polarization that afflicts America in the wake of the November 8 election. Some of you no doubt got a sour dose of the problem over Thanksgiving, when families of Trump and Clinton voters—at least those who were able even to tolerate each other’s presence—were forced to talk, or scream, at each other across the dining room table. If you undergo the therapy provided here, the Winter holidays should be a good deal calmer.
Some 43 days before Inauguration Day, partisans on both sides are still remarkably enraged at each other, in the streets, on Facebook and Twitter, seemingly everywhere they interact. This is not normal. Democrats still cannot believe that Republicans overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and Republicans cannot believe that Democrats are being such sore losers.
If we are to stop the spleen-spilling, we first must better understand each other. So let’s do a thought experiment that puts each partisan in the other party’s moccasins. Let’s imagine that the Democratic Party nomination fight had been very different. Instead of a two-person fight that erupted between a socialist gadfly and the avatar of a political dynasty, what if 17 Democrats had fought for the nomination, as was the case with the GOP field in 2016. And imagine that the field included Al Sharpton.
Yeah, good ol’ Reverend Al. Most Americans today probably don’t remember that he already ran for President, way back in 2004. But most Americans know Al. He’s one of the few political figures among us who has almost as much baggage as Donald Trump. Let us count the ways.
Like Trump and birtherism, he first rose to political prominence with a massive lie: the Tawana Brawley affair, in which a black teenager falsely alleged she had been gang-raped by whites.
Like Trump, he’s been known for years for saying racially insensitive things about minorities, like Jews (he challenged them to a fist fight in Crown Heights and referred to them as “diamond dealers” and “white interlopers”) and Koreans.
Like Trump, he’s said nasty things about religious minorities, once saying that Christians shouldn’t vote for Romney because he’s a Mormon. (It should be noted that unlike Trump, Sharpton has often apologized for his slurs.)
His non-profits are almost as ethically challenged as Trump’s businesses, with lawsuits, stiffed vendors, unpaid taxes, and corrupt self-dealing.
He may be the only figure in American politics with a worse record on paying personal taxes than Trump, although of course when Al doesn’t pay Uncle Sam, we all lose a lot less than when Trump cheats on his taxes.
Sharpton even has a record of association with ripping off poor people; he has appeared in a Loan Max ad, a business that traps working people into cycles of debt that frequently lead to bankruptcy.
Al even has philandered and publicly paraded with women while married.
Also, both men were informally advised in their presidential runs by Republican fixer and dirty tricks expert, Roger Stone. Hard to believe? Well, believe it because it’s true.
So if there is a Donald Trump in the Democratic Party, it’s Al Sharpton. I’m not claiming that Sharpton is as bad—he might or might not be, depending on which issues matter to you most. But the guy is manifestly flawed in Trumpian ways. I won’t even bring up the hair issues that join them, or that both of them were once paid to participate in professional wrestling. Oops, I guess I just did.
In my alternate universe, though, let’s adjust a couple things about Al Sharpton—let’s make his MSNBC show as big a hit as Trump’s The Apprentice, and let’s have this more famous Sharpton win the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party. How? The way Trump did. With a rabid base of firm support, the inability of the establishment to unite around an attractive challenger, a media willing to give him more free airtime than all his rivals combined, the candidate’s outsized demagogic skills—plus a signature: reparations for slavery. That’s Sharpton’s Mexican border wall paid for by Mexico: an impossible dream, but one that works politically because it’s extremely simple, concrete, and bold.
Next, let’s link Sharpton to some of the most anti-Semitic and radical forces of the American fringe Left. Let’s say he advocates a “soak the rich” and partial nationalization platform similar to what elected Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and has associates who say it’s time to take Wall Street and our foreign policy back from the Jews. And let’s say this stuff doesn’t seem to hurt him as much as we all expect it would.
It seems improbable, but so was Trump’s victory. And as I pointed out in Running on Race, my book on racial politics in presidential campaigns, the black vote in the Democratic primaries has selected every winner from 1976 on, excepting only 1988 when Jesse Jackson received their support. Granted, Sharpton is far less popular in black America today than Jackson was in 1988, but let’s assume he could rally that vote to him. If the non-black vote were split among the other 16 candidates, Sharpton could win some early victories, and just keep winning until it was down to him and two “normal” Democrats, just like Trump with Ted Cruz and John Kasich.
I can already hear Democrats crying, “but no responsible Democrat would ever endorse Sharpton the way Christie and others went with Trump in the primaries after elimination!” Maybe not; I too find it hard to imagine a Democratic Party endorsing a Chávez-type authoritarianism, particularly one giving off even the slightest whiff of anti-Semitism. But please stay with me, because you have to believe my scenario if you are going to be healed.
On the Republican side, let’s posit a Democratic-style race. So who is the Republican Hillary? It’s not Jeb Bush, though he is dynastic like Hillary. He lacks her polarizing prominence in the 1990s and the endless investigations that Hillary carried with her (whether you think they found anything or not isn’t the issue in politics, now is it?). No, there’s only one figure who works: Dick Cheney, a key architect of the Iraq War and the deep mover behind the authorization of torture. Only Cheney could do to Democratic minds what Hillary did to Republican ones in 2016.
In my scenario, Cheney needs to be a couple years younger and healthier, and plans all through Obama’s second term to win the nomination. So he quietly nails down all the donors and most of the campaign talent. Only Ted Cruz, who really is the Republican Bernie Sanders in so many ways (except that a few Democratic Senators actually like Bernie), challenges him hard. But Cheney prevails just as Hillary prevailed, by slogging it out in the trenches and calling in every IOU he could lay hands on. It’s not a perfect comparison, because even at her least charismatic, Hillary had the zazz of “first-woman President,” which “first President from Wyoming” or “first President with six pacemakers” just can’t match.
Let’s give Cheney some more baggage, though, to make the resemblance stronger. Let’s add some Bush era scandals. How about the unlawful deletion of 22 million emails—let’s link Cheney to that (he wasn’t really involved —sorry Dick, it’s for a good cause). And let’s include the accusation that Cheney wanted an Iraq War to benefit Halliburton, his old company (just for the record, I have defended Cheney against that charge to Democratic friends for more than a decade. I believe he did what he did for honorable reasons, though I did not share his views, and I actually believe the same about Hillary. I’m bipartisanly trusting.) But many Democrats believe—just as firmly as some Republicans believe ridiculous stuff about Benghazi and the enormities of the Clinton Foundation—that “Cheney lied, kids died” as Cheney profited. And let’s assume that during the campaign these allegations reach a white-hot heat as Democrats build a massive, eruptive mountain of Cheney hatred.
So now, my fellow Americans, ask yourselves: How would you have voted had it been Al Sharpton versus Dick Cheney for the presidency on November 8, 2016?
For Republicans, this is a no-brainer. Even the Paulites who grew to abhor the Iraq War will come home to party and Cheney. For small-government conservatives this isn’t even close, even if we ramp up the investigations of Cheney’s alleged war profiteering. As most Democrats forgave Hillary her trespasses, real and imagined, so most Republicans would forgive Cheney’s.
But for Democrats? Cheney or Reverend Al? Yuck. The vast majority of Democrats I know would hold their noses and vote for Sharpton before they would ever vote for Cheney. Now, Democrats, do you understand why Republicans eventually voted for Trump at almost normal high levels of partisan loyalty?
And remember, this is Sharpton victorious, Sharpton who is now endorsed by almost all of the Democratic establishment, people you trust and respect. This is a Sharpton who is electrifying inner cities in a way that no Democrat, not even Obama, has ever done. He’s drawing record crowds all over the country. He’s pulling people into the Democratic Party, most of them folks who local party workers have never seen before. You may fret about the anti-Semites, socialists, and black nationalists he’s surrounding himself with, but you think his selection of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar as his running mate will be a moderating presence. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz stayed neutral the whole time, but then hugged Al close once he won. Major Jewish leaders were as cowardly about Sharpton as they have been about Trump and his alt-Right associates. He’ll appoint good people. Think about the Supreme Court: Vote for the evil Cheney and Roe v. Wade goes up in smoke!
Yeah, Democrats, admit it. The vast majority of you are voting for Al Sharpton, the fabulously unqualified, ethically challenged, dangerously ignorant (have you watched his show? Although I concede that he knows more about policy than Trump), gadfly turned into a political hurricane. Just like Trump.
Now, let’s just say the Republicans are supremely confident about victory, certain that a man with one of the best resumes in all of American politics will destroy this ignorant upstart, celebrity pretender, and race hustler. The polls say so, too. Yes, Cheney’s got record-high negatives, but Sharpton’s are even higher. Besides, Sharpton is wildly ignorant about American foreign policy, even questioning why we defend all those rich fat “white” European countries when our inner cities are “disasters!” NATO nations tremble at the prospect of a Sharpton presidency, and display subtly pro-Cheney body language.
Republicans try, and seem to be succeeding, at making this election all about Al. They release ads featuring the family of Yankel Rosenbaum, the young Orthodox Jewish student who was lynched by a black mob after Sharpton challenged Crown Heights Jews saying “(i)f the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house!” They run ads about his tax cheating, his stiffing of vendors, his comments about “white interlopers” and others. It’s ugly, but it’s working.
But Cheney never quite puts Sharpton away. Every time Al says something dumb or offensive, a bit of Halliburton scandal comes out, or Wikileaks releases videos of waterboarding and America reels in horror at what Cheney authorized (in this scenario, many Americans care about the barbaric treatment of our enemies—see, it’s my fantasy, I can do that). Suppose Russia, working with Wikileaks, orchestrates anti-Cheney attacks because they think Sharpton will be a pushover with his record of favoring cuts in the military budget.
And in my scenario, the media spends much more time on Cheney’s emails and links to war profiteering than it does on any of the Sharpton scandals (in the non-alternate universe that would have meant some serious investigative reporting into Trump’s shady dealings with Russian oligarchs, which of course never happened). Somehow, Sharpton seems to repeatedly survive things that would end a normal candidate’s campaign.
Cheney wins every debate, running rings around Sharpton’s ignorant bombast. On the eve of the second debate, women conveniently come forward with accusations that Sharpton procured underage prostitutes for James Brown during the years he was Brown’s tour manager (for you libel lawyers out there—there is no evidence of that). A hot mike tape from 2005 of Sharpton bragging to Billy Bush about those years seems to confirm the story. But Sharpton gets in a few effective digs about how we can’t trust Cheney, he took us into Iraq, and where are the emails from his time at the Bush White House, anyway?
A few weeks before the election, the FBI announces that it has found a way to recover most of the 22 million emails from the Bush years, and a cursory read of some leads them to believe that there is a link between the war in Iraq and Halliburton profits. Cheney’s involved, not directly, yet, but a lot of emails remain unread. The investigation remains is open; Cheney’s trust numbers, never strong, drop lower.
Nevertheless, come Election Day, Republicans are already anticipating Cheney’s inauguration. They are ordering cakes with Cheney-Pence (can’t change everything) on them in expectation of election night parties. They are feeling smug as all the journalists are saying that Sharpton would have to win almost all the battleground states to take the White House.
All through the night, though, Democrats get happier and Republicans slowly get bitchslapped. Sharpton has somehow ignited a fire in poor (and sympathetic) America. People who never vote—Hispanics and downtrodden whites as well as blacks—are flocking to this firebrand populist who speaks to them in their own clipped, chest-out vernacular. He is one of them, and they know he’ll bring jobs back. They don’t care about his past, the riots he fomented for utterly opportunistic reasons, the taxes he evades, the lawsuits he was enmeshed in, the Tawana Brawley “big lie”—none of it. They want change so badly that when the choice is a flawed representative of a dynasty or an exciting, dangerous new face, they want the new face. In one of the greatest upsets—no, in the greatest upset in American political history—Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr. is elected President.
Republican readers, how would you feel? Honestly? You’d feel like the Republic was not only doomed, but that the Democratic Party deserves to be rounded up, put in the Grand Canyon, and set on fire. You elected that deplorable to run America? You let the Russian government flip an American presidential election? You ran a goddamn Hugo Chávez clone? You and the media lied repeatedly about a good man, Dick Cheney, and then your guy won by encouraging the least-educated voters, filling their brains with anti-white rhetoric about reparations, which Republicans kept screaming were never going to be possible anyway.
By the way, a few days after the election, sources close to Sharpton say that reparations will be more symbolic than real, but (as Newt Gingrich said of Mexico paying for the wall), it was “a great campaign device.”
As you contemplate the imaginary presidency of Al Sharpton, Republicans, now you have some idea of how Democrats feel right now. Imagine also that Cheney won the popular vote more decisively than any losing candidate in history, just to pour some more salt into your gaping chest wound.
And Democrats, how would you feel about electing Sharpton President? He’s now the leader of your nation and party; the party of FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton is headed by a former FBI informant and tour manager who has incited riots, who knows more boxers and rappers than he does diplomats, who has said disgusting things about other minorities, who never graduated college, whose only professional credential is being twice ordained a minister without any formal theological education, the first time when he was nine years old.
Well, I think you’d be quietly hoping for the best, Democrats, like a lot of Republicans I know are hoping now. You’d be putting on the best face, hoping that Vice President Klobuchar acts as a constraint. Not so deep inside, you know your country just took a huge risk. You watched those debates, so you know how ignorant your candidate is and, more important, how frighteningly exotic his personality is.
Perhaps then you’d understand that many votes for Trump from Republicans, independents, and even some Democrats were not votes for his bigotry, his buffoonery, his scandalous record as a conman, his sexual assaults, his authoritarian streak. They were votes that looked past those things in the name of change, and to stop Hillary, the way many of you would vote to stop Cheney.
Maybe, if you think about President Sharpton hard enough, some compassion and understanding might emerge in our ever more polarized electorate. The Republican Party has not morphed into the KKK. The Democratic Party has not lost all reason in its reaction to Trump. It’s doing exactly what the Republicans would do in the first weeks after Al Sharpton won our alternate-universe election.
Of course, if we spool out the scenario further, and President Sharpton appoints as his top strategist a black Panther website owner, and his Attorney General was previously too closely associated with Louis Farrakhan to get confirmed as a Federal judge…well…I’ll stop. The point is, neither party has really lost its mind. The electorate did what it did, and both parties are responding predictably to an improbable set of events.
Yes, the moment is dangerous, and the risks real. But you don’t have to attack your cousin Bill for voting for Trump, or harangue your niece Cheryl for participating in demonstrations against Trump. Try thinking about what it would be like to be on the other side at this truly scary moment in American history. And so be healed.