“We have an opportunity now to lower the volume of this race,” Elliot Ackerman wrote in the Atlantic a few days after an assassin’s bullet almost ended Donald Trump’s life. His message to Democrats was to stop arguing Trump poses a serious threat to American democracy. If they must win for it to survive, “then democracy is already dead, because democracy requires choice.”
But a country wrestling with incompatible truths won’t be healed by the choices we make in the election booth. That’s why Democrats need to build partnership with traditional conservatives who passionately oppose Trump. And to show they’re sincere, they could run a bipartisan campaign like Bill Walker and Byron Mallott did in Alaska in 2014.
That year, Mallott had won the Democratic gubernatorial primary for governor. He withdrew his candidacy to become the running mate for Bill Walker, a lifelong Republican who had entered the race as an independent.
“Our vision for Alaska was part of the problem in the campaign,” Mallott said after the two men formally announced their Alaska Unity ticket. “They overlapped so much that there was little differentiation between us.”
In a race for the White House two years later, Michael Anton not only believed Trump and Hillary Clinton shared no common vision, he argued that the choice conservatives faced was similar to the passengers who rushed the cockpit of the jet that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on 911.
The Flight 93 election analogy was published by the Claremont Institute. Writing under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, Anton complained that conservatives with serious apprehensions about Trump’s candidacy were “the least willing to consider the possibility that the republic is dying.”
American democracy must have been in a coma when his essay went viral. It almost died four years later.
“Make no mistake, this election was stolen from you, from me and from the country,” Trump said at his inaptly named Save America rally on Jan. 6. Near the end of his speech, he told the crowd “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he did nothing for three hours while his supporters violently attacked the Capitol.
President Joe Biden understands that kind of overheated political rhetoric has contributed to the violence. But he argues, that “doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth.”
Now I’m not sure which truth he was referring to. But a perceived serious future threat is not one of them.
The most important truth to defend is also the easiest. It’s the irrefutable fact Trump lost the 2020 election. He’s had almost four years to produce evidence proving otherwise. And despite repeatedly claiming to have it, he’s avoided every opportunity to share anything.
Voting for him is in service to his big lie.
However, Biden isn’t the right person to make that case. He should never have contemplated running for reelection. He needs to stop ignoring the fact that a sizable majority of Americans believe he’s too old to serve another four years and withdraw from the race.
At this late stage, Vice President Kamala Harris is the only one who can replace him. But she’ll need just as much help defending the truth. That’s why she should consider an Alaska Unity approach by asking Liz Cheney to be her running mate.
In regard to Trump’s illegal schemes to overturn the election, Cheney has been the most powerful spokesperson in the country. Putting her on the ticket would knock Trump and his campaign completely off balance. They’d never recover.
Not only can a Harris-Cheney ticket win in November. Millions of Republican voters who are fed up with Trump, but aren’t happy with Biden will recognize Democrats are putting the health of the nation ahead of their party’s interests. They could lift Harris and Cheney to a landslide victory that will also serve as a decisive blow against the party apparatus that enabled Trump’s improbable comeback.
Unlike the Walker and Mallott, on the domestic front Harris and Cheney only share one common vision. To help our democracy breathe freely again, I’m imagining them leading the nation through a period of truth and reconciliation.”
“If this sounds like a fantasy, perhaps it is,” Shadi Hamid wrote from a different angle following the attempted assassination. “But fantasies sometimes come true.”
And sometimes we need to imagine them just to remain hopeful.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
