Politically homeless face a stark choice if it’s Trump vs. Warren

This is a memo for the politically homeless. It’s a memo to those of us who could never support Donald Trump but think the Bernie-squad-warren Democratic Party is sprinting too far left. It’s a memo built around the following question: If the general election campaign turns out to be Trump versus Warren, what the heck are we supposed to do?

The first thing we could do, of course, is pray the Democrats will nominate one of the five B’s or the K: Biden, Buttigieg, Booker, Bennet, Bullock or Klobuchar.

These candidates are pluralists, not purists. They make many voters who disagree with them feel heard and respected. They practice the craft of politics, building majority coalitions to get things done.

If the party nominated one of those six, the Democrats could really gather progressives and moderates into an enduring majority coalition as the Republicans recede into obsolescence. You could see movement on a range of issues with large majorities already stacked on one side: guns, climate change, reducing income inequality, expanding health coverage.

But Elizabeth Warren has the momentum now, and so those of us who feel politically homeless may face a stark choice.

For many, supporting Warren is too high a price to pay, even for ousting Trump. And you can see why.

First, there are Warren’s policies. On trade, she’s a protectionist. Her 10-year, $34-trillion health care plan isn’t paid for. Her student debt cancellation plan is a handout to the upper middle class.

Second, she’s one of the few Democrats who could actually lose. As Yascha Mounk notes in The Atlantic, Democrats won in 2018 because they won back a lot of nonpartisan suburban office park workers who found moderates they could vote for. When you remind independents of Democratic support for abolishing private health insurance and decriminalizing unauthorized border crossing — two key Warren policies — they become 6 percentage points less likely to vote for the Democrats.

Third, Warren’s policy ideas would make any progressive-moderate coalition impossible.

And yet...

And yet, if it comes to Trump versus Warren in a general election, the only plausible choice is to support Warren. Over the past month, Trump has given us fresh reminders of the unique and exceptional ways he corrupts American life. You’re either part of removing that corruption or you are not. When your nation’s political system is in danger, staying home and not voting is not a responsible option.

Politics is downstream from morality and culture. Warren represents a policy wrong turn, in my view, but policies can be argued about and reversed. Trump represents a much more important and fundamental threat: To the norms, values, standards and soul of this country.

Last week, Trump all but greenlighted the ethnic cleansing of Kurds without an ounce of remorse. He normalizes dishonesty and valorizes cruelty. His letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminds us yet again that we have a president whose professional competence is at kindergarten level.

Furthermore, Trump is an unprecedented threat to democratic institutions. I’ve thought the progressive fears of incipient American fascism were vastly overblown. But Trump has validated those fears and raised the horrifying specter of what he’ll be like if he is given a second term and is vindicated, unhinged and unwell.

In their book “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that authoritarians undermine democracy in several ways. They reject the democratic rules of the game. They deny the legitimacy of their political opponents, using extreme language to deny them standing as co-citizens. They tolerate or even encourage violence, threatening to take legal action against critics in rival parties.

Trump is guilty of all three sins and given a second term he’ll stomp where so far he’s merely tread.

This election is about whether we can hold together as a functioning nation, across our economic, racial, geographic and ideological divides. In such circumstances, a bad option is better than a suicidal one.