A keyboard “radical” asked me why Democrats didn’t have a plan B for Harris’ loss.

There is no backup plan because she was the last line of defense. Biden messed up when he appointed an AG who was more interested in bending over backwards to give Trump every out possible rather than going after him like the insurrectionist rapist crook that he is. Had the AG done his job on day one, Trump would have been in jail or in Russia. Before that, had RBG retired as the left begged her to, Roe would be in effect and the women who died due to abortion bans would be alive today.

There’s no plan B after Harris because she wasn’t plan A, B or even C. Harris was but one stop along a very long continuum of interventions the left has begged “centrists” to back.

The left backed progressive leadership at the DNC. The DNC rejected that for a Centrist, which is how we got Biden and his Centrist appointments, which is how we got our AG, which is how we now have Trump.

We are where we are because Centrists have, at every turn, valued the status quo over believing progressives when we criticized them for thinking they had a seat at the table when they were, in fact, on the menu. At every step, rather than taking decisive action to stop the right, Centrists valued pretending the right were good faith actors even when the left was screaming the truth.

We aren’t here because the right are fascists. The problem is, and has always been the Centrist. Centrists are how we wound up with the Great Compromise that gave us the Electoral College. Centrists compromised with the South ending Reconstruction and gave us Jim Crow. Trumpism and all the harm that will come from it is the natural result of Centrism. A Centrist will ALWAYS stand down rather than fight, unless their denial is forcibly shattered. The right knows this and has always used this to their advantage. Google “hide your power level.“

A Democrat won in 2020 because Centrists got a good dose of what a world in crisis –complements of COVID19– looks like under an authoritarian government. We got social security, the GI Bill, and civil rights in the wake of Centrists having their nose shoved into the reality of what fascism is after WWII.

At any given time, the US population seems to be comprised of 1/3 who believe, as a matter of sacred ideology, 1/3 of the US population must be eliminated. The other 1/3 –the Centrists– tend to be content with that happening as long as their lives aren’t significantly disrupted. This is why we are here and this is what will happen next:

The right will act swiftly to betray every promise they made to Centrists and rather than blame themselves, Centrists will blame trans people, queer people, and feminists, and other minority populations, redoubling their denial, insisting that if we just reason with the right, all will be well. The right will champion this bias in the Centrist as the world slides further into fascism over the next 2 years.

In 2 years, we will (hopefully) have another election and a new Congress will gum up some of the worst of law policy as right sacrifices some of their most awful stuff to cement their more “moderate” fascism, which Centrists will champion as a win. Centrists will support fascist positions that would have been unthinkable before Trump, but will seem reasonable when compared to the positions the right allowed the Centrists to kill. The DNC will believe this is progress, back another Centrist, and this entire process will repeat.

You might think I’m being a passement or unfair to the Centrists. Nothing I’ve said here hasn’t been said before by the likes of even MLK:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

While Centrists are, and will continue to be, an unwilling partner in the progress of equality, the keyboard radical is every bit as problematic in their willful denial of material reality. Every post-9/11 evil that has occurred in the US is, in no small way, directly attributable to the keyboard radical’s willful disregard for the material reality that defines the lives of those the “radical” claims to represent. In this way, the keyboard radical is just the flipside of the same “paternalistic” (as MLK put it) coin.

The keyboard “radical” rejects the demonstrable fact that ours is a fist-past-the-post electoral system.

They reject the demonstrable fact that such systems ALWAYS produce binary choices. In their cavalier denial, they vote 3rd party, choose not to vote, and deride others for acting in accord with material reality. The keyboard radical’s self-appointed privilege of denying reality gave the country George W Bush, Trump, and every hardship and death these pro-oligarchy actors wrought against the very populations the keyboard radical claims to represent. Moreover, the keyboard “radical” always functions as a beard for fascism in that their privileged intransigence always functions to make the dialectic of fascism seem more reasonable.

Why are we going to have a front row seat to the wholesale eradication of a century of progress? Why will I get to watch my loved ones suffer and die? The paternalistic privilege of the Centrist and keyboard radical value their smug paternalism more than they value liberty, freedom, and equality.

Now, me and my community have to find a way to survive the world the world they co-created.