Politico arrived in our inboxes this morning with a breathless scoop of great importance: “A Startling Document Predicted Jan. 6. Democrats Are Missing Its Other Warnings.” How could Democrats have missed such a clarion call? What other warnings of theirs are going unheeded? I have always been moved by the myth of the Trojan princess Cassandra, cursed with visions of the future that none around her would believe, so I am well disposed to lending an ear to any would-be prophets and their proposed solutions. And boy, these folks over at “the Hub” speaking of “Plan D” seem to be serious men engaged in serious business:
Plan D was the fourth of several studies organized by an opaque advocacy group, known as the Hub, to prepare for the depredations of the Trump era. The Hub is known in Washington for its sophisticated dark-money interventions in electoral politics. During the 2020 campaign, it also gathered up strategists, lawyers and activists to draft plans for a different kind of conflict.
The document is an artifact from a dangerous time: Warning that Trump would surely not concede defeat to Joe Biden, it advised Trump’s opponents to “assume the worst” would follow. It urged them to gird for a struggle not only with the president but with “institutions controlled or influenced by the GOP, including the courts.” The document forecast “militia and white supremacist activities through the inauguration — and, very likely, accelerated activity in the early months of a Biden administration.”
Hmmm . . . well, give them one out of three, at least. They were right about Trump and his mob, but wildly wrong about the GOP-controlled courts (all of whom laughed Trump’s various evidence-free election lawsuits out of their chambers as quickly as possible). And if there’s been “accelerated activity” among the types that would, say, stage an invasion of the U.S. Capitol, it’s mostly been in the direction of prison. But credit where it’s due to the Hub for at least being right that Trump would fight removal from office catastrophically. This is not sarcasm; I did not see the full enormity of January 6 coming myself, even as the postelection insanity ramped up to a fever pitch.
So why were these Cassandras unheeded by their Democratic peers? Was it the curse of Apollo yet again? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s because their actual agenda is demonstrably insane:
“First and foremost, we must rewrite the rules of our democracy . . . We must commit to structural reforms that, at a minimum, include DC and Puerto Rico statehood and expanding the federal courts.”
Liberals must also “embrace more aspirational goals of ending the Electoral College and establishing a constitutional right to vote,” it continued, plus more basic aims like the elimination of the Senate filibuster. Should Democrats fail to achieve those aims, the report proposed divisive and punitive measures, like denying certain federal assistance to sections of the country that consistently reject Democrats and yet hold a veto over legislation because the system is tilted in their favor. Perhaps, it suggested, brute fiscal coercion would extract concessions from Trump country.
Well then. So the proper solution to Trump’s threat to the republic is actual revolution. Why were these lonely prophets ignored?
This is the point where anyone familiar with the folkways of the online Left begins to laugh knowingly. Because the agenda here is almost a parody of the masturbatory D.C. ultra-progressive/media elite “reform” wish list that astringent-faced Twitter bluechecks working Washington policy-rag jobs rant about on social media after happy hour has done its work. Abolish the Electoral College, abolish or expand the Senate, abolish the filibuster, and pack the Supreme Court: the whole enchilada for securing the one-party state, ideally with fewer gulags this time. (As a friend queried, “was this document written by, or for, Ian Millhiser?”)
And the further recommendations about employing “divisive and punitive measures” against Republican-leaning states and “brute fiscal coercion” to “extract concessions”? That’s just the language these people typically reserve for when they’re fulminating in private, in friendly company. They usually don’t have the temerity to say it out loud — and given how this document was kept private for three years, one assumes they didn’t think they were saying it out loud in this case either. It reminds me of an old joke from Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a character in the film Joel and the Bots are watching argues that communists don’t respect humanity, freedom, the value of religious conscience, etc. And that’s when our on-screen hecklers add the unstated kicker: “. . . which is why we’ve got to crush them.” I’m guessing that’s how the Hub feels about, well, most anyone who isn’t already a member of the Hub.
The author of Politico’s piece (a reporter, not an opinion columnist) laments the fact that “America’s liberal party is more comfortable thundering against changes to the number of ballot-collection boxes in the Atlanta area than openly discussing the profound unfairness of a system that awards equal representation in the Senate to South Dakota and California.” But I for one am glad these prophetic heralds of doom remained unheard at the time, even if they were right about Trump’s odiousness. Trump gave us a disgraceful riot. These people would seemingly prefer civil war.