I used to idolize the Democratic Party. For me, this was the party of the Kennedys and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—great, if flawed, politicians who helped transform America during the twentieth century. Coming of age in the 1990s, I saw Bill Clinton as the embodiment of all those great Democrats.
That is why I worked so hard to find a role in the Clinton White House—albeit in its last couple months, as Al Gore and George W. Bush fought in the Supreme Court and cynicism surged in the West Wing (anybody remember the missing “Ws” from White House keyboards?)—and why I spent much of my career after that working to elect Democrats, including Joe Biden in 2020.
But I also live and work in the real world, so I have seen the damage that the Democratic Party has done to America during Biden’s reign. And it’s getting worse. Witness the prosecution of former President Trump and the unprecedented guilty verdict rendered against him last week.
Much ink has already been spilled about the danger the guilty verdict poses to America. It is an act of political retribution that is unprecedented in American history, a dangerous step for a country that set the global standard for even-handed constitutional government. It also reflects a flawed and biased legal process. Indeed, I suspect that most people involved in the Trump prosecution assume the conviction will be reversed on appeal. They may be right.
That makes no difference. The Trump prosecution served one purpose: to
