We haven’t seen this in awhile. In fact, unless someone has unlocked the key to immortality, no one has seen this. The Republican party is dead. So, this is an important time in our country just like the last time this happened. Abraham Lincoln created a new party that was desperately needed at that point in American history. The Whigs went the way of the doodoo bird.

The two-party system is unique in the world. Most democracies around the world operate under a kind of coalition government. So, parties are pure and they have to reach across the aisle to multiple groups to get things done. In that world, it is easy to operate as a party. Your views can be more narrow and your orthodoxy can be consistent.

The Democratic and Republican parties have been coalition parties amidst themselves. They appeal to groups and those groups shift. As groups shift then believes and planks shift. So, to say the GOP is dead is not an ideological critique. Someone somewhere will appeal to those groups. There will be an uncomfortable period where allegiances will shift, but it is ultimately something that has to happen.

Why has the GOP died? Simply put, they have abandoned democracy. Their standard bearer has gone full on Nazi. Full stop. When you start including the term “vermin” in your campaign stump speech you are flat out giving a nod to Hitler. Whatever you feel about that kind of acknowledgment, the brand is now about full on election denialism. The GOP in Ohio wants to deny their recent results. Imagine a sports team that never acknowledged defeat and sued the league every time they lost. At a certain point, the league would have to expel them so that normalcy could return.

In that vain, people like Joe Mancin are touring the country to see if they can forge a new way forward. For the time being, we will assume he is on the up and up. There are a number of things that make me question that, but we will leave that aside for now. When there is a Nazi on the ballot you do anything you can to defeat the Nazi. That is of course unless you are a Nazi yourself.

So, there will be time for a new center-right party to form. It absolutely needs to happen and it will happen. One party government is not real democracy. I’m a Democrat and have always been a Democrat but more than anything else I am an American. I am a progressive. I will ultimately be wherever those folks end up going. Many of my friends and family are conservative. They aren’t crazy. They aren’t Nazis. They aren’t white supremacists. They are just conservative.

So, I salute any group that wants to forge a new way forward. They need to wait until we defeat the Nazi. A large part of the issue is that the GOP is dead. They are incapable of policing themselves. That is one of the signs you know they are dead. Trump will likely go to prison and it won’t matter. They have had numerous opportunities to police themselves. They haven’t.

So, the American people will have to do that for them. They will need to overwhelmingly vote Democratic until that menace goes away. They will need to serve on juries and vote guilty. Judges will need to have the courage to send him to prison. Everyone say goodbye to the GOP. They had a good run. It’s time for a new conservative party to take its place. However, we need to save our democracy first.

What becomes harder and harder these days is coming up with a list of things I want for Christmas. Most items are things no one would buy for me because either they are unhealthy or they don’t know exactly what I want. In other years, I just don’t want anything that badly. However, since this is the last piece I will write before Christmas I thought I would use that tact to address this particularly situation.

My first instinct is to assert that Joe Mancin and Kyrsten Synema are not really Democrats. The whole reason we are in the mess we are in is that far too many people treat political parties like a team or tribe and not as a generic way of telling people what you stand for. They are both Democrats in the sense that they support policies Democrats support more often than not. They just don’t support enough of them or as often as many of us would like.

So, as angry as one can get at the failure of the Build Back Better bill, it is hard to know exactly what Mancin is thinking. He represents West Virginia. Maybe this deal isn’t good for West Virginia in his eyes. Maybe he bent to the whims of his donors. Maybe he just wants to wield more power on his way out the door. Maybe he is really a Republican in sheep’s clothing. Maybe a lot of things are true.

Getting legislation passed is an uphill battle. Getting judges is an uphill battle. Getting ambassadors and political appointments is an uphill battle. Holding the insurrectionists accountable has been an uphill battle. Look around the country and you clearly see one party cares about democracy (small d) while the other cares about power. One party cares about preserving individual rights while the other cares about power.

Yet, we see Demotats fighting over infrastructure, economic relief, and saving the elderly and working families money. These things are all important. Yet, it cannot be more important than giving those people a fighting chance to get people that will represent their interest. It doesn’t matter which issue it is. Public opinion polls always show that an overwhelming number of people support what the Democrats want to do. Yet, they have a 50/50 split in the Senate.

While Democrats have focused on those important but transient issues, Republicans have managed to tip the scales. They’ve managed to rig statewide elections. They are working to stack the courts. That work is starting to produce fruit now and that fruit is something the majority does not want. What the majority wants doesn’t matter. Yet, here we are still pushing that proverbial rock up the mountain.

What I want for Christmas is for the Democrats in Congress to use whatever political capital they have left to ensure that the overall representation reflects the values of the people. That means that everyone that has the right to vote should be able to vote. That means more access. That means district lines that make sense and that are fair. That means no intimidation. That means no thumbs on the scale. That means no changing the outcome when the outcome is “wrong.” That means one person, one vote. That means that land doesn’t determine political power. People do. Once you get that then all the build back better and progressive planks come. They come whether Joe Mancin supports them or not.