We Can’t “Harm Reduction” Our Way Out Anymore
As we approach the midterm campaign season, we’re going to get bombarded with a lot of pleas to get out and vote. From elected officials to ideological fellow travelers, people are going to ask for millions to rally for the Democratic Party because, well, the alternative is the Republican Party, a literal authoritarian movement headed by a man who has called for open insurrection and a violent overthrow of the US government multiple times since he launched an actual attack last year. There’s going to be cajoling and sniping and begging and reverse-psychology negging, and it is going to run into the unfortunate and terrible truth that the Democratic Party has made people apathetic to change.
I have said many times before, and will tragically say many times again, that the Democratic Party is the entire spectrum of rational politics in the United States. This should, in theory, give the party huge majorities — because most voters are, in fact, aligned with rational politics. But in reality, the open nature of the party and its absorption of the last “reasonable” conservatives has led to a completely incoherent policy and political approach. Wings of what should be three or four different parties clash constantly over direction, tactics, goals, and crucially, messaging, forcing every candidate to choose their own adventure and making it impossible to tell what Democrats actually stand for.
The way the modern party has managed this is to label everything under “harm reduction,” hoping that this is enough to satiate the progressive faction and the marginalized people who have developed activism in response to the violence of the status quo, while keeping the “principled” conservatives and former GOP on board. This is the safe way to keep all the differing factions under the umbrella while achieving nothing that makes any of them happy. “Harm reduction” isn’t a goal with tangible effects, so it can’t be measured and evaluated, but its abstract nature provides room for emotional investment from people who like to think that they’re good. After all, who doesn’t want to reduce harm?
Well, the opponents of democracy: the Republican Party. They want to maximize harm. They want very specific people to feel as terrible as possible for as much time as possible, and to prevent any changes that would allow these specific people to feel good about themselves and their future in this country. They want to steal potential, impede possibility, and wipe out the hopes and destinies of millions of marginalized people, because they do not hold the right identities to be part of the winning “tribe.”
This authoritarian mentality from the GOP and its white supremacist base cannot be met with a compromising approach because any time they win, we lose. It is the nature of a zero-sum game, which is what they have turned politics into. A GOP win is a loss for anyone who aligned with Democrats, and they aren’t going to share the polity and the power with people who “lost” because winners win and fascists are always the winners.
Continuing to pretend that this is a “harm” that can be “reduced” instead of taking proactive steps to actively deny the entrenchment and revanchism of the fascist reactionaries is basically just biding time until the reactionaries win. If a loss is 100% whenever Democrats lose, and it’s 50% whenever Democrats win, the math kind of speaks for itself, and you know, I’m usually terrible at math. Compromising is not aspirational when your opponent doesn’t think the contest itself is legitimate. In this context, harm reduction is not and cannot be a solution; it is, in fact, the problem.
And so we return to a campaign season where Democrats will try to convince voters that they need to stop Republicans from taking power because Democrats are the only thing between them and the abyss, while slowly backing their way towards the abyss by accommodating and negotiating with the very same people they say are going to destroy us. Voters, as bewildering and ridiculous as many can seem, are not actually incapable of recognizing that Democrats are edging towards that abyss themselves. Sure, Democrats are walking backwards to it rather than actively shepherding us towards it, but once you fall in, the difference is kind of meaningless, no?
There is a risk that moving from “harm reduction” to a meaningful and tangible future will lose the Democrats some voters who were only present because they couldn’t stand Republican antics (but are actually fine with the suffering-focused policy and outcomes). But it’s also quite possible that saying that some goals are worth seeking out, and that the Democratic Party is the only one interested in solutions — and hearing from all the perspectives within the party — might energize some voters who are deeply unhappy with the status quo. Maybe, given an alternative to fascism, they might throw their lot in with a party that might not agree with them, but will at least hear them out as they make moves.
And make moves they must. Because it’s not enough anymore to stand still and hope that Republicans stop pushing. The abyss is inches behind us, and Democrats aren’t actively fighting to keep our footing, let alone pushing back. No one is going to rally their energy after all of this misery and mess to go to bat for a party that is willing to give up everything rather than fight for something.
“There are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
The same holds true for a party. They can’t take voters for granted anymore. In this campaign season, it’s time for Democrats to argue that they are fit to live.
