I agree that turning the Democratic party into a mirror image of the GOP is an awful and undesired outcome. But neither do I think being nice to them is the answer.
Right now the interactions between the GOP and the Democrats (and the nation) look something like those between an abuser and his victim. You don't engage with abusers. You don't apologize to them. And you don't encourage or reward them.
Make fun of how awful and stupid the GOP is. Talk up Democratic plans for fixing and improving our future. (Something in rather short supply too much of the time.) Play their game as little as possible.
This is a tough situation, because of how much power the GOP has. But power alone does not legitimize them. We do that and we need to stop or we're only making things worse.
This argument makes the most sense, so thank you for it. I think I agree with almost everything you said here.
That said, this is our government so you can't have one half of it treat it the way one should an abuser, which is just to get the heck out and never have anything to do with them again, because even negative attention is attention. So for me, not playing their game is not talking crap but just working on getting done what we can. Definitely talk up our plans and actually enact them. But like you said, don't play their game. Don't grab at power by any means necessary, because that's playing directly into their hands. Don't smear or belittle them, because that's also playing directly into their hands.
Protest. Civil disobedience (which
should include not following unjust laws). Being active in politics in multiple different ways (we need to stop saying that all people need to do is vote--democracy requires people to be involved more than just voting). Those are all wonderful things that I support. But I cannot and will not tolerate following their example.
Loving someone doesn't mean apologizing to them. A lot of times, it means calling them out on their crap (though not nagging on it--that's different) and then leading by example.
To bring up a long-dead horse and hopefully only lightly flog it, Hillary's campaign was weak because it focused on how bad Trump and Republicans are. That's pointless. We all already knew. Those of us who were against him on principle were already going to vote. But the folks who didn't like him but were wondering what the alternative is--they weren't given an answer. Trump lied but he gave options for the future. So many people stayed home. If they had been given options on what Democrats (and Hillary) were planning, how they were going to do things over the next four years, that would have given folks a bit more reason to turn out for her. Of course, huge simplification, but it was a factor.
That's what we need here. We don't need to be like the Republicans because then our country will just go down the crapper, with every election an out-and-out brawl for more power, including the Supreme Court, with gerrymandering everywhere the new norm, etc etc. We also can't spend our time making fun of them, calling them names, or besmirching them. We CAN point out unconstitutional behavior, but even focusing on that gives them time to pull us into the mud with them. Instead, as I said before, we lead by example. We love them. Because, you know what? If we want a good and successful country, we need to wish that success on those who disagree with us, as well. So we have to demonstrate where we can that our options are what will bring about positive change and we stay the heck away from rolling around in the mud.
Another point that is relevant is this--local politics is much more important than most people realize. If local Democrats can lead with love, then the Democrats as a whole will do significantly better. First, it builds a solid foundation of back-benchers who don't have mud already slung all over them because of petty power grabs or whatever else. Secondly, it allows for national Democrats to have examples to point to. "In this county, Democrats did X and look at the results!" It works its way up. But because people aren't involved (I include myself in this because I'm not involved at the local level the way I should be), it's easy for the folks who are only interested in power for power's sake to do whatever the heck they want to do. And then "we" complain about how they are taking advantage of us (which they are!) but don't do anything else. Kick that toxic and manipulative jerkface out of the house by getting up and blocking his way. Yelling at him won't help.
