John F. Kennedy was killed over 60 years ago.
November 22, 1963 was the key event in Joe Biden’s political life. He turned 21 two days before. This is true for much of his generation. Kennedy’s claimed U-Turn on Vietnam helped inspire Vietnam War protestors. The killing of Martin and Bobby solidified the myth of the New Left and all the politics flowing from it.
Nixon resigned almost 50 years ago.
I was in Washington that day, a summer intern at a conservative magazine. August 9, 1974 became the key event in the life of modern conservatism. It’s a grievance leading directly to the Federalist Society, to Project 2025, and all the rest of it. It fueled the Religious Right, convincing conservatives that all our institutions would have to be remade, in their image, to remove the threat of the New Left.
Most American voters have no memory of these events. Some remember the Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or 9/11, but none of these events changed the fundamental political equation. As recently as last week American politics was still a war between those aggrieved over Kennedy and those aggrieved over Nixon.
January 6
But here’s the point. Every voter today, even those just 18 years old, can remember January 6, 2021. January 6 is the great reset.
Joe Biden tried, and failed, to make the Trump coup central to his campaign. He failed because he is still attached (in the public mind) to the Kennedy generation, as Trump is the heir of the Nixon generation.
Kamala Harris can make that case because she isn’t attached to the Kennedy era. She hadn’t even entered public life on 9/11. She was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2004.
January 6 is a case that must be prosecuted, to the fullest extent of the law. Today’s Republican Party, from the top to the bottom, is wedded to the lie that January 6 wasn’t a coup, that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and that Nixon was somehow railroaded. The current Republican Party is thus not a legitimate democratic institution. It is as foreign to our values as the Confederacy and slavery.
That’s because once you believe Nixon was railroaded, or that Trump’s re-election was stolen, fascism must be your ultimate destination. Your truth can only become universal when opposition is crushed, as thoroughly as China crushed the truth of Tiananmen Square.
That’s today’s political divide. This Second Civil War only ends when no coup follower is considered a viable candidate for any public office. The first step is a sweeping election triumph, not a close-run thing like most of our elections, but a true landslide leaving us with an Administration resolute in overturning every impediment to democracy erected in the Federalist Society’s name.
I can’t do it. I can see it, but like Joe Biden I’m too old for the fight.
This is the political task of our children’s generation, forging a new consensus around the truth of our history, and our obligation to the future.
That is what 2024 is now about.
