America’s Moral Reckoning

Max Stearns

I woke up this morning to the remarkable news of Trump’s resounding midterm defeat. Voters took him literally and seriously, as if he were on the ballot. Celebrations abound among all who abhor the corruption, base politics, routine sacrifice of principle, indifference to the plight of those most in need, and insistence upon absolute blind loyalty that has transformed his personal brand to that of his party. My personal celebration is tempered. The moral reckoning I seek confronts both parties, not just one.

The Democratic Party did not win yesterday. Two conflicting camps nested within that party, and now destined to be at each other’s throats, managed under compelling circumstances to prevail. But elections that align groups of people against a common enemy are notoriously prone to breaking down, revealing factions long suppressed.

The Democratic Party isn’t a party in the traditional sense. It is a collection of constituencies lacking a core. Or to the extent it had one—ending Trumpism—that’s soon to fall away. With the duck rendered lame, Democratic Socialists and traditional Democrats face a locked-in battle that in 2028 might well emerge the mirror image of the 2016 battle among MAGA and traditional conservatives.

Many Democrats for far too long have failed to recognize gradations on the opposite side. The political science term, affective polarization, means grouping everyone on the other side as if they were the same. Of course, Republicans are as guilty, treating all Democrats as radical socialists, even communists.

From the start of the Trump era, I have tried, again and again, with colleagues and friends, to encourage recognizing gradations, only to be repeatedly told they’re all the same: John McCain, John Kasich, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, JD Vance. Sure.

Democratic Socialists and traditional Democrats likewise have profound differences. The former, but not the latter, increasingly demands rigid adherence to all its orthodoxies. At a minimum, that faction decides what is or is not negotiable, exhibiting little or no tolerance for those who, despite going along with 70, 80, even 90 percent, choose to draw a different line. Self-declared experts even, perhaps especially, on deeply complex matters often appear as self-anointed arbiters of our collective moral standing. And this especially holds in contexts where facts are most seriously contested, characterizations tendentious, and profound moral claims competing.

When I published Parliamentary America in 2024, I argued that the greatest threat to democracy is not ideological positioning or commitment. Rather it is an unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of competing points of view and ever to compromise. We often say that troublesome attributes of our political system are both features and bugs. But this is all bug. Ridding ourselves of a system that constantly insists upon rigid loyalty to a cruel and narcissistic leader or rigid adherence to a set of uncompromising yet profoundly contestable claims is essential to genuine moral reckoning.

I wrote Parliamentary America to explain that a better pathway forward is not merely desirable; it is achievable. We must transform from two party presidentialism into a thriving multiparty democracy. The alternative I envision, based on a system called mixed-member proportionality, or MMP, would not demand Democratic Socialists or MAGA abandon their core beliefs or ideological commitments. Same for traditional conservatives and Democrats, who in the long run might just find they have quite a bit in common. It would do the opposite.

Let each faction emerge as its own competing party. And let’s see which of these, and perhaps others, thrive without the present threat of a single faction taking one of only two parties capable of gaining power hostage. In this alternative scheme, party leaders will thrive by prioritizing their agendas and working with other party leaders to achieve some, but not all, of what they seek and hope to provide their supporters. Those leaders unable to work in such a system, to accept part but not all of what they want, whether as coalition leaders or members of coalitions others lead, won’t fare well. That’s as it should be. But those able to work with others—to not insist that they are invariably right on every issue—will be able to gain something meaningful by joining a coalition rather than being forced to bend a knee to someone who insists on taking it all.

I do not deny anybody their rightful celebration of Trump’s resounding defeat. I wish I were happier engaging in it. I’m not there because right now, I don’t know what’s actually being celebrated.

I most fear that yesterday’s victory will lead to a lull, rather than to profound introspection concerning how our system of governance is tearing our nation apart. I reject outright any claim that last night somehow vindicated the wisdom, even brilliance, of our framers or the system they created through a course correction. It did no such thing. I fear that as in other systems—some I describe in my book—we will experience ever-widening volleys, extreme right to extreme left, with little space for those who, more than anything, reject the uncompromising ideological extremes themselves and the system that increasingly demand we choose between them. That is not the country that I wish to live in. I hope that’s true for you as well.

That is why, for me, it is time for a moral reckoning, not a celebration.

I welcome your comments.