Democrats don't go scorched earth on Republicans the way Republicans do against Democrats because Democrats want to believe there will still be a negotiating partner when the "crazies" are gone.

They will never be gone. It will get worse. There will be no negotiating partner.

We will disempower them utterly as in California, or they will achieve an apartheid autocracy.

There is no middle ground. Tip'n'Ronnie isn't coming back. Cocktail parties with Strom Thurmond were evil. The West Wing is lame fantasy TV for nerds who can't hack Lord of the Rings.

The chummy Washington DC that Peggy Noonan, Joe Biden and Maureen Dowd long to recreate is gone forever--and it was bad to begin with.

This isn't a game. It is, as Von Clausewitz said, war by other means. The other side is playing for keeps. Act like it.

If Republicans are voting to let their voters die, go on the air and say that. Put out ads that say exactly that.

Don't call them misguided. Call them what they are. How is it that this group of suicidal End Times cultists has gotten away with calling US a "culture of death"?

Instead of pretending that Trump is a hostile cancer that has temporarily taken over the GOP, a fever that will break, start telling the truth.

The truth is that Trump gives them all permission to say and do what they've always wanted to but never had the guts to. They're bad.

They are Trump, and he is them. There is no distance between them.

Y'all let monsters like KellyAnne Conway and Bill Barr sit next to you in polite company at DC steakhouses. The whole chummy culture of DC is broken.

Treat them as if they were wearing swastikas in public.

And I know that Democrats, especially of a certain age, don't want any of this to be true. They don't want a cold civil war. They want everything to go back to normal.

It isn't going back to normal. Electing Biden won't make it go back to normal, either. This is life now.

Your polite Republican neighbor will eagerly join in the apartheid autocracy, even if it means a tyranny that destroys you.

If you want a nice backyard BBQ with that neighbor again, 1) maybe don't, but 2) if you insist, see to it your mutual government can't hurt you.

And none of that even gets to the truth of the policy challenge, which really does come down to socialism or barbarism.

If we don't get a Green New Deal, your kids/grandkids will live to see an apocalypse that makes COVID-19 look like a Sunday brunch. And it will be your fault.

Not your fault because you voted for Trump.

Your fault because you just wanted "normal" back. You wanted "chummy" back. You wanted "One America" back. You didn't ask for any of this, right??

But you did. Your prosperity was built on socioeconomic decisions that guaranteed this.

Y'all let racism and sexism fester in the 70s and 80s and 90s and 00s. You let the militias grow. You treated the Tea Party as a serious "movement." So now non-college whites would rather kill you than lose their privileged status.

Now the bill is coming due. It's time to fight.

And you hollowed out the economy with tax cuts, a preposterously goosed up housing market, a stock market goosed up at the expense of workers, and now you have a young generation that won't live half as well as you did. And boy are they angry about it, as they should be.

So guess what? Normal isn't coming back. It's gone.

It's gone politically, socially, economically. The racists want war. Young people are deservedly in open contempt. The bills are due, and "chummy" isn't on the table anymore.

Either help steer, or cede control of the wheel.