On Principled Non-Partisanship

The intense desire to remove the neo-fascist sociopath from the White House has resulted in an unwritten and unspoken, but very apparent, moratorium on critical commentary of Joe Biden or the Democratic Party (and I am sure now Kamala Harris). I and others have been the victims of this policy in the responses we receive from some of our FB colleagues who are now the informal enforcers of this creed.

Because all my classes, maybe with the exception of Data Analysis, are political and politicized, for which I make no apology, I introduce students to the concept and practice of “principled non-partisanship”. This simply means that if you have a set of value commitments or political/philosophical principles – like equality, democracy, transparency, right to privacy, etc – you evaluate political figures or political parties on the basis of those principles independent of the party or party affiliation. So, if as a Democrat you criticized the George W. Bush administration for violating the constitutional right to privacy in revelations on wiretapping Americans during the so-called “war on terror”, you also do the same when you discover that the Obama administration, as revealed by Edward Snowden, also violated the constitution. Selective application of one’s principles based on partisan attachment is “unprincipled partisanship”, something that has reached epic levels within the Republican Party under Trump.

Therefore, if the Democrats and Republicans both violate a principle I hold dear, but I only criticize the Republicans for that violation, it would be hypocritical generally, and specifically with regard to a principle I am asking my students to adhere to (do as your told, not as I do).

The fear and reluctance to criticize Biden if you want Trump defeated has a structural source in the American electoral system, or more specifically the two-party duopoly (on this I strongly recommend Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop by Lee Drutman). It produces a binary/zero-sum logic that has enormous implications for current political dynamics and discourse but as it applies here it means that any gain or advantage given to one party is automatically at the expense of the other party. Hence, to criticize Biden is to indirectly help Trump, almost by default. If we had a multiparty system, this would not be the case.

So, here is the alternative aphorism promoted by the moratorium enforcers: “if you don’t have anything nice to say about Biden or the Democrats, don’t say anything at all.” Just censor yourself.