I thank Sid Tarrow for a valuable review of Crackup; he was generous and thoughtful in discussing our differing assessments about America’s path forward.

I second his praise of Michael Zoorob and Theda Skocpol for their analysis of the organizations that actively supported Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016. I leave the thorny issue of assessing their actual impacts for another time. I regret not citing Skocpol’s early work on social revolutions as a reminder that the collapse of the state, or a loss of confidence in the center, can be the start of massive change: all great movements do not start from the bottom. This resonates with Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph’s research connecting low trust in government with support for outsiders like Trump (see Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 1979; Hetherington and Rudolph, Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis, 2015).

Trumpism will not end with Donald Trump because it did not begin with him. He recycled the promises of the other candidates but with catchier slogans, like “Make America Great Again” (which he trademarked in 2012), and the credibility of an outsider—“the people’s billionaire”—untainted by responsibility for the GOP’s broken promises.

However, I do not believe that “protective white nationalism,” despite its popularity, will be an adequate program to resolve the differing constituencies of senators and representatives over health care repeal, foreign trade, protectionism, alliances, and the Confederate flag. For example, Senator Mitch McConnell supported Republican senators who voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill, while GOP representatives tried to strip leadership positions from supportive colleagues. And although some Republican senators support Ukraine and NATO, one-third of their House counterparts would not vote for a symbolic resolution praising NATO’s defense of democracy.

Although I take Tarrow’s point about differences in party composition, I stand by my belief that Democrats are just as vulnerable to a crack-up. Campaign finance reform was the straw that broke the GOP’s back, but there are many ways that a party can crack up. Democrats did not have a two-term president from 1968 until 1992 because of irreconcilable splits related to race, crime, and the social safety net. In the 1980s, moderates pushed the Democratic caucus to write a welfare reform bill they could explain to voters. “If we designed the bill for the mentality of the average man,” a progressive replied, “we’d have the Republican bill.” The bill died.

Stalemates like this motivated the formation of the Democratic Leadership Conference. Although dubbed the “Rhett Butler Brigade” by the Left, it succeeded in bridging enough of the racial gap to win its former chair, Bill Clinton, two presidential elections.

There are already divides opening in the party as more representatives identify with outside movements. When Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA 7th District) cosponsored a bill abolishing ICE during the family-separation crisis, her position was, “We’re not about electing Democrats; we’re about representing the rights of our constituents.” When Speaker Kevin McCarthy moved to immediately schedule the vote on her bill, Jayapal had to disavow her own proposal to bail out the party and kill McCarthy’s ploy.

The single most important vote of any legislator is still the vote to elect the Senate or House leader, no matter how committed they are to outside groups. Parties are still a necessary virtue, and I look forward to future contributions from Sidney Tarrow as we struggle to buttress democracy so that the passion of movements and the incrementalism of legislation can coexist.