I am not a sports person; one of the few phrases I know is the "own goal" in soccer, when a player inadvertently kicks the ball into their own side's net. (The rest are of course baseball metaphors.) In business, sociology, and journalism, this is most often referred to as an "unforced error". A rather wonderful if appalling example in recent months is South Dakota governor Kristi Noem's proud admission that she shot to death a young, healthy puppy because she thought it was overly exuberant.
History is full of own goals, such as Napoleon and Hitler invading Russia; McGovern choosing Eagleton as Vice Presidential candidate without vetting him; Nixon taping his own conversations; the recently defeated Democratic Congressman who set off a fire alarm prankishly in the House chamber; and of course a long history of elected officials thinking with their genitals, diving into the Washington basin or lying about hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
The history of the Democratic Party for much of my lifetime has been a series of endless own goals. I will start with the latest one, Joe Biden's Epic Fail, then place it in context.
Biden has been visibly elderly, frail, and seemingly confused for some time. His "minders" apparently isolated him even from some staff for his own protection, and relentlessly managed public appearances, for the sake of keeping the truth from the public. Then--inexplicably-- they decided he could weather a debate with Donald Trump which....he couldn't; there was probably never any chance he could get through it. Own goal! They could have decided he should refuse to debate, a not wholly improper historical tactic: he couild have announced, with some honor, that Trump was beneath dignity, beneath respect, that there was no reason for him to waste his time responding to copnspiracy theories or being berated. "Nothing human is alien to me", yet I can barely stand in the shoes of the planners who allowed him to enter a duel of wits unarmed.
Biden's own vanity and lack of judgment is reminiscent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who elevated her own selfishness over the nation's good by not resigning while Barack Obama could appoint her replacement, and dying on Donald Trump's watch.
If we pull back the telescope a bit, and focus on a wider field, the Democratic Party's role as a gerontocracy makes a significant contribution. While running Biden against Trump in 2020 was not an own goal, obviously, a tactically adept, powerful party would have internally agreed he was to serve one term, and groomed a vice president to step up in the second term. The choice would have been made specifically of someone highly qualified, and then they would have been entruisted with great responsibilities and made highly visible during Biden's one term. The fact that there was no plan of action whatever, just panic and indecision today at the critical moment-- when there is no way left to fix it-- is a Democratic Party own goal.
So is the lack of a "bench" of younger people with autonomy and authority who don't need to be "invented" at the last moment but already have a strong share of public recognition and respect. The elderly do not tolerate that, nor do they inculcate those qualities-- witness the New York party spending more energy and money defeating its charismatic young in primaries than it does fighting Republicans.
The party has had a deer-in-the-headlights look for much of my life, even when it holds the Presidency. I think the evil began when Johnson decided not to run for re-election; no Democrat since then has really seemed to fill the place-- not the intelligent,kind Jimmy Carter, nor impulsive, own goal-prone Bill Clinton (thinking with his genitals), nor even Barack Obama, the best president of my lifetime, who couldn't do two-thirds of the things he wanted, and could not even get Merrick Garland on the Court. Chuck Schumer is 74; naturally he could have chosen to step aside to encourage the younger, as Nancy Pelosi (84) finally did last year. I am not telepathic, but I imagine Schumer and a thousand others privately thinking, "Whatever happens, I will be fine"-- which may not be true. Its a tired comparison, but the Democrats have long had a Weimar aura-- when Walter Rathenau was assassinated it almost seemed as if the government half believed they had it coming, or at least, that the public believed that. I find these days that my own daily work, fighting for students and faculty targeted by their universities for criticism of Israel, is fueled by adrenaline and indignation-- but I am not detecting either "chemical" in the Democrats' bloodstream.
Finally, we can refocus the telescope one more time and look at the trajectory of American history and of its attempt at a sort of democracy. America more or less excelled at what I refer to as the meta-data (Constitutions) and the data (laws and court decisions interpreting them). What has been vastly and egregiously lacking--an own goal-- is the meta-meta-data, the values which inform and perfect the other two levels. We have never paid the least attention to the problem of maintaining an intelligent, ethical, educated, compassionate voter who wants the system to continue. Instead, the opposite has happened for convenience-- both parties, but the Republicans more so, have had their own version of a Stupid Voter Project, as its just easier to trick people into voting for you than it is to persuade them. The very invention of parties, not foreseen in the Constitution, was the first huge step. Democracies can, and have, voted to end themselves-- Germany in 1932, Algeria in 1992, the U.S. in 2016. When more than half the population can be tricked into thinking Donald Trump is presidential, the prospects that the system will continue, in any recognizable form, are not great. That is democracy's own goal.