Those who genuinely embrace a creed or hold passionately to a point of view are, in principle, always looking for converts. Yet the old believers are often suspicious of the new arrivals.
Sometimes, the converts are annoyingly rigid and sectarian. This can bother those who are long comfortable in their faith and thus at ease with pluralism. But there is also the opposite fear: that the new allies haven’t really changed their thinking and are only trying to sow heretical notions among the orthodox.
It is the second anxiety that animates an unease among some progressives about anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives. This has fostered a limited but
vocal backlash against the idea that John Kasich, the Republican former Ohio governor, might address the scaled-back Democratic National Convention on behalf of presumptive nominee Joe Biden.
The easy answer to this apprehension is to say that if you believe (as I certainly do) that defeating President Trump is the prerequisite for anything good happening again in American politics, you should welcome everyone willing to help get the job done. And in light of Trump’s threats to challenge the results if he loses, the health of our democracy may depend on Biden’s winning by a landslide that would leave not a smidgen of doubt about what the voters were saying. This is an all-hands-on-deck proposition.