Democrats in the Senate have developed a ritual they enact whenever a Trump administration nominee comes before their committees for confirmation hearings. One senator on the committee is chosen to ask this question: “Who won the 2020 election?” The nominee — every single time — responds with something like, “Joe Biden was certified as the winner.” The senator then says “That’s not what I asked.” They go back and forth a bit, with the senator trying to pin the nominee down and the nominee refusing to say that Biden won.
If you’re the kind of sicko who watches a lot of C-SPAN, you might be tired of this by now, since it has been repeated dozens if not hundreds of times. But I want to argue that it’s important for Democrats to keep doing it, and not just for the viral moments. Among other things, it’s a vital component of their strategy to win back control of the government in 2028.
Though this ritual has been repeated too many times to count by now, one recent iteration went somewhat viral, when Sen. Jon Ossoff asked the question of Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence. There are a few reasons it got a lot of attention: 1) Democrats just love them some Jon Ossoff, and many are hoping he runs for president in 2028; 2) Ossoff is particularly good at this kind of questioning; and 3) he put a very important bow on the exchange. Have a look:
I’ve watched many of these episodes, and in the hands of a less skillful questioner, they often wind up losing their impact. After a few rounds back and forth, the senator ends it by saying something like “Well, I’m just shocked you can’t admit the truth. Anyhow, moving on…” Ossoff, on the other hand, not only doesn’t let Clayton get away with saying he answered the question, he frames the whole exchange at the end, so anyone watching understands what’s going on:
“Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question? To have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to this question. Why can you not give it?”
By the standards of this administration, Clayton is a serious and accomplished person; he isn’t qualified for the job he’s being appointed to (he has no intelligence experience), but he was a white-shoe lawyer, chair of the SEC, and a U.S. Attorney. What’s important here is that joining the administration requires him to humiliate himself, to perform a public act of debasement required of anyone who would work for Donald Trump.
Ossoff might have gone further and said that not only does everyone know that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Clayton himself knows it too, which makes his performance even more pathetic and repugnant. This flamboyant display of dishonesty and lickspittlery is required of everyone who works for Trump: You will have to not just indulge the president’s delusions but repeat his lies and act on his pettiest impulses, making yourself complicit in all of it.
Trump wants to prosecute his critics? Justice Department officials leap to do it, knowing the cases will get tossed out of court. Trump says the screwup of the no-bid contractor hired to seal the Reflecting Pool is actually the fault of “vandals”? Officials go on TV to insist it’s true. Trump says the Iran war is a spectacular victory? Every Republican has to agree.
And this is where we get to the next presidential election.
When a presidency comes to an end and someone from the same party as the outgoing president gets nominated, they often struggle to explain how they’ll be distinct — they don’t get much credit for the president’s accomplishments, but they get tarred with his shortcomings. It even happens when the outgoing president is popular; Al Gore struggled to explain how he would be his own man after serving as Bill Clinton’s VP for eight years, as did George H.W. Bush twelve years before. In 2024, Kamala Harris somehow didn’t anticipate that she’d get asked what she would have done differently over the prior four years (“There is not a thing that comes to mind”), which got her in a bunch of trouble. The more successful recent candidates — Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush — were able to define themselves as distinct from their parties, and didn’t carry the baggage of a prior presidency.
This problem will be even harder for Republicans to solve in 2028 because of the way Donald Trump has turned the GOP into a personality cult. There isn’t something called Bidenism or Obamaism, but Trumpism is absolutely a thing — and not a popular one. All the Republicans who will run in 2028 are tainted by it — especially J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, but the rest of them too.
Being a Republican in the Trump era has meant many things, but one of the most important is that it has shown everyone involved to be weak. No one with any strength of character could succeed in Republican politics in this era. Not only did you have to lie, you had to tell lies when everyone knew you were lying, and communicate your approval of all Trump’s misdeeds.
When the 2028 election starts, no Republican is going to be able to escape the anchor of Trumpism. Not only will they need to pander to the MAGA base, Trump himself will still be around, and will demand that all the candidates offer him praise and fealty. If they don’t, he will unleash his wrath upon them — and because they’re all cowards, they won’t want to risk that.
To Ossoff’s question — Isn’t it humiliating? — the answer is, yes, it is humiliating. They all humiliated themselves again and again. They had to justify corruption, defend stupidity, echo bigotry, and applaud when America was damaged and degraded. They showed themselves to be spineless toadies, no matter how much they try to overcompensate by strutting around with their guts sucked in and their chests puffed out while they call their opponents gay.
This is the point that Democrats have to keep hammering for the next two years: These people — all of them — are weak and pathetic. The more voters understand that, the harder it will be for any Republican to win the White House in 2028.
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