Democrats Are So Embarrassing

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s Democrats Being Embarrassing During the Lame Duck Season!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what next year will look like after Trump is sworn in again, despite not really wanting to. I want to be launched into space instead. But I’m stuck on earth, not just with Trump and the anti-democratic forces swirling him and who make up the rest of his party, but also with a feckless “opposition” party who can’t even be relied upon to find a microphone somewhere to assure the American people that they’re going to do everything in their power to fight back. No one can be bothered to even attempt to defeat a nominee for Secretary of Defense who has been credibly accused of sexual assault, violence against women, and whose own mom thinks he sucks. But Democrats are nowhere to be found!

Paul Waldman (who has a great newsletter himself!) wrote about this for MSNBC last week:

Ask a Senate Democrat about the nominees, and you’re more likely to hear “I have some serious concerns” than the far more appropriate “My God, is Trump insane? These are the worst nominees in history!”

Many of these Democrats would consider such a response uncivil and undignified; if Trump won’t adhere to norms of propriety, at least they will. Worse, they believe that it is politically clever for them to show voters that they seek bipartisanship, even if that desire turns out to be unrequited.

Paul goes on to say, correctly, that people don’t actually care about bipartisanship, they care about results. What voters really want, Paul writes, is a vocal opposition party that fights against the worst excesses of the party in power, which in this instance involves nominating a potentially alcoholic morning show host to a job that places him sixth in the line of presidential succession.

My take is that this Democratic absence during this very obvious flailing of the incoming Trump administration to assemble a functional government is not only stupid on the merits — it would be bad for the country and for the health of our democracy if Trump’s nominees, like Pete Hegseth, were confirmed, of course. There is an ongoing sexual assault crisis permeating throughout the military, and Trump — himself a sex pest! — wants to put an accused sexual assailant in charge of it. Would it be so hard for Democrats to object? Apparently, yes.

But it’s also stupid politically! Democrats were not as aggressive as they should have been when Trump’s other sex pest nominee, Matt Gaetz, was nominated to serve as the Attorney General of the United States. Gaetz’s nomination folded like a taco, and pretty quickly, probably not so much due to the allegations of sex trafficking against him but more due to the fact that Gaetz has managed to become the most loathed member of a party made up exclusively of loathsome individuals. But because Democrats didn’t plant a strong, clear, aggressive stake in the ground opposing Gaetz — truly I cannot believe no one leaked that Ethics Committee report, Jesus Christ you guys! — they also couldn’t take a victory lap when Gaetz withdrew his nomination.

As I have said, I strongly believe the path forward for Democratic rebuilding is to go big, work fast, make a difference in people’s lives they can actually feel, and then take MEGALOMANIACAL CREDIT for those achievements. So much of politics is presenting a narrative that people can understand. I know that sounds crass, and it probably is, but we live in an information environment where people, at most, only read the headlines. But usually people are getting newsy recaps from non-journalist creators on social media platforms, which does not lend itself to a nuanced discussion about how There’s Actually a Very Smart Reason Why Democrats Have Disappeared For Three Months, or It Actually Makes a Ton of Sense Why Democrats Made This Bill Worse and Now College is Somehow More Expensive. In this environment, Democrats need to spend more time considering what one-sentence explanation they want to break through. For my money, “Donald Trump Nominated a Sex Trafficker to His Cabinet and We Defeated Him” would have been pretty good.

All of this is to say that it is becoming increasingly clear to me that Democrats don’t want to take credit for opposing Trump and his nominees. They do not want to resist. There are a couple of reasons for this, in my view. The first is that Democrats hate to work (relatable, babes). Remember when Senate Dems were whining to the press about how long Trump’s second impeachment trial was taking (you know, the one that launched after he FOMENTED AN INSURRECTION THAT RESULTED IN FIVE DEATHS???) because they wanted to go home for Valentine’s Day? I fucking do! Well, I’m very sorry to Senate Democrats that creeping fascism is threatening your holidays but I think it might be beneficial to, I don’t know, level with the American people about what Donald Trump is signaling with these nominations, and it’s not going to result in cheaper eggs.

I think there’s one other thing happening here, which is that, as per usual, Democrats learned the wrong lesson from this year’s election. I get that Trump’s previous victory, where he decisively lost the popular vote while managing to win the electoral college, lends itself more easily to a resistance narrative. It’s clear Trump had no mandate in that scenario. This go-round was different — Trump won. Straight up. Scoreboard! Our asses got got!

However, it was one of the smallest margins of victory in American history, meaning that Trump’s “mandate,” such that it exists, isn’t particularly broad. At most he has a mandate to make white women feel better about groceries. Yet Democrats are acting as if this victory represents a massive ideological realignment, as though we woke up one day and 100% of all registered voters are Joe Rogan acolytes addicted to erectile dysfunction supplements. It simply isn’t true! Trump’s victory does not signal that he has a mandate to brutalize our most vulnerable community members, and it certainly doesn’t grant him broad authority to stack the government with fashy, litigious weirdos and podcast bros whose explicit goal is to destroy our democracy.

And yet. And yet! We have some pretty visible Democrats absolutely tripping over themselves to portray themselves as sensible Smart Guys in the absolutely incorrect belief that “bipartisan” overtures will be appealing to the American people. Take for example Senator John Fetterman, a man who ran as a progressive when it was politically convenient but has since rebranded as a center-right moderate (I guess?) who sucks up to Benjamin Netanyahu and who bullies kids who want to stop climate change. This idiot appeared on The View to argue that Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump in his New York hush money case because that prosecution was “politically motivated,” as was Hunter Biden’s. This is deranged on multiple levels, not least of which is that the President of the United States does not have the constitutional authority to pardon someone charged or convicted under STATE law, only for federal violations. And this chump claims to be a Harvard grad!

Not to mention the fact that the hush money case is truly only “politically motivated” in the sense that Donald Trump, a politician, was motivated to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about their affair so he could win an election, and thus he used his political campaign money to pay her off. That’s…illegal. Are there a lot of Democrats in New York? Sure. But you can’t refuse to go after people because they’re politicians because that in and of itself is a “politically motivated” prosecution — if prosecutors ignore political misconduct, that results in a de facto immunity for a range of illegal behaviors for a group of people who should in fact be held to a higher standard than anyone else. Unlike the president’s son, who actually was targeted by his father’s political opponents for the sin of being related to Joe Biden. Idiot!

And then we have South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, a person who needs to exit politics immediately. He appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to declare his belief that Joe Biden should pardon Trump (and at least based on my viewing, appeared to imply that Biden should also pardon those currently in custody for crimes related to January 6) for a range of behaviors to “clean the slate,” because “if we keep digging at things in the past, I'm not too sure the country will not lose its way.”

No…no dude. One of the worst missteps in presidential history was when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974. That utter lack of accountability led to a massive loss of trust in our democratic institutions that I still don’t think we’ve recovered from. If Biden pardons Donald Trump (again, as a reminder, a man who was impeached twice and who literally kicked off an insurrection that resulted in multiple fatalities), the idea that the president is an untouchable god-king immune from consequence will forever tarnish our democracy and will encourage even more despicable behavior from future would-be Trumps who seek the presidency specifically to wield its power for corrupt aims.

Again, I think it’s too early to say for sure what Resistance 2.0 will look like, but it cannot be this. It cannot be weak capitulation to fascism based on the flawed belief that the American people voted for this. It should look like a strong opposition party who’s ready to draw real distinctions between what the GOP has to offer (despair for all unless you’re rich) and what Democrats stand for by contrast (opportunity, freedom, economic justice). I realize that tangible achievements will be impossible in a Republican trifecta, but Democrats are not powerless. They should take a note of previous Member-led protests that captured public attention, like when Rep. Cori Bush slept outside on the Capitol steps to protest the end of the Covid-era eviction moratorium. Or when Democrats, led by the late John Lewis, seized control of the House floor to stage a sit-in to protest yet another deadly school shooting and to demand a vote on gun safety legislation. This act not only ground down regular business to a halt, it forced Hill media to report on it. Perhaps nothing “real” came from these protests — there were no changes to the laws — but it showed a political party willing to fight for the American people no matter what.

Now is not the time to curl up in the fetal position and wait to get our asses kicked (some more). It’s time to fight back, even if you might miss a holiday party or two.

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