"A few brave governors have committed to
resisting Trump, but congressional Democrats have
been mostly silent."
By Thom Hartmann
Community
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
at 9:19:23a MST
REPUBLISHED BY:
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
at 9:19:23a MST
Monday
morning MSNBC and CNN (and, presumably, Fox, etc.) gave Trump roughly
40 minutes of live television time to rant and lie, threaten an Iowa
newspaper and pollster, propose privatizing our Post Office, and muse
about ending schoolchildren’s vaccine mandates for polio.
Everybody watching cable TV probably saw it; it was later the topic
of numerous newscasts and newspaper articles that are still echoing
across the news space.
Around the same time, President Joe Biden spoke at the
inauguration of the Francis Perkins National Monument to FDR’s famous
Labor Secretary and principal author of the New Deal. He truthfully
pointed out that his one four-year administration had helped create
16 million new jobs, more than any single presidential term in history
(and more than the jobs created by the Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump
administrations combined).
The cable networks chose to completely ignore Biden’s speech. As did
the rest of the nation’s media. So, I get it, there’s a strong media
bias in favor of Trump (“What new outrageous thing will he say? OMG!
Click bait!!!”) and generally against Democrats.
That doesn’t mean, though, that elected Democrats should run
and hide. Americans across the country are terrified, particularly in
Red states where women are bleeding out, while the morbidly rich and
religious fanatics are licking their chops.
So, where are the Democrats? What happened to “When we fight, we win!” ???
Even when the media would rather ignore you, political theater
still works. Standing up to bullies still works. And fighting back
becomes even more imperative.
Where the hell, for example, is Kamala Harris?
She told us that Trump was a “fascist,” suggesting he was dedicated to destroying our country:
“Donald Trump has said he would terminate the Constitution of the United States.”
That sounds like a five-alarm fire. So, where has she been
since the election? Did Trump’s fascism just go away? His threat to
terminate our Constitution was just a joke? Where the hell is she?
For that matter, where the hell are any of the leaders in the Democratic Party? It seems that Nancy Pelosi has been spending her time trying to rig backroom deals
to screw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in favor of 74-year-old cancer victim
Gerry Connelly. (The hotlink in that sentence points to NBC News; I’m
no longer linking to — or watching — ABC “News” or using any of Disney’s
products.)
The headline at KamalaHarris.com
says, “OUR FIGHT CONTINUES,” and the text below it asks for donations
“to hold the Trump administration accountable.” Really? How is she going
to do that from wherever she and Tim Walz are hiding?
Is it that Trump has succeeded in cowing Democrats as fast as
he has our largest corporations and their billionaire owners? Two top
MSNBC hosts made a pathetic pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. A few Democratic
members of Congress have even said they “look forward” to working with Trump and his Muskrat buddy. Is this some sort of sick joke?
Remember the night of President Obama’s first inauguration?
At the same time Louise and I were dancing with Barack and Michelle at
Union Station, Republican leaders were gathered at the Caucus Room
Restaurant in DC to organize a “massive resistance” campaign against our
nation’s first Black president.
In attendance were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete
Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions,
along with Senators Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and
Jon Kyl. Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz, who organized the dinner,
rounded out the group.
As I wrote for Truthout back in the day:
Over juicy steaks and fancy cocktails in a private room in the
back of the restaurant, the Republican bigwigs promised each other that
they would filibuster and obstruct any and all legislation supported by
President Obama.
Congressman Pete Sessions, who was at the four-hour long dinner,
even promised to use “Taliban-like” tactics to achieve those goals.
Kevin McCarthy, now the Majority Whip, said that they’d obstruct
every single piece of legislation. That includes things the Republicans
used to support.
The Caucus Room conspiracy had three major objectives.
The first was to use obstruction — knowing the corporate media
would call it “gridlock” as if the Democrats were responsible, too — to
prevent President Obama from having any legislative success.
The second was to sabotage any legislative victories that the
president did manage to win — like Obamacare — and convince US citizens
that they were actually failures.
And the third was to blame all the economic damage caused by
Republicans on BOTH parties and then come out in the next election and
say that Republicans are the party that will make things right in
Washington as if the state of the economy was the Democrats’ fault.
After the meeting, Kevin McCarthy famously said of their commitment to obstruction:
“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the
minority. We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge
them on every single campaign.”
And, sure enough, they did. And continue to do so to this day. And
the voters rewarded them, “shellacking” Obama’s Democrats in the next
election.
Where are the Democrats today with that kind of spine? Where
is our resolve to fight, rather than enable, fascists? What happened to
our principles and commitment to democracy?
As one of the Party’s newest up-and-comers, 24-year-old Parkland survivor and gun activist David Hogg, pointed out, the Democratic Party has become far too reliant on self-interested consultants:
“Throughout the campaign, there were multiple times where I brought
up publicly my concerns about young voters, and I was shut down by
consultants and messaged by them saying, ‘You don’t know what you are
talking about. This is not an issue. This is dumb of you to say,’ and a
whole lot of other things that I can’t tell you on TV…
“We need to build a party that tells people what it needs to hear and not what its consultants are paid just to say…”
While a few brave governors have spoken out, committing themselves to
resist Trump’s mass deportation plans, congressional Democrats have
been largely silent. For a brief moment in time, it looked like
Democratic governors JB Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Lujan Grisham, and a few
others might rally Democrats nationwide to roar back at the incoming
Trumpistas.
And then the Party went silent.
Democrats from previous eras had no problem taking on
Republicans. LBJ ate their lunch, legislatively. FDR called them out
repeatedly, referring to them and their morbidly rich backers as “economic royalists”:
“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of
small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the
American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than
the worker or the farmer. …
“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of
these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for
control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped
it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries
sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a
result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the
Minute Man. …
“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow
the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we
seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”
Republicans called FDR a tyrant and a communist, and he
laughed at them. They said he’d destroy America, and he steamrolled
them. They whined and complained as he called out the fat cats and
ridiculed that generation’s GOP, rendering them impotent.
When one wealthy man famously said he’d have to leave the country because of FDR’s high taxes, Roosevelt told
a crowd, “And I will miss him very much” to gales of laughter. He named
names. He was arrogant. He fought hard on behalf of the average person
until, literally, the day he died.
Where is this generation’s FDR? Where are the Democratic Party’s heroes? Where are our spokespeople? Where is their outrage?
Or do Democrats expect Trump to magically morph into Mitt Romney on
January 20th? The five-alarm fire is out? Disaster averted? WTF?
Kamala Harris lost the election. She lost by a whisker, but she lost.
And if she and other leaders and would-be leaders of the Democratic Party don’t step up now to challenge Trump and the fascist crew he’s assembling, don’t offer a contrasting vision for the future of our country today, don’t challenge Trump’s outrageous policies and bizarre appointees every single day, they’re going to lose us our democracy as well.
It’s time to grow a damn spine.
Kamala: You almost beat the fascist. You can't just walk away from the fray. We need you now more than ever.
