Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Supposedly Donald Trump got re-inaugurated last Monday. I didn’t see it. Because I have made a deliberate policy to punish Trump’s collaborator media by boycotting any live coverage of his appearances, including his State of the Union or any White House press conferences. After all, most of non-Trump America boycotted Election Day, and that made a pretty big difference.
Trump won the election even though on the one debate His Majesty deigned to grant Kamala Harris , she spanked his ass harder than Stormy Daniels and didn’t even have to get paid for it. He won because a critical plurality of Americans are maliciously ignorant and see all his vices as virtues. But the malicious idiocy of Trumpniks is a known quantity. All you have to do is outvote them. They were not outvoted. Kamala Harris got at least ten million less votes than Joe Biden got in 2020, and if you’re to believe the people in Nancy Pelosi’s camp, Harris did a lot better than Biden would’ve if he’d stuck it out.
Everybody knew Trump was a criminal, everybody remembered, presumably, that he killed hundreds of thousands with Trump Virus (TM) and everybody knew what would happen if Trump was re-elected, and they stayed home anyway because they did not see the Democratic Party as worth voting for.
And it remains to be seen exactly why each and every potential voter who didn’t vote for Trump also didn’t vote for Harris, but there is some more after-the-fact research coming out. “A poll from the Middle East Understanding Policy Project/YouGov released Wednesday found that Gaza was the number one reason why millions who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 decided to stay home in 2024.” The YouGov poll revealed that the issue played a huge role in battleground states, which Donald Trump swept, as 20% of voters in the six swing states that flipped from Biden to Trump said that “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was their top issue followed by 33% of people for the economy. “Even among Biden 2020 voters who did vote for Harris in swing states, voters by a 7:1 margin say they would have been more enthusiastic in their support if Harris ‘pledged to break from Biden by promising to withhold weapons to Israel,’ rather than less enthusiastic.” USA Today: “Harris underperformed with voters of color − particularly Latino voters − but also Black voters in urban centers such as Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee. Harris carried Black voters 86%-12% and Latino voters 53%-45%, according to CNN exit polls. But in the 2020 election, Biden won Black voters by a wider 92%-8% margin over Trump, and Latino voters 65%-32%.”
The point isn’t whether Democrats should align with the socialist/progressive/Free Palestine people or go with the centrists like Lucas Kunze, John Fetterman and Seth Moulton who want the party more focused on the old kitchen-table issues. The point is that they aren’t doing either. What is the Democratic Party doing? Who knows? Not even them.
Back in Malcolm X’ day he would talk to Black audiences about the difference between the “field Negro” and the “house Negro.” (Keep in mind, at the time ‘negro’ was the polite term.) In one speech, he said: “The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house–probably in the basement or the attic–but he still lived in the master’s house. … But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses–the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he’d die. If his house caught on fire, they’d pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.
“If someone came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate,” naturally that Uncle Tom would say, “Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?” That’s the house Negro. But if you went to the field Negro and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate,” he wouldn’t even ask you where or how. He’d say, “Yes, let’s go.” And that one ended right there.”
Democrats are the house Negroes of American government. Their priority is to preserve the institution, even if it ceases to serve its original purpose. So if that means enabling the Trumpniks that seek to destroy it, well, that’s okay, as long as they keep a seat at the table. Even if it’s the kids’ table. The point is they get to keep all the privileges and perks of being in Washington, which is really all that Republican politicians want, except they actually, y’know, do stuff.
There is this theory in cynical leftist circles called Murc’s Law, which is the idea that in public perception everything is (or is made out to be) Democrats’ fault, including what Republicans do because Democrats somehow provoked them into doing it. Which is not entirely fair. Because it’s pretty obvious that Republicans are going to do whatever they want regardless of how Democrats act. Murc’s Law has also been expressed as “the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics”. A more accurate expression would be this: Republicans DO have agency, and they have the power of moral choice, whether they want to admit it or not. They go along with Trump not (just) because they’re scared of him and his Mob, but ultimately because he gets them what they want, and for that they will throw away everything they used to call “conservative.” They have agency. They can choose to do the right thing. And for at least since the Clinton Administration, they have always done the wrong thing. And since you can’t control them, and you can only control yourselves, you are responsible for what you can control.
Some would argue that rather than blaming Attorney General Merritt Garland for not prosecuting Trump before the midterms, we should blame Mitch McConnell, because after all, he was Senate Majority Leader during January 6 and in the impeachment could have organized his colleagues to get the necessary two-thirds vote for conviction, which also could have meant barring Trump from office and breaking his hold on the Republican Party. It was his fault for not having the Senate do their damn job. And while that assertion is quite true, it only confirms the point that Republicans have agency and choice, and they always choose evil. Mitch McConnell is the reason why Merritt Garland is not a Supreme Court Justice in the first place. If you’re relying on Mitch McConnell to save the republic, you’re doomed. Which is why the Biden Administration should have taken McConnell’s decision as policy, and acted accordingly.
If Biden had instead appointed Jack Smith or someone of like character to be Attorney General, he would at least have started the investigations earlier so that Trump’s telegraphed strategy of legal delay until re-election would have been less likely to succeed. Biden and Harris kept saying that Trump and Republicans were an existential threat to the republic, but they didn’t act like it. By appointing Garland as AG and not pressing the issue of January 6 while it was still fresh, Biden and Democrats gave the impression that Trump’s behavior was the new norm. If we wanted to preserve the impression of a two-party system where Republicans and Democrats could negotiate in good faith, Democrats needed to address the main aberration preventing such negotiation. Because let’s face it, if you really DO believe that the republic is under threat, refusing to take every legal means to deal with it means you have failed your raison d’etre as government, just as surely as if you had let Mexico or Russia march troops into one of our states.
Another issue that was definitely under Democratic control was the economy. “It’s the economy, stupid” in America is analogous to that Roman emperor who told his heirs “Make the soldiers rich and don’t worry about the rest“. This is what you need to keep foremost if you want to stay on top. Needless to say, one thing you don’t want to do if you want to stay in office is jack up inflation. But while Biden’s America Rescue Plan was intended to deal with COVID impacts on the economy, and other developed nations also had price increases after 2020, in the US prices rose higher and faster. was primarily intended to reduce deficits long term by creating even more spending on IRS enforcement and renewable energy initiatives. However experts say its impacts, if any, will take place over years and it did not have a statistical impact on inflation leading up to 2024, and now that Republicans have all branches of government, they are in position to reverse a lot of these changes. Which is another good lesson in regard to both the Biden and Obama presidencies: Will the changes you want to implement cost you so much politically that they can be easily reversed the next time Republicans get power?
Democrats, you protected an establishment that wasn’t working for the average American, and that’s why the country abandoned you. Now authoritarians control all three branches of government, and thanks to the tech bros and TikTok, they control the media. Something else you completely took for granted. So you can quit defending the establishment, because you’re no longer it. You should do what Republicans did during all those years of liberal Big Government dominance: use the remaining procedures of the system to gum up their plans, while you still have the chance. Create your own media spaces to build a following outside the “Lamestream Media.” Like Rush Limbaugh did. And you should actually do what Rush and Newt Gingrich did with the “Contract For America” when they sought to take control of the House of Representatives: Tell everybody what you’re actually FOR. And publicize a step-by-step plan for how you want to accomplish it in the Congress, as opposed to hoping you elect a president so he can do everything by executive order.
And to the leftist faction, if you really care about the human rights of Palestinians, maybe try not to give political aid and comfort to Jared Kushner’s father-in-law. Just a thought. You could use one.
To come down to it, Democrats need to find out what people actually want from the government and then offer yourselves as the party that can do it. Even if that goes against your protocols or you don’t think it’s going to work. You’ve tried what you think is going to work, and it hasn’t. Remember the Costanza Maneuver.
The fact is, most Americans are not communists. We do not believe that billionaires are inherently evil just because they have more money than everyone else. We do not necessarily hate Christians just because they believe in something no one else can see. The majority ARE Christians, at least nominally. We do not hate conservatism just because. In fact, the reason the once-Republican Party has managed to coast this long is because Americans ARE generally right-of-center. It’s the billionaires and religious conservatives themselves that are promoting an image of petty control freaks against a general public that is disinclined to believe the Left’s opinion of them. In other words, if anyone believes the “conservatives” are the enemy, it’s because of what they actually do, not because of what Democrats say they are. Cause as we saw in November, no one cares what Democrats think.
If there is no constructive opposition to the party in power, eventually there will come a destructive opposition. This is what we saw in at least two elections. People were so sick of the Democrats and their mores and their political correctness that they elected the Trump Party, again, even knowing what that would mean. But what happens when even the opposition becomes insufferable and there is no constructive alternative to them?
If we actually survive four years of this, the Trump Party is going to have to decide if it wants to support Trump for a third term, against the Constitution. (I doubt he will live so long, but remember, God is real, and He hates us all.) Doing so would cause conflict immediately. Worse would be if he does retire, or dies before 2028, in which case the cult will have its various factions fight it out for supremacy, since none of them command the same mass appeal that Trump does on his own. I predict the various proud oathbreaker boogaloo boys will rampage across the land committing bloodshed and mass rape, possibly involving women. Eventually it will escalate across the 48 states, if not beyond, and make The Purge look like Switzerland. When they have exhausted our military resources and manpower, the remaining 40 percent of sane Americans will have to find the least radioactive part of the country and try to rebuild civilization.
But that’s the optimistic view.
More likely Americans will continue to do what they always do, they will continue to normalize, they will continue to rationalize, they will continue to refuse to take radical action against radical action, and the republic will continue to decay into a zombie of itself, dropping once-vital organs out of its body as it shambles on. And future generations will think the current dysfunction is the way things always were, and therefore the way things are supposed to be. While those old enough to remember where everything went south will look at 2025 as the good old days.
In the short term, I’ve decided that when it comes time to confirm my voter registration, I’m going to change back to Independent from Democrat. Not that I am not still obliged to vote for Democrats as the only plausible not-Trump party in the general election, but the only reason to be in the party is to vote in their primary rounds, and it’s pretty clear to me that my opinion isn’t wanted. And if my mental contribution isn’t wanted, most of the party (with some exceptions) isn’t getting my material contribution either. Cause at this point, the main difference between a Kickstarter fundraising campaign and a Democratic Party fundraising campaign is that in the Kickstarter campaign there’s a better chance of getting what I paid for.
