No more deals. No more games. No more parliamentarian parlor tricks designed to dull the roughest edges of Donald Trump’s unconscionable policies. My greatest wish for the shambolic political party known as the Democrats is that they abandon the cloying institutional response to Trump that they have deployed to such little effect.
I am not suggesting that the Democrats should help Trump; I’m not recommending that they join in the evil he is about to unleash. But they should not spend another four years holding a “center” that has already shifted so far to the right that it makes George W. Bush look like a benign moderate.
We’ve already seen how little that approach achieves. Since 2016, the Democrats have deployed institutional responses – lawsuits, hearings, impeachment efforts, Republican allies – to try to stop Trump, while Trump has used raw political power, billionaire buddies and captured media to bend the political universe to his will.
Democrats have spent their emotional and moral energy on defending the institutions Trump attacks instead of the human people he threatens. This cycle has to stop. We cannot defeat Trump or, more importantly, his racist, misogynist, know-nothing movement by propping up institutions and systems that so many millions of people have come to despise. When Trump moves to destroy an institution, the Democrats should do nothing. But when he moves to destroy people, the Democrats should do everything under the sun, including taking the “resistance” directly to the streets in the form of extrajudicial maneuvers and civil disobedience.
The best possible political outcome of this approach would be for the Republicans to own everything Trump does. The government is not divided; Republicans have won one-party rule. So force them to rule.
I don’t want to hear about “friends from across the aisle.”
Trump shouldn’t be able to get a single cabinet appointment with the help of Democratic votes. He shouldn’t be able to pass a single piece of legislation with their support. He shouldn’t be able to pass a budget with their help. The Republicans should be on their own.
I don’t want to hear a word about “friends from across the aisle” when those “friends” are trying to banish 20 million people. Instead, I want to see Democrats doing sit-ins and being carried out of Congress by the sergeant at arms. I want Democrats lying down on train tracks.
As important, I want the American people to see the Democrats doing it. The Trump media will cover a lawsuit as just that: legal mumbo jumbo where both sides have a credible argument but Republican jurists get to decide who is right.
The people need to see that at least the Democrats are not punks. At least the Democrats have the courage of their convictions.
Trump drove around in a garbage truck for a day; the least Democrats could do would be to actually get their hands dirty.
(3) comments
Monterey County Now should stick to state and local news.
The crucial thing is to understand the true nature of the current Democratic Party. Ever since the horrific Citizens United Supreme Court decision, most Dem politicians became CORPORATE Democrats, serving their corporate, super-rich donors, the same way traditional Republicans have. Almost the only politicians who are honest and actually represent the working class, i.e. the majority, are the true Progressives, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, etc.
We know by three main ways that Bernie Sanders and the people were cheated out of the 2016 Democratic Primary, and thus, the presidency.
1 - The WikiLeaks e-mails exposing all the sordid, corrupt collusion between the corrupt DNC, the Hillary campaign and the corporate media, to cheat against Sanders.
2 - The firing of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz as a scapegoat for the scandal.
3 - The tell-all book by subsequent DNC Chair Donna Brazile that described the depths of the corruption and the collusion with the corporate media against Sanders. -- He was cheated out of the 2020 Democratic primary in much the same way.
By this monstrous behavior, we know that the corporate Democrats would rather lose to Trump than let a Progressive, like Bernie in the White House.
The only way the working class can take back the Democratic Party, and save the country and planet, is by putting Progressives in the highest positions of power.
Let's hope enough Americans wake up before it's too late.
Only a liberal can come up with a democrat plan like this one.
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