trumpians

Democrats Can No Longer Afford Moral Purity

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

I’ve said it before in a different context: when only one side is playing by the rules, they’re setting themselves up for a moral victory accompanied by a crushing actual defeat.

The Democratic party’s insistence on moral purity is what led them to purge their own Senator Al Franken. It’s what allowed Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat to sit vacant for ten months, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s was filled in ten days. And it’s what continues to cause massive headaches for those of us who actually worry about the future of the country.

Chuck Schumer was absolutely correct in his vote for the “continuing resolution” to keep the government funded: voting against it is what the Trumpians wanted. There may have been moral purity in rejecting the bill, but then what? Shut down the government? Declare moral purity by not voting for the bill? That is exactly what the Trumpians wanted.

Indeed, they’re already doing it. Look at what has happened during Trump 2.0: USAID has been shut down. NOAA has been shut down. The Department of Education is nearly shut down. They’re shutting down the government piecemeal while patriotic ex-employees file pitiable lawsuits, hoping to keep their jobs.

Not adopting Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution would have done in one fell swoop what Trump & Co. are doing slowly, department by department: it would have shut everything down.

“But then shutting down the government would have been the Republicans’ fault,” the purest of the pure cry.

“So what?” respond the rational people. “That’s what they’re doing today. That’s what they want to do.” And that appears to be what the voters asked for.

Regardless of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s commentary, there was no pathway to negotiate a clean four-week extension. If that negotiation could have occurred, it would have happened weeks ago. But Trump’s minions in the House had no interest in doing so. They have the majority there, so they don’t need to talk to the Democrats about anything.

Had the staunch Democrats succeeded in delaying the bill and shutting down the government, the Trumpians would have been celebrating. And they would have had no reason to negotiate anything to re-open it. We would be suffering through a government shutdown that would last until the next election, all while Trump and Elon Musk determine which pieces of the government are “necessary” and which are not. They would have had the time of their lives, selling off pieces of the government to their cronies at bargain prices, while the Democrats would be mewling for negotiations to fund and re-open the government.

I disagree—vehemently—with almost every action taken by the president and his gang of thieves. I disagree with their policies, their stated goals, and their methods. But the moral purity of the Democrats is a danger we can no longer afford. Adherence to the rules is a path to victory only if both sides are playing by the rules, and if the judges of the contest care about them. November 5, 2024, showed us that a plurality of American voters don’t care about following the rules, and that saddens me. But if we’re going to save our country from the predations of Trump 2.0, we’re going to have to get dirty, get down in the mud with our foes to fight back, hard.

Was Schumer morally impure for allowing the continuing resolution to pass the Senate? Yes. But was it the right thing to do in an attempt to save the country? Also, yes.

Everybody’s Speaking

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been watching the attempted election of a new Speaker of the House with interest and, I must admit, a little bit of schadenfreude. (I’ll get to the schadenfreude later).

The House’s own web site notes that, of 127 Speaker elections, only 14 times did they require multiple ballots, and that 13 of those occurred before the Civil War. The 14th was in 1923. So now, the site will have to be updated to include the 15th in 2023.

Caroline Linton, for CBS News, has already done some research on those previous multi-ballot elections. Pay particular attention to the election of Howell Cobb, in a non-two-party era.

CobbThe current election is interesting for a few other reasons. One of them — one rarely commented on in the media — is the presidential line of succession. If something dire were to happen to both the President and the Vice President, the next in line to succeed to the presidency is the Speaker of the House. But since there is no Speaker at the moment, the line of succession would move on to the next eligible person, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington. Incidentally, Murray became President pro temp on January 3rd, when the retiring Patrick Leahy left the Senate, and she was elected to the post. She is the first woman to be President pro temp. Following her is the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and on through the Cabinet.

The schadenfreude crops up when I look at the reason we’ve now seen six ballots with no candidate earning a majority of the votes to be Speaker. The Democrats have been united: each ballot, all 212 of them voted for Hakeem Jeffries. No surprises there.

The Republicans, however, have not been nearly so united. Kevin McCarthy — who had been the House minority leader, and was assumed to be the next Speaker — got 203 votes each of the first two ballots, and then 202 on the third (the first ballot saw 10 votes for Biggs, and 9 for others; the second gave 19 to Jordan, and the third, 20 to Jordan). Then the Republicans pulled themselves together enough to adjourn for the night.

They returned on the 4th and again started voting. Again, Jeffries got 212 votes on all three ballots. And on all three ballots, McCarthy was down to 201, with 20 votes for Donalds, and one Representative-elect — Victoria Spratz of Indiana — voting “present”. Again, the Republicans called for an adjournment, though only for three and a half hours.

They reconvened at 8pm, and immediately moved to adjourn for the night. This time, the Democrats made them work for it, demanding a recorded vote. Four Republicans joined the Democrats in voting no, so that the vote to adjourn wound up being a very close thing.

But how did we get here? We got here because the Republicans chose to take short-term power and got into bed with the devil to do it. In this case, the devil was the newly emerging Trumpian party. The Republicans (and the news media, for that matter) have vested interests (different interests, but with the same result) in maintaining the theory that we are in a two-party system. But we aren’t, not really, not anymore.

The Republicans keep talking about the 20 break-away Republicans as just a wing of the party, and McCarthy keeps thinking if he can just give in to enough of their demands, they’ll vote for him. But they’re not interested in compromising with him, in working together. They’re out for their own ends, and those ends come not from fixing the system, but from burning it down.

Among their latest demands, for instance, are for the Republican leadership to butt out of future primaries, giving their extremist brethren even more chance to win their way into the House in the costume of Republicans. It’s time for McCarthy and company to wake up and realize those Trumpians are no longer Republicans, that they’re angling for the long-term growth of their own party, at the expense of the Republican party. It’s time for the true Republicans to realize they’ve lost, and seek a negotiated settlement not with the Trumpians, but with the Democrats.

I bet the Republicans are now regretting forcing out Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and company.

Democrats keep attacking themselves

~ ianrandalstrock ~ 3 Comments

The Democrats are doing it again: they’re so busy fighting amongst themselves that the Republicans and the Trumpians can just sit back and laugh, knowing they’re going to win because the Democrats are their own worst enemy. How many of them are yelling at Senators Manchin and Sinema to change the filibuster rule in the Senate, instead of yelling at the Republicans and the Trumpians to protect voters’ rights? They’re just wrong. The reason the original filibuster existed—and the current horrible incarnation of it is in place—is to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Yes, of course, the majority should decide. But if the slimmest of majorities can stomp all over the largest of minorities, that’s not what we want either. And overturning the filibuster now will only result in even unhappier Democrats in the future, because the pendulum continues to swing, and there will be a time when the Democrats are a minority.

Every time there’s a political debate, it’s the same story: the Republicans yell at the Democrats, the Trumpians yell at the Democrats and threaten the Republicans, and the Democrats yell at… other Democrats. Just the latest instance of the gang who couldn’t shoot straight, DC edition. If they ever focus on those who are actually in the wrong on the issue, they might be able to accomplish great things.

The Democrats are Threatening Suicide, Again

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

What kind of morons are our Congressional representatives who claim to be Democrats? They’re the majority party (however slim a majority, it is a majority). They can actually adopt important, far-ranging, necessary legislation.

But every sub-group of Democrats in the Congress is doing its level best to kill the party, to make themselves look like the gang who only wants to shoot themselves.

And the Trumpians (the former Republican party) are keeping out of it all, laughing themselves back into the majority at the next election.

The little kids in Congress, the progressives, are quite emphatic that they want want want what they want and they want it all; most is just not good enough for them. Apparently they never bothered to learn negotiation or compromise. They’re continuing to flaunt the Democrats’ Achilles Heel of demanding absolute purity of their members, absolute fealty to their ideals because they seem to think getting most of the way there is unacceptable (but apparently they don’t have a problem with losing everything). And anyone who shows the least bit of fallible humanity is worse to them than the opposing party. If they’d stop being road blocks for five minutes, they could pass one major bill—which would be the first domino in an incredibly long and important chain—and then focus their energies on the next, rather than holding up one because they have to have everything right this minute, all or nothing!

And then we have their two senators, Manchin and Sinema, who early in these negotiations decided to set themselves up as the most powerful people in Washington. They’ve got it. We’re listening to them. No one has heard Chuck Schumer’s name in weeks. So what are they waiting for? What more do they think they can wring from their own party? Or do they think the Trumpians are going to give them more if they kill this legislation, and with it, the Democratic majority? It’s time for them to get their asses off the bench and vote for the damned bills, or else admit that they really are Trumpians in sheep’s clothing, and give the Senate back to Mitch McConnell and his twisted views of how the government should operate.

The Trumpians are laughing all the way back into power, and the Democrats’ loss will be squarely on the shoulders of the House Progressives and Manchin and Sinema. This has been the latest lesson in “how to throw away an insurmountable lead.”