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Before she left the Washington Post, columnist Jennifer Rubin warned against Democrats running to seek “common ground” with Donald Trump.
With a cacophony of alarm bells going off over Trump’s existential threat to our democracy, one might think the supposedly loyal opposition didn’t need another red alert against an incoming president whose “venality, his bigotry and racism, his fondness for dictators, and his disregard for the truth were on flamboyant display for American voters — with his former top general even decrying Trump as ‘fascist to the core,’” Tim Dickinson wrote in Rolling Stone right after the election.
He added: “Campaigning for the White House, Trump was a peacock with fetid feathers. And others flocked with him: Ostentatious oligarch Elon Musk made a mockery of our democratic system by seeking to buy off voters with small checks and million-dollar prizes. ‘Comedian’ Tony Hinchcliffe was there — making 1950s jokes about Blacks eating watermelons, Jews being tight with money, and Latinos making too many babies, while casually blasting Puerto Rico as a swirling island of garbage.
“Trump openly touted his dictatorial aims and his plans for a ‘bloody’ mass deportation — even as he courted white supremacists with a blood libel against Haitians and spouted eliminationist language about Congolese refugees being a pestilence. And more than half of American voters didn’t recoil. Whether they relished in Trump’s vicious spectacle or simply abided it, they did not turn away. They used their ballots to punch a ticket for Trump — with his dozens of felonies and a sexual abuse adjudication — to return to power, and to absolve him of the consequences of his Jan. 6 coup attempt.”
Profiles in cowardice or ‘blinding flash of common sense’?
Other pundits are rightly dinging those Dems for hoisting the white flag. In her column, Rubin also advised, Sometimes, it’s better not to bend the knee before the bidding even gets underway.
According to Daily Kos staff writer Alex Samuels, “Democratic lawmakers’ reaction to Donald Trump’s incoming administration has been decidedly more subdued this time around. In 2017, Democrats spearheaded a resistance movement, boycotted Trump’s inauguration, and ripped into him whenever they could, but now some members of the minority party just aren’t putting up a fight.”
Also writing in Rolling Stone, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng advised, “Don’t expect a strong opposition party or healthy ‘resistance’ movement this time, at least not in Washington during the ‘shock and awe’ start of his new administration. Democrats in Congress are already capitulating to Trump harder than virtually anyone expected — and Republicans are ecstatic over the degree to which Trump and the GOP’s wins have ‘paralyzed the Democratic elite.’”
They pointed out that 48 House Democrats joined Republicans in passing a viciously right-wing immigration bill [The Laken Riley Act] — legislation that, just last year, was seen as a conservative messaging bill. “Six Democratic lawmakers flipped their positions, voting for the legislation after rejecting it last year. There’s a strong likelihood that the immigration bill will pass in the Senate, too, after most of the Democratic caucus voted to begin debate on the legislation.”
(Among House Democrats voting no was Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Louisville, Kentucky’s only Democrat on Capitol Hill and a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The state’s five Republican congressmen voted yes.)
(And on Friday, the Senate did indeed vote 61-35 to advance the Laken Riley Act. Ten Democrats joined the Republicans and final passage is all but guaranteed.)
Meanwhile, “Some Democratic lawmakers are champing at the bit to work the MAGA movement, such as Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who joined the ‘DOGE Caucus,’” Samuels also wrote. “At least one former progressive darling, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, has essentially surrendered to Trump, saying he’ll back the president-elect’s far-right Cabinet picks and plans to visit him at Mar-a-Lago soon. And other usually reasonable lawmakers are readily backing some of Trump’s viciously anti-immigrant platform.”
(Fetterman and his wife traveled to Mar-a-lago, where Trump called him “a commonsense person.” Trump said he and the senator — the first Democrat to call at the president-elect’s mansion — had a “‘fascinating’ meeting,” wrote The Hill’s Alex Gangitano.)
Fetterman, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the Riley Act, said Democrats who supported it had a “blinding flash of common sense,” wrote Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. “But the Democrats’ failure to muster opposition to this bill isn’t common sense, it’s cowardice. Given the lessons of the last election, it’s wise for Democrats to defy pro-immigrant interest groups when those groups make politically insupportable demands like abolishing ICE or decriminalizing illegal border crossings. That’s very different, however, from completely capitulating to Republican demagogy with little evident concern for the long-term consequences.”
Samuels suggested that some Democrats have concluded “that the reasonable answer to losing the presidency and Senate is to find compromises with Republicans to achieve progress where they can. But there’s one major flaw in this strategy: Helping Trump succeed only enforces his power. An embrace of Trumpism will only further embed it in our fragile political system and collective psyche. Some in the party are becoming accomplices in a fait accompli they ostensibly oppose.”
Weren’t the Republicans supposed to be a house divided?
Not that long ago, some pundits were predicting less than smooth sailing for Trump’s hard-right Project 2025-driven agenda. While they lost the White House and the Senate, the Democrats narrowed the already thin House GOP majority by one seat.
Hence, the argument went, simply by standing united, the Democrats could stall extremist Trump-GOP legislation or force the president and his party to make concessions. In addition, pundits noted that in the Senate, the Republicans were seven votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority.
“It’s looking less and less likely, though, that Democrats are going to begin the second Trump administration by standing up to him — be it on immigration, or potentially any major issue at all. Predictably, Trump, his allies on Capitol Hill, and senior members of his government-in-waiting are over the moon about what this could mean for their (openly authoritarian and bloodlusting) agenda,” Perez and Suebsaeng wrote.
The duo name-checked Fetterman and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “And yet, immigration is not the only issue on which Democrats appear ready to roll over for Trump,” they wrote, adding that Fetterman has said “he could support Trump’s demands that the U.S. take over Greenland.” According to Perez and Subsaeng, Fetterman suggested on Fox News that grabbing “Greenland isn’t a ‘bonkers’ idea, explaining that he was open to discussing the idea of ‘just buying it out’ — like when the U.S. made the Louisiana Purchase.”
Shumer, they wrote, was open “to working with Donald Trump on renaming the Gulf of Mexico” — if the president-elect “first agrees to work with us on an actual plan to lower costs for Americans.” The writers mocked, “What can we even say? You drive a hard bargain, sir.”
‘Give no quarter’
Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent dissed Senate Democrats for “making this mess worse than it has to be — and in so doing, are flirting with an early surrender to Donald Trump. It suggests that some Democrats, spooked by Trump’s comeback, have already decided there’s no percentage in even attempting to challenge anything carrying the aura of ‘toughness’ on immigration. That doesn’t bode well for their capacity to resist the terrible crackdown that’s coming, but fortunately, it’s not too late to find a better path.”
Rubin denied Trump’s oft-repeated claim that he has an “overwhelming mandate to accomplish a host of rash, antidemocratic moves. As I (along with many others) have written, he does not. He barely won, in part because many of his voters thought he would not do the radical things he promised.”
She said it’s the Democrats who “do have a mandate: to stop him when they can. Instead of ‘find common ground,’ maybe they should strive to ‘give no quarter.’”
What would HST do?
History suggests that President Harry S. Truman, the guy who was president when I was born, would agree with Rubin. “The people don’t want a phony Democrat,” he said in a 1952 speech. “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.”
Learning all the wrong lessons from the election, Democrats in the House and Senate are veering “towards the right and deciding to reach out to this mythical GOP voter who will never side with them by throwing immigrants under the bus,” Wajahat Ali wrote in The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali, his Substack column. “They’re about to pass legislation that will detain undocumented immigrants who are simply charged with non-violent crimes like shoplifting. Private prisons must be drooling with glee. Meanwhile, over at corporate media, Morning Joe demands civility for a man who said the rest of us are ‘vermin,’ ‘scum,’ and ‘enemy from within’ upon whom he’ll unleash the National Guard.”
Ali concluded: “Nah, I’ll pass.”
Me, too.
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