Monday, for the first time that I can remember in my adult life, I did not watch the inauguration of a President. As a historian, and a civics and social studies educator, and a lifelong member of the Democratic party, I could not bring myself to sit there and watch something happen that never should have taken place, had our government worked the way the founding fathers desired. Without the level of trust that they determined, in their day, must exist in order for the constitutional democracy they designed and ratified to work, it reached a point of failure on January 20, 2025 from which it may never be able to recover.
Frankly, the level of trust required to make government work the way it was designed to work hasn't existed in Washington for a long time. There have been times, over the past eighty years, when a strong leader was able to make Congress deliver for the people, but that job has become much more difficult with each passing Presidency. And none of the problems perceived by those who voted for Trump, expecting that he will fix them, will get fixed, because as President, he has neither the authority, nor the ability, to fix the problems he convinced his supporters were the reason to vote for him.
What's disconcerting about all of this is that the man who made that rambling, disjointed, factless, vindictive, and demented speech as the newly inaugurated President of the United States won a razor thin election by relying on lies, anger, vindictiveness and revenge, and without offering any policy that would solve any of the problems he claimed he would fix. The party that offered a sound record of fixing problems that government needed to solve, and providing benefits that helped people deal with existing problems, along with long term, common sense solutions, lost, by a razor thin margin but still, a loss is a loss.
And the rest of the world wonders how it is that a country, blessed with the resources of the United States, and the freedom it has enjoyed for 235 years, would willingly put that freedom at risk to elect, of all things, a reality television star, as the political leader of the country and commander in chief of its military.
I wonder that same thing.
Where the Priorities Need to Be
It's not like we didn't see this coming. Rush Limbaugh was the one who pushed the idea that if the Republicans wanted control, and couldn't get it through the ballot box, then they had to keep picking up pieces of the judiciary when they could win elections and have those appointive powers, and they had to get rid of a free press in favor of propaganda outlets they could control, like his EIB network. Thom Hartmann has repeatedly reminded us of this fact. We lost those mid-term elections we needed to win to stop this from happening.
We did have options open to us. Maybe Obama's first term was too far back to see someone like Trump coming down the road, but we were already fighting with the far right over the Supreme Court. The Republicans were more than willing to step outside the bounds of acceptable protocol, and deny President Obama the opportunity to replace Antonin Scalia because they had a majority in the Senate and simply refused to even conduct hearings on his nominee.
So, it would have been practical to have considered amending the Judiciary Act, when we had a majority in both houses, and creating several additional Supreme Court justice seats for Biden to fill when he came into office. That would have prevented Roe from being overturned, which was allegedly an issue of high importance to Democrats, and it would have prevented the ridiculous and unconstitutional immunity ruling this court came up with. It would have been relatively easy to figure out legislation that would have prevented the next GOP majority Senate from doing the same.
That would have solved another problem for Democrats. It would have expidited Trump's insurrection trial and gotten a verdict quickly.
All of that was talked about, and some Democrats in Congress tried to get things started. But our party, well, I don't know. It appears that some Democratic party leaders really didn't think Trump was an existential threat to American democracy, or they didn't think he would win, one or the other. Either way, that was a grave mistake. There wouldn't have been anything at all wrong with packing the court and then, amending the judiciary act to make it virtually impossible for them to change the number of judges on the court. That would have been bold politics, risky, but doable.
Lost opportunities, though, aren't worth discussing at this point. What we need now, immediately, in spite of the malaise and depression that seems to have Democrats in its grip, is more bold action. It's time for some leadership willing to do that to step up. Not in a few months, when things are settled, but now.
And What Would Bold Action At This Point Look Like?
Running candidates, and funding them, in those races where Trump snatched members of the house out of their seats would be a good place to start. So what if they are red districts? Challenge every single seat. Surely, we can raise the kind of money that might require. Maybe it's a long shot, but special elections don't always go by the rules, especially when the turnout isn't high because there's not a presidential election, or anything else on the ballot for that matter.
I know that the system for choosing candidates to run for political office is severely flawed, skewed in the same direction everything else in our government is skewed toward, and that is the influence of money. But we need to run the best, most electable candidates possible, we need to keep the narrative simple, clear, and under control, and we need the money to get the turnout necessary to win. Special elections don't always follow patterns, thinking back to when Doug Jones was able to win the Senate seat in deep dark red Alabama when he was the only candidate on the ballot.
So let's pick up some house seats and throw the Trump agenda into disarray during its opening phase.
One of the highlights of my morning commute is the beginning of the Stephanie Miller Show. This is where I get my daily inspiration to keep going, to keep thinking in a positive direction, and frankly, just to hold it together. They have the exact correct approach, a mix of comedy, with a lot of ridicule thrown in, a check of the facts and a discussion of the big issues of the day in a manner which keeps my attention focused where it should be, and beyond that, assures me that there are plenty of other people out there who think like I do.
I don't know if becoming one of the most reliable progressive media sites was what they had in mind when they initiated their program, but we need to figure out how to get that program linked up with progressive Democrats everywhere. They, along with Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman and David Pakman, would be a knockout media group, doing, in the free press, on the left, what Fox does on the right.
Sometimes, an offhand remark can get things started. This morning, I filled up with gas. Saturday, at the convenience store across the street from my building, the price of a gallon of gas was $3.29. When I stopped today, two days after the orange headed buffoon's inauguration, it was $3.49. I made a comment to the clerk, "Well, Trump's been in two days and the price of gas is up 20 cents!" He laughed, and one of the other customers said, "It's going to get worse than that if his tarrif plans go through."
Now that tells me there are people who are paying attention to this stuff. I also heard someone in the grocery store yesterday make note of the fact that Trump had been in office for 24 hours, and the price of eggs had not come down. Is that trite? Maybe so, but it's funny, and it is nice to hear people talking that way. I have to keep reminding myself, this is, after all, Chicago, which is a liberal, progressive bubble at the core of a group of collar counties that control Illinois politics and consistently elect Democrats to Congress. But still, it helps to imagine exactly how helpful it could be for Democrats to control, not only their own narrative, but the messaging, and make sure it saturates enough of the electorate to make a difference in election results.
That's what we need to be doing, NOW!
We Need a Leader, Now
I'm curious to know where the support is going for those who are running for DNC chair. Frankly, I'm not sure I'd call the DNC effective, at least not recently. I think we need a strong leader, and the only person running for chair who has said anything that caught my attention was, incredibly, Marianne Williamson, who said, "It's important that we recognize the psychological and emotional dimensions of Trump's appeal. We need to understand it to create energy to counter it. MAGA is a distinctly 21st century political movement and it will not be defeated by a 20th century tool kit."
Amen to that. But that's about as far as the dialogue interested me. And it doesn't appear that there's much of a 21st century tool kid developing at the DNC, with the other candidates. It looks like business as usual. Whining about lack of diversity among the candidates for chair is not a good place to start. The Hill: DNC Chair Race Sees Lack of DIversity in Candidates
I'm supporting David Hogg's bid to become First Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee. It's my personal perspective and opinion that the DNC has been moribund for some time now, and it badly needs leadership that can not only unite the Democratic party quickly, but become proactively engaged in being that point where strategy comes together to help Democrats take Congress back in the 2026 mid-term elections. We need this to be the kind of political think tank like the Obama Presidential campaigns, or Bill Clinton's.
I'll tell you what did the trick for me, as far as getting on David's bandwagon. Well, "I get it that its uncomfortable to be told what you don't want to hear," he said, after being admonished to be quiet at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, "but we need to build that culture as a party."
Yes, we sure do. Democrats, not wanting to be told what they didn't want to hear, lost the Presidential election on the margins as a result. There was plenty of expert political advice coming their way that they didn't take until a debate performance by then nominee and President Joe Biden shook them awake. But it was too late, then. I want to see someone at the DNC with the political savvy to see things coming before its too late, and to bring those conversations out into the open for discussion, no matter how uncomfortable. We'd be in much different circumstances today, had a Democratic party political candidate had a full year to campaign, instead of just a few weeks.
The problem is that the Democratic party needs a real leader now. We can't wait for the election wounds to heal. Harris and Biden have left Washington, and it seems that Democrats have scurried into one hole or another.
Someone needs to step up and earn my vote.
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