Ben Rhodes, New York Times: There is a Way for Democrats to Stop Trump and Save America
It was not long after the 2020 election, still very early in Biden's term, that a discussion on a message board caught my eye. It started with the suggestion that if Trump was screaming so loud, and hollering so long about the 2020 election being "stolen" from him, including the illegal lengths he was willing to go, and the millions he was willing to spend--of other people's money of course--on legal fees to try and turn it his direction, that he might be laying plans to steal the next election. There was little doubt he was going to make a run for the White House again. And all of the caterwauling he did, describing exactly how he believed the election was stolen, was a road map to what he and his allies in every single red county in the United States were planning to do to steal the next election.
But, no worries, said the Democratic party's Washington establishment. "We're keeping an eye on it."
We had slim majorities in both houses of Congress, and the Presidency. Our politicians, including the finally-elected President Biden, declared that Trump was an existential threat to democracy, and set about to assure us that he would be brought to justice, especially for planning and inciting an insurrection, a brutal and potentially fatal and disastrous attack on the United States Capitol, an unprecedented rebellion, based on an outrageous lie.
In the long standing tradition of making politics move glacially slow, in order to avoid controversy and make it look like government is being productive, Congress was obligated to organize and conduct an investigation into the insurrection. I'm no lawyer, but I've done a massive amount of reading from multiple legal experts on this particular subject, and there is no explanation forthcoming from the Justice Department as to why it dropped the ball and failed from the outset to do what should have been routine procedure for such a crime, even as Congress was conducting its own investigation.
President Biden complained to critics who were demanding action that to take such steps against a former political opponent would have "appeared to be politically motivated." Those were his words.
And he would have been right. But he was supposed to be a transitional President, right? That's what he said, and alluded to on multiple occasions, when he was running. And he had already declared that Trump was "an existential threat to American democracy." He was absolutely right about that. So what if this appeared to be politically motivated? Doing the right thing would involve ignoring those implications and making sure Trump was removed as an existential threat to American democracy.
Of course, we know now that Congress was acting virtually alone in conducting a relatively slow-moving investigation into Trump's seditious activities. The justice department, by the attorney general's own admission, was slow-walking its own investigation, precisely to avoid the appearances of political motivation.
Frankly, I don't give a damn about appearances. If they believed Trump was an existential threat to American democracy, they failed to defend that democracy, and the Constitution they took an oath swearing to protect, by the whole manner in which they handled the investigation, the indictments and the monumentally significant failure to get Trump in a court room, in front of a judge and jury, and convicted before the next election rolled around. That was what they needed to achieve and we know how that turned out.
Let's be completely honest here. If Trump succeeds in demolishing American democracy, and he's well on his way to achieving just that, the irresolute inaction and almost complete collapse of will among Democrats will be what enabled this to occur. It wasn't the "system," it was the willingness of our politicians to let its interminable delays and flaws, mainly built-in to it to protect the privileged from justice, be the factors to blame for their failure to protect American democracy.
"Well, But, There Wasn't Really Anything We Could Do, You Know, With His Supreme Court Supporting Him and His Judicial Appointees Protecting Him.
If you believe that, then I have a beach house to sell you in New Mexico, cheap.
There were voices, among younger, more aggressive Democrats, who exhibited an extensive knowledge of the Constitution, in providing a course of action for the Democratic party to take to end this charade, and prove they really believed Trump was an existential threat to democracy. Though we had narrow majorities in both houses, the ability existed to break the Senate filibuster, a huge obstacle to democratic action in a republic, and then amend the judiciary act to allow President Biden to appoint enough justices to the Supreme Court to over-ride the conservative majority, neutralize the pig-headed Roberts, and prevent the ridiculous immunity ruling they issued on Trump's behalf.
That would have been a bold move, but looking at where Trump is headed and what is happening, it was a necessary move. But Biden didn't want to give up the filibuster, on long standing tradition and principle. And in hindsight, a majority leader like Schumer wouldn't have gone along with doing it. They were right in claiming that Trump was an existential threat to American democracy, but they were wrong, dead wrong, in the manner that they chose to deal with that. I wonder if they really cared. They have the resources to protect their own interests and cover their rear. The rest of us are the ones who will suffer under this.
And that might explain why there wasn't a whole lot of enthusiastic support from voters in November of 2024. They might have seen Trump as a threat to democracy, but they didn't see Democrats as the best way to deal with it.
Had the court been packed, the interminable delays brought by Trump's attorneys, and the slow moving, slow walking attorney general involved in prosecuting him for insurrection would have had to move their rear ends. The motions would have been wiped out in a day, and the trial date would have been set two years before the 2024 Presidential election. A two year delay in prosecution should be absolutely rejected as gross judicial inefficiency by the American people. If we ever get control of government again, progressives need to blow up the justice system and start over.
So what the Biden administration will become known for will not be the string of legislative accomplishments it achieved during those first two years. It will be for the failure to bring the nation's most notorious, dangerous, criminal and enemy to justice, and for facilitating and setting up his re-election to the White House.
A Paper Tiger
In the post from the New York Times, by Ben Rhodes, that I linked above, he interviewed several immigrants from countries where democracy had failed, and had been set up for oligarchy. One of them, from Turkey, said this, which really captured my attention:
"As a citizen, you feel like this country was a paper tiger. All those institutions we believed would stop this sense of insanity didn't even exist. There is shame that comes from the defeat of a system you've been living in."
A congressional investigation that dumped mountains of criminal evidence which proved, beyond the shadow of any doubt that Trump organized, planned and helped conduct the insurrection on January 6th was left sitting there, after its completion. The major part of the hearings, televised to multiple millions of Americans, were damning. But after it was all over, and the hype ended, and it went out of the news cycle, the justice department remained disconnected. The case was essentially made for the attorney general and handed to him on a silver platter, and the response was, "no, thank you. We'll do it our own slow, traditional, non-political way."
The risks of busting the filibuster, packing the court and getting Trump legally adjudicated as a felonious insurrectionist don't seem to great now, do they?
An what about the "we're keeping an eye on the election" claims, as the alarm bells rang and the reality of Trump making an attempt to steal the election, which was pretty much right out in the open, told to us by his own supporters who outlined all of their own theories about how 2020 was stolen from them. They knew where they could go and what they could do, and had systematically made sure that enough of their people were in place to guarantee Trump got just what he needed.
When the election results came in, and states like North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania began showing almost orchestrated differences in the votes Trump was getting in red counties, just enough to overcome what he didn't get in 2020, I knew that they had stolen the election, and that in spite of the Democratic party rhetoric, about making sure that they were keeping an eye on it, and "Mark Elias will take care of it," they weren't really doing anything about it. Greg Palast showed us evidence that they tossed enough mail-in ballots on technicalities, which was at the core of their plan, to achieve their narrow victory.
And what did Democrats do, before this when the warnings were shrill and frequent, and afterward when the evidence was in hand?
Not what we should have done. Or what we could have done.
Can the Democrats Protect American Democracy Now?
"The hard truth is that the Democratic party, in its current form, cannot lead the opposition that is required."
That's the evaluation of Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor under the Obama Administration, and a contributing editor to the New York Times. I've read some of his work before, and he's in a position to know, and be honest about it. Simple observation shows him to be correct. Our senate minority didn't have the stomach to do the right thing about the CR. How in the world are they going to confront the big stuff we know is coming?
I'm not running through all of these past errors and mistakes to point fingers or be critical. But we need to learn from them. The Republicans have the distinct advantage. They were willing to step outside the boundaries of morality, the rule of law, and the principles that make up American democracy to grab and hold power for their own agenda. They organized and conducted a destructive, damaging, dangerous insurrection. We, on the other hand, weren't willing to do the obvious, when we had the chance, and those things that Democrats were being pushed to do were within the law, the boundaries of morality and American idealism. The founders didn't want a partisan court, and wrote the judiciary act to provide Congress with ways to prevent it. The court has been both disloyal to the constitution and deliberately immoral and corrupt.
We had a chance, a real chance, with the special elections occurring on April 1. But it appears that the action on those has been faltering and irresolute. So I can see Rhodes' point.
I'm getting up there in years, dependent on Social Security now, worried about health issues that are starting to catch up with me, and about surviving. But I'm all in on protecting our democracy and standing up for the values on which this country was founded. Marching and protesting are fine, making calls and writing emails are fine, too, but if those who have been given public trust by serving in office are more interested in protecting their own interests than they are in protecting democracy and more critically, our freedom of conscience, then I don't need them and I'm not voting for them or supporting them.
I'm going to end here with one of the best quotes in the piece from Rhodes:
How are you going to reform how politics works in this country if you won't reform how it works inside your own party?
You can't build movements without breaking things. That entails risk. You will lose some donors, antagonize some interest groups and even alienate some voters.
But nothing could be riskier than our current course. This country is being destroyed from within, and what are we talking about? We don't need a detailed new policy agenda from Democrats that they can't implement now and that most people will never read. We don't need politicians fanning out as awkward guests on podcasts about sports or conspiracy theories.
We need authenticity. We need to know that the party is willing to fight for the things that matter most to people in this country and is unafraid to take on the special interests that are destroying it. Don't just tell us what program or policy you are for; tell us why you are for it. Show leadership by letting a new generation ascend. Look for people like Andy Kim who are showing courage and creativity in communities. Amplify those voices so there is a resistance that doesn't feel manufactured.
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