Poised on the Brink of a Knockout Punch, Democratic Senate Leadership Throws in the Towel

I used to think that there might actually come a day when this country would get its politics together, wake up to what is being done to it politically, and unite behind the leadership of the Democratic party to throw out the fascists and set up an era of peace and restoration that would last at least as long as the Roosevelt restoration did.  With November's election results, polling data that shows the Trump administration has lost way more ground than they can afford, the growing momentum behind the marches and protests under the "No Kings"banner, signs that the government shutdown was putting tremendous pressure on the GOP with some members of both the House and Senate ready to back down and make a deal, that old line political gamesmanship from out of a time when negotiation and give and take actually worked raised its ugly head among Senate Democrats and edged eight of them out of line into capitulation.  

Instead of holding their ground on the one thing they had claimed was worth fighting to keep, they buckled under pressure from somewhere, and threw in the towel.  I have to hold myself back from writing words that I might regret, feeling betrayed as I am right now, and lost.  Trump, squirming and bucking and showing signs that he was going to have to find a way to cut and run without looking like he was cutting and running was given a beautifully wrapped gift by these eight Democrats who still, after nine years of his rhetoric and actions, don't seem to see that he's a threat to American democracy. 

What they seem to see is that their own political career, and preserving their own political power by holding on to their Senate seat, is more important than representing the people who put them there in the first place.  And that is going to lead us to the disaster we all know has been coming for at least a year. 

We've gotten so used to this modus operandi of our party leadership that the apologists and little Mary Sunshines were out early, trying to find ways to explain away what can't be explained away.  The mixed messages are frustrating and baffling.  Trump is, all at once, the greatest threat to democracy in all of American history, and yet, well, to these eight Senators, maybe they're not on board with that and he's just another corrupt Republican politician, oh, well, huh?  

Everything that the marches and protests, and last Tuesday's elections, and the pressure on the Republicans because of the shutdown had gained up to this point has been lost.  We've gone from heartfelt and enthusiastic talk just a week ago that the Senate might realistically be in play in the midterms, to greater uncertainty about even being able to win a House majority, after this fiasco.  It's quite possible that we not only won't get control of either house in the mid-terms now, but we very likely may have just handed Trump a third term, or at least, helped the Republican nominee to the White House in 2028.  

At 68 years of age, I have to look at this practically now.  I'm not sure I'll ever see the America we once had under a constitutional democracy.  I was hoping that we'd gain enough seats in the upcoming midterm to end his agenda and stop any further damage, though I didn't see impeachment and removal as a possibility,but a faint hope. I was hoping we'd field a strong candidate in 2028 who could give us a couple of years of solid congressional majorities to undo and repair the damage done by Trump. At this point, I don't think we'll see any of that.  I don't think Democrats are done with their old line political negotiation and if this keeps up, we're going to lose the midterms in 2026, and the Presidency in 2028. 

He's going to steal it, we all know that.  With this kind of leadership, they're just going to sit around, complain about it and let him have it.  No one with the power to stop it is going to step up and do it. 

So it seems, I'll have to plan to live out the rest of my days in a fascist dictatorship.  It may simply require devoting all my energy to figuring out how to survive.  My health isn't great, and now I don't think I can count on getting all of the social security and medicare benefits I worked for all of my life.  That will definitely shorten what days I have left, if we get to that point while I'm still around.  

I'm not bragging here, but I discovered that I spent somewhere around $2,000 on the 2024 election, mostly on the Presidential race, but I gave a good chunk to the DNC, and to candidates running in places like Wisconsin, Michigan and a nice sum to Beto O'Rourke's group working in Texas.  I've stopped doing that for now. David Hogg's group is on to something worth the support. So is O'Rourke. So is Bernie Sanders, God bless his heart.  But I've kind of lost my enthusiasm at this point. Why waste the money and the time, when we will have some Senators or members of Congress just give in like this?  We'll have evidence in hand of how he's going to steal the election but no one is going to do anything about it.  So why bother? It's not much, but putting that in savings might be critical for survival at some point.   

This is how they've made me feel.  And here's something else to consider, after working up all this momentum, and having things finally start to point in our direction, how many others have been utterly discouraged by these eight Senators who will never experience anything out here like we are going to go through?  We can't afford this.  

And it damn well better change.