Democrats Who Surrender In Advance Are Bipartisan Accomplices
Time to learn the art of war.
A major reason Kamala Harris lost the presidential election is that most voters believed Donald Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a bigger failure than the King Kong musical. According to the Harris campaign’s own internal polling, undecided voters refused to blame Trump for the worst events from his first term, including a botched COVID response and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the latter of which he bragged about.
Sure, a lot of this has to do with a right-wing propaganda ecosystem that Democrats are too tired right now to combat, but the larger problem is that Democrats can’t stop serving as Trump’s most reliable accomplice.
Former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell responded to non-convicted felon Barack Obama’s landslide victory in 2008 with a policy of unified GOP obstruction, which was an unqualified success. However, when Senate Democrats re-elected Chuck Schumer as party leader last month, he announced, “Our preference is to secure bipartisan solutions wherever possible and look for ways to collaborate with our Republican colleagues to help working families. However, our Republican colleagues should make no mistake about it, we will always stand up for our values.”
Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said that capping credit card rates are an area where they could work with Trump. Sanders also publicly agreed with Elon Musk regarding the Pentagon’s budget. Under no circumstances, should you hand it to Musk.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu announced at a press conference, “House Democrats are ready to work with the incoming administration and will extend a hand of bipartisanship whenever possible to make life better for everyday Americans.”
It’s like Democrats took advantage of the Black Friday sales to stock up on white flags. Look, it’s not enough to oppose Trump’s objectively terrible policies. You can’t let him pass anything remotely positive, either, even by accident. Newt Gingrich has claimed that Republicans were responsible for the balanced budget during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and Clinton was forced to go along with it. Like his marriage vows, Gingrich’s version of history isn’t always reliable, but to the extent Republicans believe Clinton unfairly received credit for 1990s prosperity, they’d absorbed that hard lesson by the time Obama was elected.
Democrats pride themselves as the party of responsible governance, one that won’t let partisanship get in the way of serving the public. This is very noble but horrible politics. It’s one thing when Democrats rallied behind George W. Bush after 9/11 (not even a year after the Supreme Court gift-wrapped the presidency for Bush just in time for Christmas). That was only a catastrophe if you’re opposed to invading random countries. However, Trump is an existential threat to democracy, according to all the Democratic fundraising appeals I’ve received. Helping him is never in the nation’s best interests.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, House Democrats passed a $2 trillion stimulus in late March that sent much-needed relief to Americans, but in a classic Trump move, the checks bore his name, as if drawn from his own account. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should’ve at least negotiated for co-billing.) Democrats complained, but this proved effective branding. It’s not so much that deliverism doesn’t work. You just have to put your name on the check.
If Hilary Clinton had been president during the pandemic, her name wouldn’t have appeared on the stimulus checks and not because of misplaced modesty. Republicans would’ve blocked any stimulus until after the election, ensuring that Americans felt only misery while she was in office. Trump managed to enjoy all the acclaim for stimulus checks, including the ones sent as he actively plotted a coup, while Democrats shouldered all the blame for mask mandates, school closures, and excessive bread making.
According to a Navigator Survey exit poll, immigration was the top issue for 31 percent of voters, and they broke for Trump by 71 percent. Republicans didn’t just hammer Biden on this issue, often with racist lies, they actively refused to help him resolve it, even when Democrats were willing to give Republicans almost everything they wanted. Trump, while out on bail, killed the tough border security bill. 2028 Democratic contenders Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, or Ruben Gallego (don’t sleep on him) would never engage in similar tactics, even if it meant that Trump might sign some grand bargain with Democrats that he could then use to campaign against them.
Democrats have already helped Trump more than enough. The deliverables from Biden-era legislation will start ramping up in 2025. Trump will likely spend the next four years at ribbon-cutting ceremonies. This is why Biden probably should’ve focused on scoring short-term political points, considering a fascist movement was waiting in the wings. (Admittedly, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema did all they could to obstruct legislation that would’ve benefited the most people quickly.)
Pardon me?
More Democrats have publicly broken with Joe Biden over his decision to pardon Hunter. California Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested that Biden lied to him. “I took the president at his word,” Newsom told POLITICO. “So by definition, I’m disappointed and can’t support the decision.”
Yes, Biden previously said he wouldn’t pardon his son, but he changed his mind when it was obvious that Donald Trump planned to turn the Department of Justice and the FBI into his personal flying monkey army. Let’s imagine that Newsom had dinner reservations at a swanky restaurant that pairs classic French techniques with wildly fresh ingredients. Newsom might not want to disappoint anyone by backing out, but if this were the middle of a pandemic, then it’s OK to change his mind. Sometimes situations change.
Josh Barro writes in his newsletter, “If you’re going to tell people to vote for you because the other side is unethical, you have to be ethical; otherwise, the pitch doesn’t make sense.”
Donald Trump is a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist who attempted a coup. The salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross are more ethical. Even if you believe Hunter Biden’s pardon is unethical, comparing it to, well, anything Trump has done and will do is absurd false equivalence. Hey, Batman is a vigilante, which is technically illegal, so he’s morally no different from the Joker! Superman is an illegal immigrant, so how can he ethically oppose Lex Luthor?
In Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, the president questions the legality of his own Emancipation Proclamation, but that didn’t put it on the same moral footing as secession. One obviously served a greater good while the other promoted an evil system.
The institutionalists and norms-obsessed still see this as some larger moral debate, like Biden’s entire “soul of a nation” platform but that’s not even why he won in 2020. Trump lost because the economy was in free fall. Voters didn’t care that he was a crook. Americans will always vote in favor of their own comfort, however they define it.
It’s difficult to admit, but the Allies didn’t defeat the Nazis because they were morally superior. They simply waged war smarter and better. Those who are fixated on appearing morally correct almost always lose the war.
"Those who are fixated on appearing morally correct almost always lose the war."
This! A thousand times this!
I’ve been re-reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Its perspective and tactics have helped me win a few battles in my personal life (wrangling for, and receiving, promotions at work; wrangling with impossible children as a mother). It’s chock full of appropriate pointers that make particular sense these days, such as:
“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”