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One of the many people that I thought were a bit overblown sometimes, and now I read as having excellent powers of prediction, is Steve M, who’s been blogging at No More Mister Nice Blog since the start of the blogging era. He has a post today where he argues that the Democrats aren’t even going to try to leverage the impending government shutdown. He quotes a report where Chris Von Hollen wondered what the point was of shutting down the government since Trump (really Musk) has ignored Congressional mandates. Steve M’s take on that:
The need for a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open is the one point of leverage Democrats have because it require 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans can pass an actual budget through reconciliation, with 50 votes in the Senate. So the CR is the pitch Democrats should swing at.
But it appears that they won't even try.
Chris Van Hollen is probably right when he suggests that it doesn't matter what constraints are included in the bill, because Trump will ignore them, Republicans in Congress will shrug, and the courts will be slow to rebuff Trump, if they rebuff Trump at all. But if you think Trump will simply do what he pleases no matter what, that leaves you with two choices: You can put up a fight and look as if you're soldiers in an anti-Trump battle that millions of voters want to see fought, while offering an alternate view of how the country should be run to millions of voters in the middle, or you can meekly hide in a corner and appear to be giving assent to everything Trump is doing, while conveying the impression that you think Trump is on the right course because you won't even challenge him. Never mind the possibility that you might stop the juggernaut, or at least slow it down.
Why do Republican voters (and many non-Republican voters) like Donald Trump? They offer a two-word answer: He fights. He lost an election in 2020, he lost court battles in 2023 and 2024, but he always fought. Meanwhile, Democrats think they'll impress voters by not fighting.
I’m in constant correspondence with keynesaddiction, a reader on BlueSky, who is politically smart and very disappointed with the Democrats. He shares posts with me like this one:
what a stupid ass party www.mediaite.com/tv/amy-klobu...
— Oliver Willis (@owillis.bsky.social)2025-03-03T19:06:52.417Z
and this one:
It’s worse than that, Jeffries and the DCCC are actively trying to get funds from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk’s companies: readsludge.com/2025/02/24/d...
— Jaya Seeley (@jaya-seeley.bsky.social)2025-03-03T17:17:13.283Z
So we have Amy Klobuchar, who styles herself as a staunch supporter of Ukraine, relying on Marco Rubio to do something. (Spoiler alert: he won’t.) And we have Hakeem Jeffries running to Silicon Valley to get donations from companies that include SpaceX in January. No wonder he’s holding off on a full-throated opposition. (Steve M takes Jeffries to task on that point.)
Molly Jong-Fast, the person who did the Walz interview that I posted the other day, writes this at Vanity Fair:
The base of the Democratic Party is mad. They aren’t going to be satisfied with cringe nicknames and punching left. They don’t want to see leaders lying down, but out there making noise on TV and social media. Sure, there are electeds pushing back, like Senator Chris Murphy; governors Maura Healey, Janet Mills, and JB Pritzker; and representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and Maxwell Frost. And billionaire Mark Cuban is out there offering support to laid-off government tech workers. But party leadership isn’t meeting the moment and speaking to the deep frustration across the country.
I would add Becca Balint (D-VT-AL) and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to the list, but she’s not wrong that the number of Democratic officeholders consistently showing a lot of fight can be counted on two hands. Note that I said “consistently” here — the days of someone writing one letter or having one press conference are over, but I’d sure like to hear if anyone thinks that some other Democrat has been consistently great in pushing back on Republicans. The great song Coltrane covered, the title of this post, should be how every Democrat treats their role as an opposition leader.
By the way, I fucking hate writing these posts. I hate that the bulk of Congressional Democrats haven’t met the moment. I hate that we have to call and nag them to do what I think is their job. It is the opposite of hallelujah.
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