As the old DNC guard fades, the next generation of leaders is missing in action

Earlier this month, MSNBC (and, presumably, Fox, etc.) gave Trump roughly 40 minutes of live television time to rant and lie, threaten an Iowa newspaper and pollster, propose privatizing our Post Office, and muse about ending schoolchildren’s vaccine mandates for polio.

Everybody watching cable TV probably saw it; it was later the topic of numerous newscasts and newspaper articles that are still echoing across the news space.

Around the same time, President Joe Biden spoke at the inauguration of the Francis Perkins National Monument to FDR’s famous Labor Secretary and principal author of the New Deal. He truthfully pointed out that his one four-year administration had helped create 16 million new jobs, more than any single presidential term in history (and more than the jobs created by the Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump administrations combined).

The cable networks chose to completely ignore Biden’s speech. As did the rest of the nation’s media. So, I get it, there’s a strong media bias in favor of Trump (“What new outrageous thing will he say? OMG! Click bait!!!”) and generally against Democrats.

That doesn’t mean, though, that elected Democrats should run and hide. Americans across the country are terrified, particularly in Red states where women are bleeding out, while the morbidly rich and religious fanatics are licking their chops.

So, where are the Democrats? What happened to “When we fight, we win!” ???

Even when the media would rather ignore you, political theater still works. Standing up to bullies still works. And fighting back becomes even more imperative.

Where the hell, for example, is Kamala Harris?

She told us that Trump was a “fascist,” suggesting he was dedicated to destroying our country:

“Donald Trump has said he would terminate the Constitution of the United States.”

That sounds like a five-alarm fire. So, where has she been since the election? Did Trump’s fascism just go away? His threat to terminate our Constitution was just a joke? Where the hell is she?

For that matter, where the hell are any of the leaders in the Democratic Party? It seems that Nancy Pelosi has been spending her time trying to rig backroom deals to screw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in favor of 74-year-old cancer victim Gerry Connelly. (The hotlink in that sentence points to NBC News; I’m no longer linking to — or watching — ABC “News” or using any of Disney’s products.)

The headline at KamalaHarris.com says, “OUR FIGHT CONTINUES,” and the text below it asks for donations “to hold the Trump administration accountable.” Really? How is she going to do that from wherever she and Tim Walz are hiding?

Is it that Trump has succeeded in cowing Democrats as fast as he has our largest corporations and their billionaire owners? Two top MSNBC hosts made a pathetic pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. A few Democratic members of Congress have even said they “look forward” to working with Trump and his Muskrat buddy. Is this some sort of sick joke?

Remember the night of President Obama’s first inauguration? At the same time Louise and I were dancing with Barack and Michelle at Union Station, Republican leaders were gathered at the Caucus Room Restaurant in DC to organize a “massive resistance” campaign against our nation’s first Black president.

In attendance were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions, along with Senators Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz, who organized the dinner, rounded out the group.

As I wrote for Truthoutback in the day:

Over juicy steaks and fancy cocktails in a private room in the back of the restaurant, the Republican bigwigs promised each other that they would filibuster and obstruct any and all legislation supported by President Obama.
Congressman Pete Sessions, who was at the four-hour long dinner, even promised to use “Taliban-like” tactics to achieve those goals.
Kevin McCarthy, now the Majority Whip, said that they’d obstruct every single piece of legislation. That includes things the Republicans used to support.
The Caucus Room conspiracy had three major objectives.
The first was to use obstruction — knowing the corporate media would call it “gridlock” as if the Democrats were responsible, too — to prevent President Obama from having any legislative success.
The second was to sabotage any legislative victories that the president did manage to win — like Obamacare — and convince US citizens that they were actually failures.
And the third was to blame all the economic damage caused by Republicans on BOTH parties and then come out in the next election and say that Republicans are the party that will make things right in Washington as if the state of the economy was the Democrats’ fault.

After the meeting, Kevin McCarthy famously said of their commitment to obstruction:

“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority. We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”

And, sure enough, they did. And continue to do so to this day. And the voters rewarded them, “shellacking” Obama’s Democrats in the next election.

Where are the Democrats today with that kind of spine? Where is our resolve to fight, rather than enable, fascists? What happened to our principles and commitment to democracy?

As one of the Party’s newest up-and-comers, 24-year-old Parkland survivor and gun activist David Hogg, pointed out, the Democratic Party has become far too reliant on self-interested consultants:

“Throughout the campaign, there were multiple times where I brought up publicly my concerns about young voters, and I was shut down by consultants and messaged by them saying, ‘You don’t know what you are talking about. This is not an issue. This is dumb of you to say,’ and a whole lot of other things that I can’t tell you on TV…
“We need to build a party that tells people what it needs to hear and not what its consultants are paid just to say…”

While a few brave governors have spoken out, committing themselves to resist Trump’s mass deportation plans, congressional Democrats have been largely silent. For a brief moment in time, it looked like Democratic governors JB Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Lujan Grisham, and a few others might rally Democrats nationwide to roar back at the incoming Trumpistas.

And then the Party went silent.

Democrats from previous eras had no problem taking on Republicans. LBJ ate their lunch, legislatively. FDR called them out repeatedly, referring to them and their morbidly rich backers as “economic royalists”:

“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. …
“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man. …
“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

Republicans called FDR a tyrant and a communist, and he laughed at them. They said he’d destroy America, and he steamrolled them. They whined and complained as he called out the fat cats and ridiculed that generation’s GOP, rendering them impotent.

When one wealthy man famously said he’d have to leave the country because of FDR’s high taxes, Roosevelt told a crowd, “And I will miss him very much” to gales of laughter. He named names. He was arrogant. He fought hard on behalf of the average person until, literally, the day he died.

Where is this generation’s FDR? Where are the Democratic Party’s heroes? Where are our spokespeople? Where is their outrage? What happened to “good trouble”?

Or do Democrats expect Trump to magically morph into Mitt Romney on January 20th? The five-alarm fire is out? Disaster averted? WTF?

Kamala Harris lost the election. She lost by a whisker, but she lost.

And if she and other leaders and would-be leaders of the Democratic Party don’t step up now to challenge Trump and the fascist crew he’s assembling, don’t offer a contrasting vision for the future of our country today, don’t challenge Trump’s outrageous policies and bizarre appointees every single day, they’re going to lose us our democracy as well.

It’s time to grow a damn spine.

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