How do we stop the madness?
Do's and dont's of getting back a Democratic majority
There is a lot of stuff swirling around right now, and everyone is of at least three minds about why Dems lost and what we should do and how we should win back Congress. I’ve got my own opinions, and right now I don’t see them echoed enough, so I’m going to share them in the hopes that we get some traction.
You’ll find often I suggest mirroring some behaviors and attitudes of the GOP. Let’s be 100% clear: I do not approve at all of the vast majority of their policies; I am not misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, or racist; and I strongly believe that when you try to compromise on civil rights you end up with decisions like Plessy v Ferguson (the source of the “separate but equal” doctrine that fueled segregation for a century).
But there are things the GOP does right:
They stay on message with each other nearly 100%
They put aside their primary season differences, no matter how extreme
They reliably turn out to vote in large numbers
If Democrats could do those three things we’d have little trouble getting elected in large numbers.
DO #VoteBlueNoMatterWho
The time for fighting about who would be the best candidate is in the primaries. It’s how Nikki Haley could run in the primaries and say “Donald Trump is unfit to be president” yet in the end she would (pathetically) insist it was still preferable to have a Republican in the White House to Joe Biden.
Democrats are too busy nursing their wounds after primaries and fueling grudges. It’s got to stop. NONE of our candidates would be worse than anyone in Republican leadership right now. Some candidates are more progressive, some less so, but ALL of them are far more aligned with the Democratic platform than any Republican (including Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger).
Congress is primarily a “butts in seats” game. The party with the most butts in seats is the majority party, and they get to set the agenda, they have a huge advantage in voting, and they can choose to reach out to the opposition - or not.
The minority party has none of these options. The main reason the Democrats aren’t doing much other than holding hearings right now is that holding hearings is one of the few things they are empowered to do. Want Congressional Democrats to have more power? VOTE THEM INTO THE MAJORITY.
I don’t give a sh-t if you thought “So-and-so stole it from whatstheirname.” It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting a majority. Even better a veto-proof one.
DO NOT CONTINUE TO PROMOTE RIDICULOUS, OUT-OF-REACH THINGS
Citizens United was an incredibly bad decision, and the amount of corrupt, dark money it unleashed into politics has a lot to do with why we are where we are. The decision should be repealed. There should be a constitutional amendment so our corrupt SCOTUS can’t overturn it.
But ….
A constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to pass, followed by ratification by 3/4 of the states.
As desirable as it might be to create such a constitutional amendment, we don’t have a simple majority, so can’t even do the most basic of things. Fund-raising on stuff passing constitutional amendments is fundamentally dishonest. It also wastes energy and time and makes people cynical about politics. So even though we have NO WAY to pass the amendment, we get people fired up, and then when it doesn’t happen it’s a let-down. Thus, it’s damaging in the medium-to-long run.
Use that energy instead for more productive pursuits.
DO UNDERSTAND WHAT CONGRESSIONAL VOTES ARE REQUIRED FOR SPECIFIC ACTIONS
Hopefully everyone knows that passing a regular law requires a majority vote in the House and in the Senate, followed by the president signing it. That’s it. For regular laws.
What of the filibuster you say? The filibuster is of questionable constitutional validity, but regardless it is incredibly overused. There is no 60-vote requirement. McConnell once shut down all senate debate on an important piece of legislation by merely threatening to filibuster. He sent an e-mail. And killed an important part of the Biden agenda.
So here are some of the vote requirements for various congressional actions:
Pass a law - majorities of House and Senate, plus president’s signature
Overcoming a filibuster - 60 Senate votes (or massive outside pressure and negative press in an attempt to shame the filibustering party into abandoning it)
Overriding a veto - 2/3 vote of House and 2/3 vote of Senate
Impeachment - majority house, 2/3 of Senate to convict
And what about “25th amendment NOW!”? It’s more BS.
The 25th amendment requires a majority of the cabinet just to start. That would mean people like Hegseth, Vance, Bondi, RFK, Gabbard, etc., turning on Trump.
And even then, it’s temporary. The only way to remove Trump would be is if after the cabinet removed him, that 2/3 of the House plus 2/3 of the senate votes to remove him permanently. Otherwise he’s re-instated.
Simple impeachment and conviction is a FAR lower bar than the 25th amendment.
And let’s address that perennial bugaboo - the dreaded Constitutional Convention. Yes, it would probably be destabilizing. It would probably be a bad idea. But … it requires 2/3 of the states to sign on to hold one - and - wait for it - 3/4 of the states to ratify any changes the Constitutional Convention would approve.
Stop wasting time talking about the 25th Amendment and a Constitutional Convention.
There is one other thing. Expanding the number of justices on SCOTUS requires a simple majority vote and the president’s signature (it’s just a regular law).
DO NOT CONTINUE TO AMPLIFY THE FAR RIGHT’S LIES AND DISTORTIONS
There’s so many of these. We could talk about anything they have to say about the trans community, or Medicaid, or waste, fraud, and abuse, or immigrants, or - you get the idea.
But let’s use one example: “The Democrats got nothing done under Joe Biden.”
Some of the highlights:
We got the country vaccinated, and ended the scourge of COVID
We passed the American Rescue Plan, which among other things gave our rural communities broadband, and helped buttress the economy during COVID
We passed the Infrastructure Act. Donald Trump always had “infrastructure week” right around the corner, but never passed ANYTHING.
We passed a law allowing Medicare/Medicaid (CMS) to negotiate drug prices.
We capped the price of insulin.
We passed the “Respect for Marriage” Act, which codified the Obergefell and Loving decisions, as a bulwark against a corrupt and ideological SCOTUS
Republicans can repeat their own lies all the time, and they will. Have some counter-examples ready, and don’t let their lies stand.
DO ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO VOTE - AND TO GET INVOLVED
Elections hinge on turnout. Once the primaries are past we need to rally behind whoever the candidates are. We need to donate. Knock on doors. Drive people to the polls. Work as elections inspectors. Whatever we can do to ensure the integrity of our elections, and to ensure we have a good chance of winning back a majority.
DON’T GIVE UP - NO MATTER HOW FRUSTRATING IT SEEMS SOMETIMES
We fought a bloody war and eliminated chattel slavery. We eliminated racial segregation. We have increasingly recognized the rights of women and other minority groups. Yes, we are backsliding right now, but we should defend the tremendous ground we have gained.
All too often liberals catastrophize - “oh, it’s the end of democracy.” “Now we have a king.” “What’s the point?” Democracy is under attack but our judiciary and federalist system are helping us. We still have our explicitly articulated Bill of Rights. And in increasing numbers, we have “the people.”
No one wanted this fight. And the reality is that it was completely unnecessary. If Harris were president right now we wouldn’t be having a war on DEI or disappearing people to notorious prisons. We’d have due process, and we wouldn’t have to listen to nonsense about Canada as the 51st state. But somehow Trump got elected, and so we were in for the fight of our lives.
Part of the reason we got here is too many people letting democracy coast, thinking “it will all be all right.” If the garden of democracy is left untended, the crabgrass of authoritarianism can come in and choke out everything else.
FINALLY - DO KEEP SHOWING UP
The so-called conservatives just keep showing up. They might wail about how gay people getting married is the end of the world, but rather than wallow in despair they use that energy to get people panicky and to the polls. Noxious messages aside, we liberals need to do something similar.
Stop expecting people to have an epiphany after a good SCOTUS decision. Brown v Topeka Board of Ed was decided May 17, 1954. Exactly ten years before I was born. And when I was born there was still de facto segregation across the South. Schools were still refusing to integrate. Finally, by the 1970’s they resorted to forced bussing.
The day of the Dobbs decision was an incredible shock to the system. But just as conservatives kept fighting after Brown, we are now called on to dust ourselves off and begin fighting again.
But the lesson here is clear: Republicans aren’t going to give up without a fight. But they’re coming in sloppy and unprepared in court, and keep losing. We need to keep showing up. And we need to stop pretending winning in court (or even passing a law) all by itself is sufficient to change public opinion.