Last week I wrote that no matter what Republicans say about The Felon having a mandate — meaning he should get anything he wants because The People Have Spoken — mandates are bullshit. (So is the argument that as he won despite his criminal convictions, therefore he shouldn’t suffer punishment). From my state, North Carolina, a case in point: Josh Stein won the governorship over “black Nazi” Mark Robinson but the Republican legislature doesn’t care the people have spoken. Instead they’re stripping power from the governor and the new Democratic attorney general and transferring it to themselves or Republican state officials. Having gerrymandered themselves a banana republic one-party legislature years ago, they’ve been pulling this stuff whenever Dems win an office.
In this case they’ve attached the restrictions to a hurricane relief bill to pressure their Dem colleagues into supporting it. Hope the Dems don’t bite because less Republican power is definitely a good thing. Thanks again, Tricia Cotham — the pro-choice, pro-gay Dem who switched parties and policies after her next-to-last election (this year, alas, she won re-election narrowly), giving the Repubs a veto-proof majority if they all hang together.
Next topic: what do Democrats do now? Which is actually two topics, first how the outgoing leadership should react to the TFG presidency. For months they’ve been warning, accurately, of what a catastrophe it’s going to be; now they’re greeting him at the White House and saluting him as the new leader as if he were just a regular pol. Never mind that some people are seriously ready to flee America for fear of 47’s revenge.
I suspect that in most people who get to that level of government there’s a strong impulse to play by the rules and the mores, at least outwardly. And the rules are, you hand off to the new guy. Faced with the unprecedented situation of handing off to a would-be (will-be) dictator, they’re falling back on acting like it’s any ordinary transition.
I get that. But as pointed out at the link (and in coments), they should be doing more. Keep speaking up. Encourage people to resist peacefully. Give advice on what to do. I’ve seen all kinds of suggestions for what Biden can do in his remaining time, such as pardoning lots of federal prisoners. Maybe there’s more.
The second topic is how Democrats proceed forward. Unsurprisingly we’re already seeing calls to reject identity politics. Dem Rep. Elissa Slotkin, for instance says identity politics is dead and Dems should take direction “not from the faculty lounge but the assembly line.”
This is something I’ve seen since Reagan was popular in the early 1980s (contrary to legend, much less popular by the end of his term), a desperate flex to drop support for gay/women’s/POC rights and pursue those salt of the Earth working-class Republican voters who have no patience with this fussy stuff about deadnaming and saying masculinity is toxic and thinking about diversity instead of just hiring the best person (curiously things like The Felon hiring a bunch of white people because he saw them on TV are of course never held up as a problem the way POC or women getting positions of authority is. Just as him running as the champion of white males isn’t seen as identity politics).
Slotkin assumes, apparently, that there are no women or POC on the assembly line or that if there are, they’re concerned about all the bread-and-butter economic stuff and not rights of minorities. But racism and sexism aren’t some abstract academic theory with no real significance. They’re serious forces that hurt people, deny them jobs, make their jobs so toxic they can’t keep at them, and sometimes they kill. Pushing for equality — which is 90 percent of liberal identity politics — is the right course. If it doesn’t win votes — well, it’s still the right course.
And I doubt Slotkin has any evidence this is what killed Harris’ shot — it’s not like she was running everyday on pronouns and gay rights. As the Guardian said eight years back, blaming identity politics for TFG’s win is like blaming civil rights for Jim Crow. The Republicans who object to using someone’s preferred pronouns aren’t saying “I’d support trans rights if not for that.” Just as the people who used to pretend they couldn’t stomach gays because of all those Awful Perverted Antics At Gay Pride Parades are just horrified when two gays don matching tuxedos and plight eternal love to each other.
As Winifred Burton says on BluSky, some of this is probably Dems who don’t want to put any more effort into supporting minorities or women’s rights than they absolutely have to. Even if it’s not, it’s putting us on the wrong side — and it won’t work. “We want to be better Republicans” is not a rallying cry anyone’s going to get behind. My compliments to the Democrats — AOC for instance — who aren’t having it.
Another point is that even though Republicans run up red ink and mismanage the economy the public perception of the party doesn’t seem to change.
To wrap up on an up note, Matt Gaetz last week declined the attorney-general nomination. And after the smirking chimp gave up his house seat too … I’m guessing whatever’s in the House Ethics Committee report must be dynamite. I hope they release it and nuke his career, though I’m sure he’d do fine as a host on OAN or Newsmax. Of course, lots of horrible nominees remain and Gaetz’ replacement will be awful but I’ve been enjoying his sudden fall nonetheless.
