“As Monday’s Electoral College vote approaches, Democrats should be fighting tooth and nail. Instead, we are once again left with incontrovertible proof that win or lose, Republicans behave as if they won while Democrats behave as if they lost. What this portends for the next four years is truly terrifying.” Read the full article.
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We did lose. Does anyone seriously dispute that we lost?
In 2000, WE were the ones fighting. The official tally after the election had Bush as the winner.
The official tally in 2016 has Trump as the winner.
…by negative 2.7 million votes, which is at least 2 million more than the margin by which Bush “won”. This is the least mandated President-elect in a long time and I for one have yet to find a nominee I would be comfortable voting to confirm.
We’re ALL screwed now.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
as a direct result of the lower-case letter famine.
And I respect her writing on the court tremendously. Yet, there is not a viable strategy that leads to electing Hillary Clinton. That ship sailed on Nov 9th, and arguably at the last debate where she made the foolish pledge to abide by the results of the election, precluding any recount.
Instead, the strategy has to be denying Donald Trump the presidency based on the obvious as well as the new Russian revelations. I trust Mike Pence will not have the brazen business conflicts of interest or the deeply disturbing foreign policy priorities. Cutting some kind of deal with establishment Republicans where we get normal Republicans in the cabinet free of the taint of alt-right ideology or affinities for Putin is the best we can realistically hope for. Pence is the only option that wouldn’t lead to an overreaction from Trump and his supporters.
that many Republicans see the current situation as the best of both worlds. They have a president in Trump who will keep the base riled up while a true conservative in Pence is the one really running the show (to a much greater extent than even Cheney did).
That’s why it’s going to be difficult to stop this train at the outset. The danger with the strategy is that Republicans are, and have been, playing with fire. Once it becomes clear that Trump is using his office to enrich himself and his family — classic kleptocracy — while America doesn’t become “great again” in the way many Trump supporters wanted (manufacturing and coal jobs aren’t coming back), it will have ramifications down the ballot.
That’s why, despite polarization and a Republican House for the foreseeable future, I think there’s a decent chance Trump is impeached sometime in the next four years. If someone gave me 1 in 3 odds of it happening, I’d take it.
So we will see. I happen to believe our current polarized age makes the kind of non-partisan oversight of the executive the framers intended Congress and the Courts to have nearly impossible. But I’m happy to be proved wrong.
Rand Paul, Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, and to a lesser extent Graham, Murkowski and McCain are our best hopes in the Senate. There is always the possibility that the electorate decides to check the President with an opposition Congress.
Republicans fight tooth and nail because they are angry and childish. When they don’t get what they want, they get more angry. When they get what they want, they only get angrier. This is the basis of their irrationality.
Democrats are not angry. Or, as in the case of Hillary Clinton, it appears that they make sober-minded and adult decisions to do something constructive and helpful. If there was anybody more angry than Hillary Clinton, circa 1999, I don’t know who it is. Instead of pitching a moody like a five year old (Looking at you, Newt…) she got back to work. Character is as character does.
Tolstoy, Gandhi and MLK all preached non-violence not just because any use of hatred and violence is wrong, but also likely to achieve a solution that is, itself, hatred- and violence-inflected. Whether or no the ends are justified by the means might, for some, still be an open question… but it’s clear to me, justification aside, the ends will resemble the means.
So if we want two angry, bitter, forever-locked-in-battle parties, we should just go ahead and act like Republicans. But it is the Republicans, and their anger, which has brought us to this pass. Somebody is going to have to save the republic… and they’re going to have to do this without throwing a moody.
Nonviolent resistance is not rolling over and playing dead. It is a strategy for advancing a just cause.
Sadly, I am seeing very little strategic thinking on the part of Democrats.
I think the point is that it is a just strategy for advancing a just cause… and that the justice of the strategy shapes the ultimate form the solution will take.
When people come into my office seeking a solution to a problem, I first ask them “What have you tried?” And then, often, after they give me the list of things they’ve attempted I (mostly jokingly) ask them “How about knowing what you’re doing? Have you tried that?” It often gets a laugh…
I think the Democratic strategy was, and should continue to be, competence and sober-mindedness, that is to say, knowing what you’re doing. It sucks that the republic, after pretty clearly being offered that, just as clearly doesn’t want that… but there it is. But, we risk losing sight of competence and sober-mindedness if we make ‘winning’ the focus of our efforts.
I also think there is a difference between sticking to our guns on being deliberately competent — that is to say not changing our strategy drastically, and in a panic — and ‘rolling over and play dead.’ There are things to be done and some changes to be made, don’t get me wrong, but merely adopting Republican attitudes and postures towards the problem is, I think, a certain specie of ‘rolling over and play dead.’
something?
1. We have no Democratic leadership at this point. The odious DWS is gone. Perez and Ellison are now competing for the DNC chair. The party lacks leadership to tilt at these windmills.
2. We are Democrats. While it would be nice to play like Republicans, we don’t lie, cheat, and steal like they do. We may fib, but they lie to themselves and voters. We may gerrymander a little, they destroy the concept of representation. We may seek power, they will do anything to keep power. For better or worse, we are Democrats.
The recent (current?) speakers of the house may cause observers to beg to differ.
you’re referring to.
Now in the wake of the third straight felony conviction of a Massachusetts speaker, some on Beacon Hill are wondering if the power of the office is just too great a temptation for mischief – or worse.
The most recent case, the felony conviction of former Democratic House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi on federal corruption charges, is also the most serious and the one that most starkly reveals the power of the office.
Oops I forgot to note where this quote came from, sorry.
…that you jumped from national to state politics, but I would note that even state Dems have never played for keeps the way national Republicans have. In fact, that’s exactly the objection some of us have to state Dems – getting to cozy with Baker rather than offering alternatives.
P.S. – you did lose. Kick, scream, whine, bully, whatever you want to call it you lost the election and are showing yourselves to be terribly sore losers who simply cannot accept reality. Hillary was a horrible candidate – so bad in fact that she lost to the likes of Donald Trump.