THE WHIRRING NOISE AT FDR’S TOMB HAS GONE SILENT
To recap:
We won a real relief bill appropriate to the magnitude of the crisis, that empowers government to act.
We did not negotiate with terrorists or seek the sacred middle, kowtow, or water down.
And we are going to use this accomplishment to bend the political conversation and elect more Democrats.
More than anything else, it is this last move, versus the destructive habit of decades, of smugly and cluelessly letting the opposition define us, that makes me ask this:
Who are you, and what have you done with the Democratic party?
Not that I am complaining!
Of course, if we aren’t willing to move ahead with voting rights, which will mean tackling or at least finessing the Filibuster, it will jut be a flash in the pan.
But finally, the battle is joined.
Welcome back! It has been far, far too long.
Can we get any of that in Massachusetts?
I grow increasingly confident that the respective staffs of Mr. Manchin and Mr. Biden came to an agreement weeks or months ago about how to proceed on the filibuster.
The filibuster will be retained in its pre-1975 form — it will still be available for situations where the GOP can muster 40 GOP Senators to remain in the chamber at all times. Those occasions will be remarkably more rare than we’ve seen in the past decade or so.
I remain hopeful that America will categorically reject the GOP, even as it enthusiastically embraces the racist and white supremacist core of Donald Trump’s supporters.
James Carville called this months ago, in the aftermath of the second impeachment. He said something to the effect that the GOP can’t win any local races without the support of Donald Trump and it can’t win any national races WITH Donald Trump. When asked what he thought Democrats should do, he gleefully laughed and said “I’m just gonna sit back and enjoy the show.”
We desperately need the update to the voting rights act. We desperately need a national transportation and infrastructure bill. We desperately need a wealth tax and a $15/hour minimum wage. I’d like to see the federal minimum wage indexed to inflation, and the “tipped” minimum wage should be eliminated and ruled illegal at the state level.
The Democratic Party and the GOP have made the choice crystal clear for voters, and I hope that the GOP pays the price for generations to come.
I was having this very conversation on a group text with a group of friends from college. We were all Bernie or Warren in the primary and honestly feel Biden has been far more progressive than either of them might have been allowed to be. He has certainly done more in two months than Obama got done his first two years. We’re also quietly bullish about 22’, more so than the conventional wisdom.
Carville makes a great point and it’s going to bare out in 22’. Without Donald on the ballot, a good chunk of the vaunted 74 million who voted for him will stay home. Especially if they are convinced their votes don’t matter since the system is rigged to favor Democrats (oh how the turnout tables have turned). Meanwhile my cohort, my students cohort, and the millions of ordinary voters activated by this assistance and this moment will come out. This is why passing HR1 is so vitally important, and I see Manchin and Biden making enough wiggle room to avoid subjecting that to a filibuster. I could also see that proposal gaining some Republican votes.
The one fly in this ointment is the passionate commitment of the Trumpists to overthrow the government if possible. This group has shown not just willingness but absolute eagerness to assert their white supremacist views on the rest of us — witness the recent comments by Ron Johnson. He explicitly said, out loud and on the record, that he had no fear of the insurrectionists that invaded and ransacked the Capitol and said if had been “… tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
In the minds of these extremists, this new civil war has already begun. They clearly welcome violence and have utter contempt for the emerging demographic majority of Americans. I think the most important question is therefore whether or not America’s duly constituted government will be able and willing to put down this insurrection.
The confirmation of Merrick Garland as Attorney General is an excellent first step. I wonder how much of his GOP support is from elected officials who are confident that he will suppress efforts to bring criminal prosecutions against elected officials who lead this insurrection.
People — including people in high places, whomever they are — need to be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. The evidence of guilt needs to be public and convincing so that hard-core Trumpists are treated as the domestic terrorists that they are.
Yes, the war has begun. Republicans are openly admitting that they fear black people. Republicans are openly admitting that they are trying to enact laws that restrict any demographic that votes against them. Almost fifty percent of the Senate will do nothing to stop another attack on our Capitol along with 197 members of the House of Representatives who will look the other way, perhaps even grant a tour of the facility with potential attackers weeks in advance, in support of the next attack, and why will there not be a second attack?
The World Trade Center was bombed on February 26th, 1993. That attack failed to bring down the towers. The next one succeeded.
The war has begun and this is no time for bipartisanship or looking ahead to ones reelection chances. If Democrats do not take a page from Mitch McConnell’s playbook and play to win, public opinion be damned, we will lose the Capital figuratively or literally.
I really don’t understand Ron Johnson’s strategy of being so Trumpy. He may not even run again and even if he does, Wisconsin is a swing state. My imagine fails me as to how this is politically helpful for him.
Perhaps he is who he really IS.
According to Mary Trump, people like Ron Johnson act this way not because they are afraid of Trump and his base, but because this is who they are and now they feel liberated; free to express themselves openly.
I have a question for you, Christopher.
Can you identify anywhere in Ron Johnson’s utterances any place where he explicitly expresses a personal dislike of Blacks?
Do you disagree with those of us who characterize his behavior and utterances as “racist”?
Well, if what you quoted from him above doesn’t basically say he dislikes blacks I don’t know what does. I’m a bit confused though. You sound like you are challenging me for a position I do not hold.
In the past, in the context of our several discussions about systemic racism (including its very existence), you’ve said that in your view a person or entity must express an explicit and intentional animus towards Blacks in order to be correctly characterized as “racist” by you.
For example, you’ve said that even if statistical evidence shows a pronounced under-representation of Blacks in the number of new hires made from a pool of qualified black applicants, you feel that the company is guilty of racism ONLY if explicit negative mention of Blacks is part of its hiring policies.
I see little difference between between Mr. Johnson’s racism and an employer who has hired no blacks even though qualified blacks are in its applicant pool.
There is no place in his utterances where he expresses a personal dislike of Blacks. He has famously said that he would fear BLM protesters — that’s different from saying that he fears Blacks. After all, not all BLM protesters are black.
I’m looking to calibrate just how explicit a person or organization has to be in order for you to agree that they are racist.
Johnson’s quote was very explicit. He came out and said he would fear BLM protesters for doing exactly what he did not fear from the white Capitol rioters. There are a lot of variables in the hiring process, and yes, I would need to see evidence for intentional discrimination beyond results. If a hiring manager had made the comments Johnson had, I’d have a problem with that too.
The equivalent from a hiring manager is language like “We have a close-knit team here, and we have to feel comfortable working with each other — that’s a very important factor in our interviewing process.”
My point is that hiring managers routinely use language just as explicit as Mr. Johnson’s.
Mr. Johnson is afraid of BLM protesters and not afraid of white supremacists. Our hypothetical hiring manager feels uncomfortable with blacks and not with whites.
Neither explicitly uses the word “Blacks” — each implies it.
The outcome of a process is a far more reliable measure than any attempt to discern motive or state of mind.
It’s very possible to be comfortable working closely with someone of a different race. I’ve certainly worked with people of other races in my day and have been quite comfortable. Your hypothetical quote comes nowhere close to Johnson’s. There’s nothing in it that precludes hiring someone from any background. I really feel like you unnecessarily tried to pick a fight with me on this one. We agree in the context of this subthread that Johnson made a racist comment – that ought to be enough. You are looking too hard again!
Perhaps, and if so I apologize.
I think we’re in the early stages of a real-live civil war — not very far removed from the roots of the first one in 1865. Both are about race and racism.
In that context, I’m not so much trying to pick a fight as trying to calibrate where I am among my colleagues, friends, and family.
Yesterday’s formal report about Russia’s role in the 2020 election (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/politics/election-interference-russia-2020-assessment.html) provides further evidence that the GOP is willfully and intentionally partnering with Russia in fomenting insurrection. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell used the phrase “scorched earth” to threaten every American (https://news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-warns-democrats-scorched-earth-160006483.html):
This isn’t a dog whistle, it’s an absolute bugle call to every American with southern roots or knowledge of Civil War history — Mr. McConnell explicitly invoked William Tecumseh Sherman and his “March to the Sea” during the Civil War.
This was not a simple metaphor or an accidental or coincidental turn-of-phrase — Mr. McConnell knew exactly what he was saying and how it would be heard.
It is literally a call to arms.
Few people on the insurrectionist side of the fence will explicitly state their hostility towards non-white Americans. That hostility will, however, permeate their every action.
The immediate battle that Mr. McConnell and the Democrats will join is over HR1, a Democratic move to severely restrict the voter suppression laws that the GOP has been advocating for years, beginning with their “Voter ID” stalking horses.
In the past, you defended at least some of those laws here. You rejected the claim that they were racist because they make no explicit reference to race. I wonder if you still hold that position.
So I’m trying to get a handle on what the next few years are going to look like. I think we’re in for a very rough ride.
I appreciate and value your rejection of Mr. Johnson’s comments. I think that your historical resistance to the concept of systemic racism is going to be firmly tested in the next few years.
Scorched earth is a term I hear commonly enough that I guess even as a historian I did not automatically connect to Sherman in my mind. I generally do not feel qualified to read the minds of others. I do think Democrats need to grow a strong parliamentary backbone to resist the dilatory tactics that McConnell is threatening. I am not prepared to go as far as you with the violent assumptions and I assume you’ve noticed who is President now. I bring that up because for months you were convinced Biden would not be allowed to take office. I was not prepared for what happened on January 6th, but once again the system ultimately prevailed. Weaker democracies would have fallen, if they had not already due to other strains in the past four years. I support HR1 and I think there are ways to make voting both easy and secure.
The GOP did everything in its power to block Joe Biden from taking office — including armed insurrection and a successful invasion of the Capitol.
The GOP has literally declared war on the majority of Americans — that is the only reasonable way to hear Mr. McConnell’s “scorched earth” speech.
You do not connect “scorched earth” to Sherman’s march to the sea because you did not grow up in the South. Mr. McConnell represents the state of Kentucky, and he is blowing a bugle call to the GOP states throughout the south.
In what state is the most pitched battle currently being fought? Georgia. Where did the march to the sea happen? Georgia.
Voting has been secure for decades — that is the problem (for the GOP).
I also find it interesting that McConnell is “threatening” to enact the GOP agenda without shame next time they are the majority. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do? Elections have consequences and if the GOP gets the House, Senate, and WH why shouldn’t they enact their agenda? The Dems will hopefully stand up and speak and vote against those proposals, as well as offer alternatives, but it is ultimately for the public to decide every couple of years which agenda they want enacted.
Just to pile on a bit further, I find this perfectly reasonable display of firmness against fascism to be mind boggling given the history of the past 40 years:
(source (NBC))
The “Massachusetts lawmaker” is Auchincloss, who says
Ya think?
I think each and every one of us will be required to draw our own lines in the next few weeks.
I grew up in a MD suburb of Washington DC. MD history is dominated by the Civil War in the same way that Massachusetts history is dominated by the Revolution.
In that context, a key aspect of the Civil War that is often overlooked outside the border states is the way that the conflict separated family and friends. There are countless stories in MD of brothers who took arms against each other in fields that they played in together a few years earlier. Wives who betrayed husbands and vice-versa. The state of West Virginia separated from Virginia because the former was not willing to join the insurrection.
The time for a “bipartisan” response to this is past. Today’s GOP is an insurrectionist movement with strong and documented support from hostile overseas governments.
Until this insurrection is put down, it is suicidal and self-destructive for Democrats to “collaborate”. Any who do should be labeled with a capital “C”, as I have been doing with supporters and enablers of Donald Trump since 2016.
The reference to WWII-era Europe is, of course, intentional.
This battle went from lost cause to completely winnable the moment my party decided to fight back.
Heh — did you intend the phrase “lost cause” to be an ironic reference?
I’m happy that we’re fighting back, and I agree that the move is belated.
I think that demographic and social context is crucial. Our war is winnable in no small part because the GOP has been taken over by white supremacist insurrectionists. That takeover was driven by demographics (and helped immensely by Russian assistance and cash).
In any case, this certainly IS a war that must be fought and won.
While I am optimistic about the Democrats, we have a long way to go before FDR stops turning in his grave. Besides the farce what we call healthcare, there is the retirement system which is Jim Crow at this point. Government employees get pensions while private sector workers get nothing. Corporate pensions are extinct, and even though Wall St caused the Great Depression, it is now regarded as the collective standard and our economic savior. Doublethink’s roots are still pretty thick and deep with the vast majority of people. “Separate but equal” has spread into a lot of areas.