It is time for Democrats to wave the bloody shirt regarding January 6th. For three key reasons.
First, so much more information is coming out that makes the attempted Trump coup look more and more sinister, including multiple sources who now verify that Trump was ready to March into the Capitol building himself and that he was callously indifferent to the possibility of Vice President Pence getting killed by his own supporters. The risk to Pence and many members of Congress was quite real, and let us also not forget that six Americans died that day. Just as late 19th century Republicans held a stranglehold on the presidency by “waving the bloody shirt” and reminding union veterans of the Civil War which party sided with the last major insurrection, so should our party regarding the more recent one.
Second, to paraphrase an old adman adage, when you can’t change the facts, change the conversation. We are being buried by inflation and our geriatric majority leadership failing to get anything done. It’s unlikely those things can change between now and November, but we can remind voters why they rejected Trump and why his election and reality denying acolytes run our opponents party.
Third, this strategy should work. Even in swing districts. Maybe especially in swing districts. Rep. Calvert (R-CA) is a corrupt Republican hack who runs under the radar since he is not a bomb throwing like MTG. Yet despite representing an R+1 where Democrats and independents actually outnumber Republicans, he voted lockstep with the Trump agenda including denying the legitimacy of Biden’s win. Fortunately he’s running against a former federal prosecutor waving the bloody shirt of Jan 6!
Check out his ad and donate to his campaign. We need more young leaders like him willing to call out the radical terrorism supported by Republicans now pretending to be mainstream conservatives.
We need to not only point out January 6, but also Uvalde where kids died and Buffalo…people died on the GOP altar and we need to not shy away from that.
Two talking heads on Fox News this morning spent a significant amount of time and a video screen the size of an interstate billboard with graphics to spell out “proof” of the “Biden Crime Family” digging into alleged emails from 2002 and filling in the blanks as they saw fit to portray a “shakedown” of businesses in order to trade on the Biden family name.
Of course the seas of hypocrisy and irony have no shoreline at Fox news as it relates to their defense/avoidance of the Trump crime syndicate (how many felons were there in the campaign and administration?), but this suggests to me that the MAGA gang is preparing for a “so what, they all do it, or would do it if they could” explanation of the Trump crime wave of January 6th.
I REALLY wish you’d stop hammering this. It is both false and offensive.
The ENTIRE Democratic Party has been paralyzed, and it has nothing whatsoever to with age.
Ayanna Pressley and AOC are young women of color who have accomplished NOTHING constructive despite lots of media attention. The effect of the vocal “woke” side of the Democratic Party has been to delay and sabotage any chance of getting anything to pass.
The paralysis is the result of a 50/50 Senate split with two Democrats who will not support the mainstream Democratic agenda. Age has NOTHING to do with that problem. I’m unhappy with both Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi — and my unhappiness has NOTHING to do with their respective ages.
This is just as offensive as any right-winger saying “We need more white leaders …”.
Our crisis is not about age. The shooter in Uvalde was 18. The shooter in Buffalo was 18.
Talking about age only distracts from the actual problems at hand.
Anemic leadership better? I think we’re on the same page being disappointed with the Squad, Pelosi, Schumer, Sinemanchin, and Biden alike. I also feel that Obama for all his flaws had the energy to go out there and make his case, which at least saved some senate seats in 2010 and saved his re-election in 2012. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bill Clinton’s podcast lately and he still runs circles around Biden and the Congressional leadership. I just want vigorous leaders capable of convincing swing voters that progressive policies will work for them. I think we have a shortage right now.
Yuval Levin had some interesting analysis to this effect. Squad and other millennials are too young and impatient to do the real work to make change, the older end of the spectrum is set in their ways and used to losing to the GOP. It’s really middle aged leaders who get things done, they have the experience but still have the vision to look ahead to the future. Obama was in his 40’s and 50’s as president, so was Clinton, so was JFK. Buttigieg is getting close to that and the ineffective Harris is arguably in that sweet spot, but otherwise we need to pass the torch to folks who are ready to carry it. Squad isn’t ready for prime time, but it’s hard to argue the leaders we do have are fully invested in the fight. They seem to be going through the motions and running the clock.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/opinion/baby-boomers-gen-x-us-politics.html
Yes, “anemic leadership” is a more accurate criticism. “Anemic” is not a synonym for old.
Bill Clinton was a great politician in 1992 and he remains a great politician today — in my opinion, the best of my lifetime.
“Vigorous” is not a synonym for young.
“Creative” is not a synonym for young.
“Energetic” is not synonym for young.
I hate to admit it, but I must say that I think if the Democratic Party had followed Joe Manchin’s lead for the past two years, we’d be in a MUCH stronger position today.
Joe Manchin is not young.
The problem with the Joe Biden administration is not Joe Biden’s age — it is the weak and dysfunctional American political system.
Surely the paucity of effective Democratic leaders under the age of 60 reflects the abysmal participation level of young Americans. I understand that our youngest voters — those born after the turn of the century — are much more active. That active participation will produce effective leaders ten years from now and seasoned effective leaders 20 years from now.
It seems to me that today’s challenge is to stop the insurrection from destroying representative democracy itself. I’m not sure that’s a political problem.
The national party organs should be running constant ads berating as anti-democracy any Republican who voted to challenge the electoral votes. Heck, they might even consider that for any Republican who did not vote for the second impeachment. When an attack on Congress itself does not cause all 535 members to say with one voice the President does not get to treat them the way he did on 1/6, the system is clearly not working as the Framers intended.