It’s an American tradition
Brian Beutler makes the case today for the Democrats to shut down the government in the upcoming funding fight unless it ends the occupation of blue cities, forces federal agents to show their faces and badges, stops impoundments and recessions, all illegal abuses of power. He’s not talking about the usual Republican demands that the majority reverse its legislation, which is itself an abuse of power. This is using the leverage it has to stop Trump’s illegal policies, which the Congress has the power to do. (Similarly, Gavin Newsom is calling for an election to decide if California should redraw its maps, a democratic process, unlike Texas where they are just ramrodding it through the GOP legislature.)
As Beutler notes, it probably won’t succeed in doing that — we’re dealing with a tyrannical movement, after all — but neither will it result in electoral damage. It never does. The risk of losing power from this is pretty much nil. The upside is inspirational resistance.
He concludes:
It is possible that we’re already past the point at which democracy can be restored by voting alone. Do these guys seem inclined to stand aside, allow people to vote freely, then congratulate the winners when they lose? We know how that bet played out last time the political establishment ignored democracy advocates, and Trump is now surrounded exclusively by supporters of his insurrection.
Trump is a bizarre figure, and it’s true that his vanity sometimes overwhelms his despotic instincts. That’s what animates TACO as a heuristic. But there is nothing about his lawlessness or will to power that suggests it’s all some elaborate bluff.
High-profile Democrats call the occupation of Washington a “stunt” or a “distraction that we have to take seriously” because aspects of it feel artificial or surreal. Men dressed as storm troopers standing around doing nothing. The weaponization of a hoagie. But they also seem unwilling to consider that it might be exactly what historians infer about the words “military occupation of the capital city.”
I want to assure these Democrats that the death of freedom has felt surreal to people in other countries, too. [my emphasis — d]
None of this means we won’t come out of the second Trump presidency with something like a free state, which can be retrofitted and refounded to insure against another fascist ascendancy. But it does mean that isn’t likely to happen the ordinary way: where we just wait until elections, count all the votes, and the good guys claim power ministerially.
It will be through a combination of civil disobedience, and procedural radicalism that exceeds the quorum breaking in Texas and the map redrawing in California. And if it works, the people who inherit power won’t be the ones who climbed the ladder and played by the rules. It’ll be the ones who led the rebellion—who recognized the essential elements of political ambition have changed. Any Democratic senators who look in the mirror and see the future president shouldn’t be thinking about how to reduce the salience of the government funding deadline—vote no, hope yes, as per the old Beltway cliche. They should be undermining the leadership, rounding up 40 votes to shut down this faithless government, and steeling themselves to keep it shuttered as long as needed.
I wrote this morning about FDR and the need for the balance between proceduralism and radicalism of the New Deal. He tried everything and a lot of it didn’t succeed. But he was tactically brave and relentless in his pursuit of what he called “substantial justice.” It’s going to be harder for the party out of power but as we’ve seen, the Republicans managed to do it and there’s no reason the Democrats can’t do it as well. And those who led this resistance will be the ones who have what it takes to set things right.