Do Beltway Democrats have any relief pitchers?
Brian Beutler is unhappy, as well he should be. National Guard troops and federal officers Donald Trump dispatched to pacify Washington, D.C. (let’s be blunt) occupy his city. The District neither needs nor wants pacifying. Trump the Insecure has a need to pacify it. First, to show who’s boss for the cameras. Second, to road test his plans to pacify blue-state cities run by Democrats. He’s hoping to provoke a violent response that will give him cover for declaring martial law. (He’ll spell it “marshal.”)
The District is not a state. There is no illusion of sovereignty. Mayor Muriel Bowser has little leverage for pushing back that won’t backfire against her citizens and make the crackdown worse. Congressional Democrats have no such excuse, Beutler explains. “And yet they have provided little comfort, exhibited little leadership, essentially left us to fend for ourselves.”
I posted the transcript and video of Illinois Gov. JB Pritsker’s defiant speech in Chicago yesterday against Trump’s police-state action. Beutler this morning summarizes key paragraphs, their messages and purpose.
“A speech is just a speech, but Chicagoans who heard their governor will sleep better than Washingtonians, if and when the shock troops arrive. Someone who possesses and is willing to use real power has their backs,” Beutler writes ruefully. Bowser is hamstrung. No one has D.C. residents’ backs. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, for godsakes, “has effectively opened the city to Trump-loyal militants, Beutler adds,” and per Fox News “will no longer slap people with felony charges for possession of rifles or shotguns in the nation’s capital.”
As someone once shot three times in a failed D.C. mugging, Beutler retains muscle memory on how badly that decision could go.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mike Luckovich on Tuesday lampooned the tepid responses of Democratic House and Senate leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer. It’s spot on (at top). Their legislative skills are as useless as buggy whips in the MAGA occupation of D.C. Lawsuits and floor maneuvers to slow the MAGA agenda that garner no attention win no hearts and minds in the 21st-century attention economy. Meaning the pair are well past their “best by” dates. Their vaunted congressional positions do not make them effective resistance leaders. They display no awareness of that fact.
They might like Pritzker “balance their calls for peaceful resistance with promises of accountability,” Beutler suggests. They might also “warn the red states that glommed on to the occupation to expect consequences.” But no.
Beutler laments:
And they could join Pritzker in demanding more of the mainstream media.
To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.
This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.
But they can’t do any of this and deploy consultant-crafted evasive maneuvers simultaneously. The question for Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer in some sense is: What do you think and feel when you watch Pritzker’s remarks? Are you inspired, like millions of Democratic Party voters? Or do you think he’s a fool for not pivoting to tariffs?
Those were rhetorical questions.
It’s why an exasperated Anand Giridharadas exclaimed, “I feel so fucking undefended by these people. Like what are they doing, any of them?” That was February. JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom have stepped into that “void of federal leadership.” Do congressional Democrats have any relief pitchers?
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