Go nuclear
Former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens last week attributed the right’s ongoing affair with the Confederacy to the same impulse behind men going to strip clubs for a lap dance. Stevens is on a roll. He’s pissed at the fanatical turn of his formerly conservative party under Donald Trump. But he’s not optimistic about Democrats’ chances for beating back incipient MAGA fascism.
He warns that Democrats’ reflex for returning to “normal” should they somehow regain power will backfire. See MAGA’s response to Joe Biden, he writes at Zeteo:
Joe Biden took office in January 2021 with a familiar refrain from his campaign: “I pledge this to you: I will be a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.”
In response to this gracious commitment in the best of the American political tradition, MAGA responded with a screaming, “Fuck you. We don’t want your help.” Or as the intellectuals of MAGA put it, “Let’s go, Brandon.”
After a brief accounting of the many ways Biden’s p[ benefited red states, Stevens writes:
Let’s be clear: there are times when good policy makes for good politics. This isn’t one of those times. If Democrats return to power with the same approach as the Biden years, they will be back in the business of losing $5 on every sale but trying to make it up in volume.
Emotion trumps facts and Trump stirs emotions. Voters are more like sports fans than a jury pool, Stevens argues. “Why do sports fans get off the couch to spend hundreds of dollars on tickets and swag to cheer like the possessed for their favorite teams? Passion.” Want to get them off their couches to go and vote for free? Show some. Provoke some.
Are you one of the millions who hate watching some pudgy South African fuck acting like he can buy our democracy? The first day Democrats are in power, they should vote to nationalize Starlink and SpaceX under the Defense Production Act. Republicans use the assertion that we’re in a state of war to justify Stephen Miller acting out his immigration snuff film fantasies. Accept their wartime premise and act accordingly.
Democrats on Day One must begin emulating successful dissident factions in autocracies:
On that first day, vote to defund ICE and reallocate the funds with state block grants to be used for law enforcement. This would be the largest “hire more cops” initiative in the country’s history. Make the Republicans vote against hiring more cops. They all support Donald Trump’s pardon of a mob that attacked cops, so this should be an easy vote for them, right?
Pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, first introduced in 2021. That calls for a 2% annual tax on net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and a 3% on net worth over $1 billion. Modify the original bill so that 20% of the total revenue is allocated to an untouchable Social Security fund. I’ve never seen a poll that didn’t show raising taxes on those making over $10 million as a 90+% issue.
Vote to make all stock trading by members of Congress and the Senate illegal.
Vote to require the president, vice president, members of Congress, and Cabinet secretaries to release 10 years of tax returns. Any “acting secretary” for longer than six months must also release returns, to short-circuit a favorite Trump ploy to avoid Senate confirmation.
Vote to erect a statue in the Capitol’s National Sanctuary Hall commemorating the brave law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol from a Trump-inspired mob.
Vote to require Ghislaine Maxwell to be moved from her yoga class, Club Fed, back to a real prison.
You get the idea.
Christie Theriot Woodfin of Atlanta in a letter to the New York Times this morning takes a stab at why Democrats’ registration numbers are down: “While the sideshow that is the Trump administration creates quite a spectacle, the Democrats speak in modulated tones that seem stiff, muted and, sadly, old-fashioned.” Their wimpiness means we may lose our democracy, she worries. “If we haven’t already.”
Stop being fucking polite
Donal Trump has launched a civil war against anyone not MAGA. Call it out. Act like it.
And my last plea to Democrats: stop being nice and polite. Anybody who votes to confirm the town drunk as secretary of defense is not a patriot. Say it. Senator John Thune, you have betrayed your country. You are not a patriot. JD Vance is married to a woman who is a US citizen, as a result of the 14th Amendment, which Vance opposes. Who attacks the legitimacy of his own family? Call it out. What’s wrong with this guy? It’s not that RFK Jr. was a long-time heroin junkie. The problem is that he has said heroin worked for him, and he’d still be using it if it still worked. He’s a broken, deeply disturbed man who deserves pity but no respect. He’s a nut. Call Tulsi Gabbard a functioning agent of the Russian Federation. Don’t weasel-word your way to invisibility.
Republicans think they can force the Democrats to play by different rules, that they can shame Democrats into refusing to go where they go every hour. Prove them wrong.
My worry, I explained to a former Miami Herald editor recently, is that many Democrats are so deep in their own groove that they can’t see over the top of it. I wrote in February that I’d watched maybe 9-1/2 hours of the DNC winter meeting: “Most of the speeches were dispiriting. They could have been written 30 years ago. Members said what they what they were expected to say as good lefties, what they learned to say years earlier then stopped learning.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, of New York just announced his retirement this week, saying:
“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
You think? “The world has changed,” Stevens finishes. Democrats badly need to. They need to go nuclear.
How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.
We’ll vote for it too.
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