Democrats aren’t Charlie Brown, we are
They keep pulling the football
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.
Well, it was fun while it lasted, right? Democrats are just so good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, you’d think it’s a fetish. But as I write tonight, closer examination suggests that instead of consisting mainly of congenital losers, the party leadership knows exactly what it’s doing — and we’re the ones suffering for it.
But before we get to that, here’s a bit of good news: Katie Wilson, the accomplished progressive organizer and socialist who we interviewed this summer, just took the lead in the Seattle mayoral election. The race with incumbent centrist Mayor Bruce Harrell may come down to less than a hundred votes, and right now she has the edge.
Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.
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The meme that has become synonymous with Senate Democrats began appearing on social media timelines as soon as word broke that a gang of “moderates” had agreed to end the government shutdown. You didn’t even have to read the headlines to understand that a capitulation was imminent; it’s simply understood that Democrats are Charlie Brown, Republicans are Lucy, and the football is whatever Republicans are purporting to offer, including a sudden breakthrough in bipartisan governance and trustworthiness.
The basic facts of the situation support the assessment: Democrats’ ongoing ability to keep the government closed was their only procedural leverage in their quest to renew the expiring ACA healthcare subsidies, but they went and surrendered that leverage for the promise of a Senate vote on the subsidies. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who helped cut the deal, may argue otherwise, but consider the following:
There is no real reason to believe that Senate Republicans will grant them anything other than a ceremonial, doomed-to-fail vote.
Even if by some miracle the subsidy extension does pass in the Senate, with the government reopened, the GOP-run House would have zero incentive to take a similar vote, much less actually pass the extension.
After last week’s election results, it was clear that voters blamed Trump and the GOP for the government shutdown; even Trump himself admitted as much. Republicans owned the chaos and harm being done to people and they suffered electorally for it. Democrats had the political upper-hand and moral high ground, with Republicans stuck between their dedication to immiserating people and the clear consequences of immiserating people.
Instead of moderating after the electoral calamity, the White House spent the weekend literally trying to take SNAP benefits away from starving people! You couldn’t ask for a clearer illustration of conservative depravity or the ostensible difference between the two parties. The sticker shock during open insurance enrollment was only accentuating the contrast, with outrage at Republicans building.
The list goes on, but you get the point: if their goal was to win an extension of the ACA subsidies, there is no game theory or counterintuitive logic that could credibly make the case that the capitulating Democrats made the smart strategic decision here.
But we’ve seen this same sort of situation play out far too often to earnestly believe that those squish Democrats — or the caucus leadership that blessed their acquiescence — were actually prioritizing the healthcare subsidies and simply got played by Republicans for the umpteenth time. It’s actually doing them a favor to call them the Charlie Brown in this situation, because that gives them the leeway to blame the now-inevitable failure to save people’s healthcare on Republicans’ broken promises.
Where we are assuming naivety, we might instead assign cynicism. Instead of Democrats whiffing once again, there is every reason to believe that they were betting that their voters — you and me — would take the bait and play the role of old hapless Charlie Brown once again.
Good Grief
In hindsight, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Democratic voters’ biggest weakness is their loyalty to the Democratic Party. Look at how the base went all-in for the party this fall. For all the talk about being done with the party after Chuck Schumer’s capitulation in March, rank and file Democrats donated a record amount of money and turned out in unprecedented numbers for uninspiring gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.
They gave Democrats in Georgia their first triumphs in statewide elections in decades.
They defeated a billionaire’s attempt to buy three Supreme Court seats in Pennsylvania.
They knocked doors, rushed to fill up food banks, and rallied against Trump at the No Kings protests.
Party leaders knew that anger at Trump would supersede dissatisfaction with Democrats. Understood that after eight months of demanding that they fight back, the base would reward a hardline on the government shutdown, especially when it was the focal point of fundraising emails. So they publicly stuck to their guns, boldly defiant in a way that suggested they were finally meeting the moment — all the while planning to cave shortly after Election Day.
This isn’t speculation, either; the American Prospect reported this weekend that the lead negotiators of the surrender announced that they had a deal to throw in the towel on Thursday, but had to push it back after the stronger-than-expected election rout. They clearly didn’t spend that extra time workshopping better excuses.
To be clear, I don’t think every Senate Democrat was in on this decision or approved of what transpired. There are members of the caucus who were clearly and authentically angry about the decision to cave after 40 days. But this wouldn’t have happened if a majority of the caucus didn’t support the plan, because otherwise Chuck Schumer — who at the very least blessed this deal — would be in danger of losing his job. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, one of the eight that voted for the deal, admitted many other Democrats were onboard.
“I can tell you this, there were a lot more than eight that were really happy that the eight of us voted them the way we did,” he told reporters on Monday.
It’s no accident that those eight Democrats who voted for the deal are either retiring, not up for re-election, or suffering from a personality-altering brain injury. They are the latest designated bad guys in the Democrats’ long-running game of rotating villain.
During the Biden years, it was generally Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who ran interference, collaborated with Republicans, and put up the roadblocks to progressive policy that the rest of the caucus just couldn’t seem to overcome. Dick Durbin, meanwhile, took the lead in spoiling every other Democrat’s supposed desperate desire to investigate the corruption festering around the conservative Supreme Court justices, and here he is again, fronting the group of loser Democrats who have little apparent interest in keeping Donald Trump’s fascist state in check.
They won’t say that, of course. Last year, Durbin furrowed his brow and expressed his deep concern when John Roberts wouldn’t voluntarily regulate the rampant bribery of conservative justices, and tut-tutted the lack of cooperation from the billionaire reactionaries fueling the scandal. Today, both Durbin and Shaheen took to Twitter and cable news to try to put the onus on Republicans, tragically unaware that their credibility has been torched for the rest of time.
The same goes for people like Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who last year pretended to want to take a harder line against the Supreme Court and today feigned disappointment in the capitulation before cynically trying to refocus rank and file anger at Republicans.
Everything I do turns into a disaster
Whitehouse’s thread went on to propose that Democrats would ultimately benefit from a separate vote on ACA subsidies next month, which would if nothing else fully reveal the depths of the GOP’s depravity. But as noted above, there’s no world in which that prospective vote is anything other than window dressing, anything more than a moment on the calendar for Democrats to surround with lame PR statements and fundraising appeals. They were not pursuing any tangible policy goals or coherent political strategies, at least not in the way that any of us understand them.
DC gargoyles like Dick Durbin and Jeanne Shaheen keep watch over the Capitol and other government institutions, prioritizing their preservation over the people that they are supposed to serve. Durbin could not bring himself to expose corruption on the Supreme Court because he believed doing so would erode public faith in the judiciary, just as he would not end the blue slip tradition for confirming federal judges even if it meant that Trump would get to fill even more open seats on the bench. Shaheen values bipartisanship over all else, and was one of two Democrats to vote for the deal in March that greenlit Trump’s reign of terror.
Ultimately, Trump’s threat to the filibuster, which began after the election, scared them more than the threats he posed to millions of peoples’ lives and the future of American self-governance.
Given the stakes, the comparison to Charlie Brown and Lucy may be a bit too wholesome. At this point, Democratic voters are in an abusive relationship with this party, which soaks them for donations and campaign volunteer shifts time and again, stabs them in the back, and then promises things will be different the next time. The solution in this case is cleaning house and supporting primary challengers not on the basis of what the establishment considers “electable,” but instead based on trustworthiness and shared values. “Moderation” is not a virtue when it ultimately means capitulation.
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Democrats as a whole now look even more weak and feckless than before and it's pretty clear that the centrist, corporate old guard was more concerned with pleasing their wealthy donors and hanging on to their positions than they were about protecting the American people. The way things played out it is difficult not to believe Schumer, et. al. scripted the capitulation from the beginning .The main antagonists, the Traitorous Eight, were chosen because they had the least to risk, the drama went on long enough to get through the elections and, at the peak of their negotiating power, they surrendered saying it was for the good of the people. This allows the Republicans to control the politics and the Senate Dems to avoid making any moves toward progressive policies using their oft repeated cry "The Republicans control all 3 branches of government. What, oh what, can WE do?". These Senate Democrats are more afraid of sharing power with progressives than they are of allowing the country to become a fascist hell hole.
The break is widening in the Democratic Party, and yes, we are more powerful united than not, but old Schumer had better unite with the mobile and energized part of the Party and ditch the sclerotic, sick and corrupt part. Unite around Progressive wing, Chucky, not the other way around!
We can't unite with Chuck. He betrayed us one time too many, and his position on Bibi runs counter to the Law of the land (The Leahy law).The international Court is correct.
I wrote to my Senator and told her that if she caved, she would not get any more donations from me. (I had seen an article that suggested that she might cave).
I'm sure it's not my little donation that would sway her, but perhaps she got many other messages that went in the same direction. Tammy stood strong! good for her!
Remember, folks: They cannot do any harm if they are not elected or re-elected.
Now, on to the House it goes.
I've been working at 'tenderizing' little Derrick (VanOrden), although this insurrectionist will probably not budge. (I contact him at every scandal and he responds with a pablum letter, telling me he is listening. It's the same form letter every time)
We will just keep on protesting. I'm 77 and on crutches right now, but I'll keep at it as long as I can. (It's getting freaking cold in Wisconsin!) We have very few counter protesters, (6, always the same ones) when we can bring hundreds) proof that MAGAs are weakening. As to those who caved, their emails are rigged so they only "listen" to constituents. We can only hope that their constituents will give them a piece of their mind.
Something changed last Tuesday. We are now energized and won't quit until regime change.
Yes, REGIME CHANGE! The corruption is so deep in this Government, that nothing else will do.