Fascism is not a distraction
Democrats who urge acquiescence are part of the problem
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.
Allergy season has officially arrived in New York City. I was not prepared for the switch to flip, so I’m writing this newsletter through watering eyes and between sniffles. Allergy medicine is one of those things that make you realize that in spite of everything, we are living in a golden age for humanity. And to some degree, it’s a reminder that life on this planet can be better and is worth fighting to preserve.
Tonight we’re talking about the political cynicism and DC brain rot that discourages that fight and why it’s so urgent to defeat that loser impulse.
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I’m not surprised that California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to dismiss the government kidnapping of Abrego Garcia as the “distraction of the day,” because it’s the sort of deeply cynical thing that career politicians say.
What did shock me, however, was the blowback that Newsom received from some national Democratic leaders and mainstream pundits, because it’s the sort of deeply cynical thing that national Democratic leaders and pundits love to say.
Here’s Newsom’s full quote:
“This is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction… we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it. Those that believe in the rule of law are defending it. But it’s a tough case, because people are really—are they defending MS-13? Are they defending someone who’s out of sight, out of mind in El Salvador? . . . It’s exactly the debate [Republicans] want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs. They don’t want to be accountable to markets today. . . . They want to have this conversation. Don’t get distracted by distractions. We’re all perfect sheep.
Newsom packed a lot of depravity into one soundbite:
First, advocating for the party to stop trying to rescue an innocent man sent by the president to a foreign gulag is morally disqualifying.
Plus, giving credence to the administration’s false, slanderous argument that Garcia is an MS-13 member only galvanized the White House to double and triple down on the claim, further endangering him.
He was also wrong about the polling advantage that Republicans have on the issue; a recent YouGov poll focused specifically on the El Salvador arrangement overwhelmingly say that the government should be forced to bring back an immigrant who was wrongfully sent to a foreign prison.
Then there is the broader constitutional crisis at play. Garcia’s illegal deportation and imprisonment may have been the result of an administrative error, but it’s now being used deliberately by the Trump administration in a bid to expand its power.
Garcia’s case stands in for an entire protocol in which every step violates the law: denial of due process, disappearing of protected residents, and paying a foreign dictator to imprison innocent people ostensibly beyond the reach of the American legal system. And in blatantly ignoring a unanimous Supreme Court order, the White House is essentially daring anybody to hold it accountable.
If Democrats were to wave off such a high profile and dangerous provocation as just a “distraction,” it would be as good as waving a white flag and acceding to a functional dictatorship. Garcia would be doomed to live out at least the next few years in a torture prison camp, and there would be nothing stopping ICE and the DOJ from abducting innocent people off the street and all but sentencing them to death without as much as a legal hearing.
The message to the public would be that resistance is futile, that Trump really is as powerful as he insists, and that there is no opposition party willing to stand up for their most basic rights.
Newsom wasn’t the only well-known Democrat to call this a “distraction,” but it’s fortunate that Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen took the exact opposite tact, flying to El Salvador and demanding to meet with Garcia, who is one of his constituents. And taking action, it turns out, actually creates avenues for justice.
The confrontation forced the Bukele administration to buckle for the first time, as if swung from denying Van Hollen access to granting him a meeting with Garcia. The laughably staged setting, which looked a million miles away from the hellish prison of Bukele’s PR campaign, indicated that the strongman is actually terrified of accountability when confronted.
It also put the Trump team on the defensive, leading them to put out contemptible and clownish tweets that underscored the insincerity of their legal arguments. The Supreme Court then rushed a decision that blocked upcoming deportations to CECOT or any other foreign prison complex, defying its usual slow-walking of injunctions or any other limitations placed on the Trump regime.
All of this came as a result of a Democrat ignoring consultants and pundits and pointless "news analysis” to fight aggressively on behalf of the public interest. It must have pained Newsom to see Van Hollen on every single Sunday show today, but hopefully he took notes as the Maryland senator used the spotlight to direct and reshape media narratives and public perception instead of surrendering to a moment in time.
Newsom is hardly the only Democrat who has defaulted to acquiescence under the guise of political strategy. Whenever Democrats lose elections, the political media defaults to the narrative that the party is just too beholden to the left, a narrative that conservative Dems are happy to encourage.
In fact, Newsom is hardly the only Democrat who has been throwing around the term “distraction” to dismiss hard or inconvenient issues.
Distraction from what?
Politicians have always tried to dismiss scandals or uncomfortable revelations by calling them distractions from the real issues at hand. And sometimes, they’re right: personal foibles, verbal gaffes, and private email servers are all granted far too much airtime and attention, stealing focus from urgent matters that will actually impact people and shape the future of our democracy.
But the term has been so abused lately that it’s almost a meme: centrist Democrats wave away some corruption or new grievous encroachment on people’s rights, insisting instead that they must focus entirely on “kitchen table issues.” But instead of a sincere pivot to economic populism, the line is an excuse to narrow the aperture of the battles they are willing to fight and issues they’re willing to address, throwing constituents under the bus and ceding key ground to conservative bullshit.
They do it most with so-called culture war issues, with disastrous political consequences: centrists looking to squash the left or curry favor with the right will twist cynical wedge issues against their own vulnerable and under-attack supporters in the Black and LGBTQ+ communities, blaming their acts of self-defense for causing the distractions.
This invariably emboldens bigots with confirmation of their political advantage and the sheen of bipartisanship, making it easier for Republicans to escape media scrutiny for doing things like eliminating the civil rights division of the Justice Department and enacting countless laws that infringe on the rights of trans people.
It’s obvious that Democrats shouldn’t make “identity politics” the center of their platform, but casting people aside and calling them distractions that prevent the party from winning elections is something else entirely. More pertinently, the line is now a way to silence anybody willing to stand up to Trump in any aggressive manner.
Back in November, as Trump stocked his cabinet with clowns, unqualified loyalists, and utter lunatics, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries preemptively dismissed questions about their antics as “distractions” and vowed not to address them.
“Here’s what I’m not going to do for the next two years and the next four years,” Jeffries said. “I’m not going to deal with, it’s Tulsi Gabbard one day, then an hour later it’s Matt Gaetz, then the next day it’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., then he says something on X on Truth Social and then the people connected to him are doing something outra[geous]—No! That I’m not doing. Because that’s all a distraction.”
A distraction from what, exactly? Preventing — or at least speaking out against — the most powerful positions in the federal government being filled by drunks, predators, and far-right imbeciles willing to break laws and violate Americans’ rights sure seems like it should have been high on the list of priorities. What was more important on November 15th than building resistance against Trump’s agenda and stooges?
The instinct to chicken out and pretend it’s part of a cognizant plan also took root in February around the time of Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress. In the days leading up to the address, leadership and many centrists spoke repeatedly about not wanting to create “distractions” with protests or forceful pushback, signaling undeserved deference to the White House.
Trump had already fired tens of thousands of federal workers and begun to implement his unconstitutional crackdown on legal residents, while the GOP was preparing gigantic cuts to Social Security and Medicaid. Yet Democrats used the “distraction” trope to creative the media narrative that resistance was an act of extremism.
When Rep. Al Green did stand up to protest the GOP’s proposed cuts to health care for low-income Americans, they called him a distraction. Nearly a dozen Democrats even voted to censure Green, including Rep. Ami Bera, who released this statement to the media
"Al Green is a friend and respected colleague. Right now the caucus cannot be a distraction. We shouldn’t be talking about Al Green - we should be talking about Donald Trump and the 70,000 VA workers being laid off. We should be talking about Trump’s plans to eliminate the Department of Education. We’ve got to keep the focus not on our caucus, but on what Donald Trump is actually doing.”
There’s no better way to avoid distractions than publicly airing internal grievances and issuing a statement about it to the media, right?
In this case, the “distraction” line was used to punish a progressive who was willing to stand up and speak out against the administration, even on issues that Democrats should desperately want to spotlight. There was no need to reprimand Green, but there’s nothing that these Democrats love more than to pose as the Adults in the Room, to their own political peril.
For James Carville, Democrats doing anything at all right now would qualify as a distraction.
Not only was [Trump’s tariff regime] an act of economic warfare, it has broken the cardinal rule in American politics: Never destabilize the economy. With it, the Trump administration is causing enormous damage to itself — and there can be no more distraction from this naked truth.
Carville has been on a real do-nothing kick over the past few months, arguing that showing any kind of resistance would take eyeballs away from Trump’s economic self-destruction; in February, he urged Democrats to “roll over and play dead” so that Republican incompetence was on full display.
It was one of those purposefully provocative essays meant to stir up conversation on cable news and reassert its author as a clever strategist worthy of big consulting gigs, but it made zero sense against an opponent who thrives in the spotlight and spins his own reality. Trump’s one major skill is his innate ability to manipulate the media, control narratives, and make people believe the opposite of the truth.
Trump panics and slips up when he’s under pressure, lifting the facade he’s created and forcing him to engage with reality. Left to own his devices, he defies gravity, finding ways to spin even the most grievous offenses into advantages. After Trump was effectively banished for leading a violent insurrection, AG Merrick Garland loafed on investigating his involvement in the Stop the Steal effort and the Biden administration decided to ignore his provocations. Look at how that worked out.
The belief that Donald Trump will sink himself, or that economic data alone will be enough to turn people against him, is jaw-droppingly naive after a full decade of his dominance. It’s also the kind of smug dereliction of duty that leads directly to fascism. Anyone who is comfortable enough to believe these issues are a distraction should no be running the Democratic Party.
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