Trump Redux: The Death of Democracy, or Overblown Hyperbole?

[DJChameleon]

Good for you, BM, working to promote dees both big and small: democracy and Democrats. I still find it difficult to comprehend just how disconnected from their politics some people are, which must 've made your efforts dispiriting at times.

It was so dispiriting that I only did one door knocking shift for Kamala leading up to the election. I couldn't muster the energy to go hard one unpaid and two for the amount of apathy and general misinformation or lack of knowledge voters had. Also sticking point for me was hearing more daily about Israel going wild in the middle east and attacking Lebanon with Harris being quiet as a mouse during that time. I'm like no, I can't do this.

Also my main objective while talking to voters was to get them to vote for Harris on the working families party line so we can save that line in NY state but even that objective wasn't enough for me to put up with the negatives. Fortunately we did make it and got enough votes to save the line.

[Trollheart]

Well, shock! Horror! No demonstrations/attacks/riots/insurrections! I'll be damned!

Congress ratifies Trump's win

[Lisnaholic]

...but also a missed opportunity, imo:

I think he should've done much more to remind those GOP senators of their conduct: how they had to run from rioters 4 yrs ago, and how they didn't have the courage to call out Trump and MAGA for what they did. I would've gone hard on how the Capitol Police suffered 4 yrs ago, and how the the GOP raced, not to support the police who protected them, but to whitewash Trump. I would've compared their contemptable response to what the Brazilians did with Bolsonaro, the so-called "Brazilian Trump". He also rejected an election result he didn't like, but:-

  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-barred-running-office-electronic-voting-court-rcna92160

"Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was barred Friday from running for office again until 2030 after a panel of judges concluded that he abused his power and cast unfounded doubts on the country's electronic voting system.

The decision upends the 68-year-old's political future and likely erases any chance for him to regain power."

But that's the GOP and Supreme Court today: ethics that are sub-Brazilian.

[DJChameleon]

At least they had the balls to ban him from running again. Our congress is slow and feckless

Frani hit the nail on the head with this commentary.

[SGR]

At least they had the balls to ban him from running again. Our congress is slow and feckless

Frani hit the nail on the head with this commentary.

Definitely hit on some true points in this video. Biden himself regrets appointing Merrick Garland as he was slow-walking the cases against Trump. I could be wrong, but I feel like it was done that way in an effort to try and avoid the optics of looking like 'political persecution' (instead of just prosecution), but Republicans and right-aligned media were able to sell it successfully as that anyways, so nothing at all appears to have been gained in retrospect besides criticism, derision and failure. He might end up being remembered in a similar fashion as Comey, but for different reasons.

Her last point seems to ring true in many ways: "Resistance liberalism has always been about branding, and not about action. In other words, no one is here to save us from fascism, except ourselves" - to her point, talk about whiplash from the Dems' campaign messaging to now. In the run-up to the election, they offered grave warnings of Trump being a fascist, a threat to democracy, an authoritarian, etc. And now that he's won, they're spending time patting themselves on the back for what good, well-behaved losers they are and how much they love and respect the institutions that spelled their own defeat to a twice-impeached felon who tried to overturn the last election. At the very least, like Lisna said, Hakeem Jeffries could've given a little more import to how much he disagrees, politically and morally, with Donald Trump and the GOP's actions while providing the proper weight to the idea that while he abides by the decisions of the voters, he (and other Democrats) don't need to pretend that this is just business as usual. It makes his flub during his recent speech all the more funny:

https://x.com/nypost/status/1875290055196987758

[Lisnaholic]

"...dickless custodians of the status quo..."

That's a great phrase from Frani, and pretty accurate when you consider how Trump has escaped, effectively unscathed. It's a sad America where it takes private citizen E.Jean Carroll to do what the Senate, DOJ and Supreme Court can't: hold Trump accountable.

Yep, that verbal blunder from H Jeffries will be around for a while I suspect.

But you are right, SGR, about Merrick Garland: he proved himself unequal to his job,and coupled with the slow-moving and corrupt judicial system (those indefensible Supreme Court delays, Eileen Cannon, etc) America was cheated of timely justice. Now we wait and see how bad the consequences of that institutional failure will be.

[Jwb]

Well, shock! Horror! No demonstrations/attacks/riots/insurrections! I'll be damned!

Congress ratifies Trump's win

there's part of me that thinks we should have done so.

Democracy is a losing strategy at this point.  If you have a 2 party system where one of the two sides respects the results of elections and the other side only does so if they win,  that's a rigged game.  You are bound to lose out over time.

Increasingly, I'm seeing  pundits on the Dem side come to the conclusion that trying to be the party that upholds the "norms and institutions" is not only something the voters don't care about, it's also just tying your hands behind your back to try to adhere to a standard the other side doesn't. Maybe eventually they will come to realize that the same applies to respecting election results and thus democracy in general.  Or maybe I'm missing something but that seems pretty apparent from my pov.

[Jwb]

Definitely hit on some true points in this video. Biden himself regrets appointing Merrick Garland as he was slow-walking the cases against Trump. I could be wrong, but I feel like it was done that way in an effort to try and avoid the optics of looking like 'political persecution' (instead of just prosecution), but Republicans and right-aligned media were able to sell it successfully as that anyways, so nothing at all appears to have been gained in retrospect besides criticism, derision and failure. He might end up being remembered in a similar fashion as Comey, but for different reasons.

Her last point seems to ring true in many ways: "Resistance liberalism has always been about branding, and not about action. In other words, no one is here to save us from fascism, except ourselves" - to her point, talk about whiplash from the Dems' campaign messaging to now. In the run-up to the election, they offered grave warnings of Trump being a fascist, a threat to democracy, an authoritarian, etc. And now that he's won, they're spending time patting themselves on the back for what good, well-behaved losers they are and how much they love and respect the institutions that spelled their own defeat to a twice-impeached felon who tried to overturn the last election. At the very least, like Lisna said, Hakeem Jeffries could've given a little more import to how much he disagrees, politically and morally, with Donald Trump and the GOP's actions while providing the proper weight to the idea that while he abides by the decisions of the voters, he (and other Democrats) don't need to pretend that this is just business as usual. It makes his flub during his recent speech all the more funny:

https://x.com/nypost/status/1875290055196987758

Yeah,  the patting ourselves on the back for being good losers is spot on. And the reason they are not revolting has nothing to do with the Trump threat not being real.  People have revolted for much less, as we saw the last time around. They just need something or someone to rally around that they actually believe in.  The problem with appealing to abstract norms and institutions,  and the threat that Trump is said to pose to them, is nobody knows or cares about why or how these institutions and the norms that govern them even matter in the first place.  The same thing with fascism.  Nobody really knows or cares what that word means.  It's a vague sort of blanket term for anyone you think has authoritarian tendencies,  and since the only dictator anyone even remembers in this country is Hitler,  basically it just gets translated as Trump is Hitler. So then the question you're posing seems obvious: if it's Hitler then why go silently into the night?

The reality is that the emergence of a kind of authoritarianism in the US, if it were to come to pass,  is probably going to be a lot more nuanced and difficult to assess. It seems like a more likely scenario is one where the norms and guardrails that check the power of the executive are eroded over time, than something as drastic and immediate as Hitler's enabling act. So how do you resist something like that? Especially if it's a concern that can't really be easily articulated for the public?

Like, @Lisnaholic I hate to be the party pooper, but whose mind is going to be changed by Hakim Jeffries going over the horrors of Jan 6th for the 1000th time? Anyone who cares has already heard about it.  I don't know what to tell you.  You want the American people to be outraged enough for this to be a deal breaker, but it just isn't.  It's time to come to terms with that. 4 years have passed.  People aren't going to get more amped up about it than they already have. 

[Trollheart]

What a Democrat brings to a fight


What a Republican brings to a fight

[SGR]

What a Democrat brings to a fight

What a Republican brings to a fight

Democracy is a losing strategy at this point.  If you have a 2 party system where one of the two sides respects the results of elections and the other side only does so if they win,  that's a rigged game.  You are bound to lose out over time.

[Weekender]

there's part of me that thinks we should have done so.

Democracy is a losing strategy at this point.  If you have a 2 party system where one of the two sides respects the results of elections and the other side only does so if they win,  that's a rigged game.  You are bound to lose out over time.

Increasingly, I'm seeing  pundits on the Dem side come to the conclusion that trying to be the party that upholds the "norms and institutions" is not only something the voters don't care about, it's also just tying your hands behind your back to try to adhere to a standard the other side doesn't. Maybe eventually they will come to realize that the same applies to respecting election results and thus democracy in general.  Or maybe I'm missing something but that seems pretty apparent from my pov.

I'm sympathetic to this point of view, but also to the opposite. If the game isn't protected, then there's nothing to play for. More important than healthcare policy and taxes is the sanctity of elections.

[Trollheart]

It's true to say though also if one team plays without a goalkeeper the other team is going to win. Or, insert your own sporting analogy. Nice guys finish last.  Just ask me.

[Weekender]

Sure, you'd probably refuse to play if you knew the other side was bribing the refs.
But to be fair the Dems pulled the goalie early on their own.

[Lisnaholic]

Like, @Lisnaholic I hate to be the party pooper, but whose mind is going to be changed by Hakim Jeffries going over the horrors of Jan 6th for the 1000th time? Anyone who cares has already heard about it.  I don't know what to tell you.  You want the American people to be outraged enough for this to be a deal breaker, but it just isn't.  It's time to come to terms with that. 4 years have passed.  People aren't going to get more amped up about it than they already have. 

^ It's true that I'm disappointed that more of the electorate haven't voted their outrage at all the election denialism, fake elector scams, etc, but Hakim Jeffries wasn't making a campaign speech for the Dems. It wasn't necessary for him to fire up outrage anew, but he missed a chance to put on record the facts: how democracy was put at risk during the last hand-over of power and how this latest hand-over is restoring the tradition of it being done peacefully.
Perhaps people are tired of hearing about the famous Jan 6th, but I don't like your alternative, which seems to be "let's forget about it and move on". I don't think that's a good response because it plays into the process of normalising things that shouldn't be normalised.

[Lisnaholic]

Democracy is a losing strategy at this point.  If you have a 2 party system where one of the two sides respects the results of elections and the other side only does so if they win,  that's a rigged game.  You are bound to lose out over time.

Increasingly, I'm seeing  pundits on the Dem side come to the conclusion that trying to be the party that upholds the "norms and institutions" is not only something the voters don't care about, it's also just tying your hands behind your back to try to adhere to a standard the other side doesn't. Maybe eventually they will come to realize that the same applies to respecting election results and thus democracy in general.  Or maybe I'm missing something but that seems pretty apparent from my pov.

^ Is it really?! I don't think so, and it certainly shouldn't be - even though it's true that so much is rigged in favour of the GOP, with all the weird gerrymandering and electoral college distribution, for example. Still, I think it's important for Dems to uphold those "norms and institutions" you mention, to show the American people that there is an alternative to the GOP. At the moment the Dems look sadly hampered by their "fair play" approach, but things could change: the electorate could get fed up during the next four years and if the Dems can claim some moral high ground in adhering to democracy, that will be an important rallying cry, rather than offering "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".