Yeah, we know. The modern Republican party is full of Nazis and various Nazi-adjacent folks.
But it’s got even more Confederates.
So today’s sick historical burn for the Democrats should really be comparing them to General George McClellan.
You may know McClellan: he’s the Union general who refused to do a damn thing for the opening phase of the first Civil War, probably out of general economic- and social-class sympathy for the Confederacy.
If Lincoln hadn’t removed him, it’s likely that his half-hearted running of the war would have ended up losing the whole thing for the North.
The similarities should be obvious enough.
So today’s message to the Democratic Party comes in the words of then-President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to then-General McClellan:
“I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”
Seriously, the Democrats have sat on their hands and played at business-as-usual for far too long already. It’s possible that the coup has already done irreparable damage to the country, but it’s certain that it will if left unopposed.
The message should be clear enough.
Congressional Democrats need to:
- obstruct all coup-related and coup-supporting legislation in Congress, to the fullest extent of their abilities
- obstruct all executive appointments in the Senate, to the fullest extent of their abilities
State Democrats need to do the same, if they’re in a minority. In states where they hold majorities, the Democrats need to:
- prevent their National Guards and various police agencies from accepting federal orders
- prepare their National Guards and police agencies to resist federal deployments in their states
- prevent any coordination or support of state or local law enforcement with federal operations
- block any extradition or the enforcement of any law or court judgement whose basis is an action that would be legal in their state
These are, at minimum, the actions the Democrats need to be pursuing in order for us to take them seriously as an opposition to this coup. There’s a hell of a lot more that they should be doing.
But that’s an absolute minimum.
To pursue their preferred response to the Republican attempt at even further gerrymandering Congress, the Democrats are going to have to come to the voters. They’ll need to ask us to grant them more power over congressional redistricting in several states for that to work.
And they really haven’t shown us any reason to give them that. What actual good would come from having more idle Democrats in Congress?
They need to understand that giving them more power doesn’t make a lot of sense to many of us right now, since the Democrats aren’t even using the power that they have already.
They must act.
To quote Lincoln again:
“And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this.”
