Yellow Stripes And Dead Armadillos: Democrats In The Middle Of The Road

Once, twice, three times, yeah.
Once I can understand it,
Twice I can let it be,
Three times is one too many now.
You’ll have to do without me.
You’ll have to do without me.

I was going to write about pardons again today.

What with all the recent abuses of that particular Presidential power.

But the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog has a post today in which they highlight something one of their commenters said that I think deserves to be spread far and wide.

So I’m gonna quote it here too:

Basically, we should withdraw from governing with the fascist coalition unless they meet our demands, which are “govern within the normal constitutional order and be significantly non-fascist.” They won elections. They have majorities. Very well; even in our ramshackle system this grants them a great amount of formal legitimacy and they may therefore govern as they please.
But WE do not have to govern WITH them. That formal legitimacy is as far as it goes. Beyond that? They get nothing from us. Not one thing. We should, in fact, be hurling our bodies into the gears of governance and not giving an inch. You remember those stunts Republicans would periodically pull, where in the Senate they’d do shit like have a single Senator hold up all military promotions for months by refusing to cooperate? That, but with EVERYTHING. They can’t so much as pass a resolution declaring that kittens are fluffy without us refusing to cooperate in any way, shape, or form.
When asked about this, the response should always be “Trump and his enablers are treasonous rapists who are vandalizing the nation. We won’t participate in that. They have majorities; address your questions about how the country is run to them.”
Withdraw from governing. Refuse to be complicit. This is the very, very least of what the moment requires, the bare minimum.
Now, the most logical outcome here is they simply run us over. Very well; make them do that.
I don’t give a shit about polls or public sentiment on this one, or how it affects electability. Any pol, pundit, or commenter who wants to whinge about polling has already fucked up, they’ve failed at the first hurdle. When the Republic is under siege I expect our political leaders to do the right thing regardless of the political winds. You know who put his finger to the wind and decided he had to give the ruling coalition what they wanted to? Ludwig Kaas.
Don’t collaborate.
That’s the option we should pick. You’re right; there isn’t middle ground.

The minimalist position in response to a fascist takeover is to just never vote for anything that advances the coup’s goals. That is the least we should expect from anyone who isn’t part of the coup.

Though they are wrong about one thing: refusing to be complicit is the middle ground.

That’s the middle: not opposing the coup, just refusing to support it.

Voting for the coup’s agenda is supporting it; voting against its agenda is the middle ground.

Actively seeking out ways to gum it up is opposition.

As the commenter says, to be actually opposing the coup means to do more; to actively use the levers of procedure to slow or halt as much of the coup’s use of the State as possible: