Democrats™ Awaken To The Consequences Of Conflict Avoidance

Biden is struggling, Trump is recovering, and now it's almost too late

Here’s a tale of The Democrats vs. The Democrats™. 

The Democrats are the ones who showed up at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing ready to slug it out with Republicans, who were there to refer Hunter Biden to the full House of Representatives for contempt of Congress.

The Democrats™ are those at the top of the party—the leaders, their aides, and outside advisers—who leave The Democrats to fend for themselves.

Now, less than a year before the election, after metric tons of lies, smears, and scandals have gone unaddressed, the distinction has become unusually clear, and its importance has started to dawn on people who should’ve sounded the alarm long ago.

RASKIN BOBBIN’ 

The Democrats can be inspiring. They often bring more clarity to the cravenness of the GOP than mainstream journalists, who tend to speak about this elemental fact of modern politics in euphemism.

When Republicans declared Hunter Biden in contempt because he’s declined to testify behind closed doors, The Democrats were there to set the record straight: Republicans reneged on their offer to let him testify publicly, which he’s agreed to do. 

When they pretended to believe in the sanctity of Congress’s subpoena power, The Democrats had receipts: a mountain of subpoenas that Republicans—including some sitting on the House Oversight Committee—had ignored without consequence. 

When Republicans feigned commitment to principle, The Democrats reminded them: 

1) that they lie constantly about what witnesses say behind closed doors, and their lodestar is total fealty to someone who tried to steal the last election. 

2) That they don’t even care about the principle of the thing they claim to be (but aren’t really) investigating.

It’s important work, and The Democrats have a bunch of talented members willing to do it. 

FRUIT OF THE POISON ASYMMETRY

The Democrats™, by contrast, don’t seem to value this work very much. 

It’s fitting that the most compelling j’accuse came from Jamie Raskin, the Oversight Committee’s ranking member, because he exemplifies how much more effective The Democrats™ could be if they appreciated the power of unearthing new facts, and using them as the basis for further investigation.

We all knew to a practical certainty that Donald Trump used his businesses as depositories for foreign bribes, but Raskin—acting on his own—put real numbers to it. Examining a small fraction of receipts from a small fraction of Trump’s businesses, he found that Trump hoovered up millions of dollars from the Chinese and Saudi governments while he was president. Now we can see, as Raskin observed, that Republicans “don’t care about the principle” at all. It’s a bit like when they tried to take down Bill Clinton for lying about an affair, only to find that their own leaders were up to their lapels in mistresses.  

But The Democrats™ don’t see much value in this finding. It’s not that they stood in Raskin’s way exactly—Raskin was able to issue a lengthy report without obvious interference. It’s that they don’t care. They back-burnered the emoluments issue when they had the majority, and now that Raskin’s found the fire burning under all the smoke, they aren’t interested. They don’t mention it. They certainly don’t see it as a jumping-off point for more fact-finding. 

Hakeem Jeffries isn’t interested. Senate Democratic chairmen aren’t interested. Chuck Schumer isn’t interested. 

And so it slides down the memory hole, while Republicans resume their Hunter Biden pseudo-investigation frictionlessly, as if nothing happened.

The Raskin report is just one example. On Tuesday, Donald Trump, through his lawyers, claimed the power as president to assassinate his political opponents. Two days later, closing arguments in his New York civil-fraud trial were delayed because one of the many terrorists Trump has inspired called in a bomb threat at presiding Judge Arthur Engoron’s house. 

The Democrats™, again, just don’t care. Or to be more generous about it: To whatever extent they care, they care about the bad advice they’re getting more. They value the perception that they float above the fray, that they don’t dwell on issues that make focus-group participants feel icky, more than they disdain the brutal Republican onslaught against the rule of law. 

A year and a half ago a single, armed, mentally disturbed man took a cab to Brett Kavanaugh’s home, thought better of the huge mistake he was about to make, and turned himself into authorities without incident. It was a troubling episode, truly, but it was also revealing: Republicans saw it as an opportunity to embarrass Democrats (as though Joe Biden spends all day tweeting incitement about his enemies) and less than a week later Congress—then led entirely by Democrats—passed legislation to bolster security for Supreme Court justices. 

I don’t object to the security, but I do object to the asymmetry. Yes, Engoron is a New York state judge, not a federal judge. But Democrats, with control of the Senate and a large House minority, could turn Congress into a staging ground for confrontation with Republicans over the propriety of using intimidation and violence to subvert elections and legal justice. Is swatting federal judges and prosecutors okay, or something the Justice Department should have extra resources to investigate? Is terrorizing election workers okay, or is it something Congress should be working overtime to deter? Are Republicans willing to enhance security for all judges, prosecutors, jurors, and election workers under threat? Or will they vote against the principle in solidarity with their criminal leader? Do The Democrats™ want to find out? 

BLAH AND BORDER

This has spillover effects in the realm of policy. Democrats have shown their cards and revealed a willingness to give Republicans huge border-control concessions in exchange for reviving military aid to Ukraine. 

Bracket the questions of whether they’re entering a worthwhile deal, and of whether Republicans even want one—remember, they keep telling us they don’t! Focus on what Republicans say they want and why. 

Among other things, Republicans want to: 

• expand expedited removal of immigrants, regardless of circumstance; 

• gut the administration’s parole authority, which allows tens of thousands of migrants per month to apply to enter the country from afar without making the trek to the border, thus relieving pressure on overtaxed border officials and infrastructure;

• dramatically raise the bar for claiming credible fear, ending the U.S. asylum system as we know it.

As a substantive matter, Democrats should do what they think is right. Republicans have pitted important values against one another and Democrats may have little choice but to decide which wins out. 

But as a political matter, they are free to engage with Republican demands however they please. They could be excessively generous, if they want to be chumps about it, and take Republicans at face value when they say they’re motivated by a demand for a more lawful and orderly society.

Or they could introduce context: of the GOP’s leader bellowing about the immigrant-poisoned blood of the American body politic, while he sabotages the republic itself to avoid the 91 felony charges he faces. 

The Democrats prefer option two; The Democrats™ prefer option one. 

Nobody can stop Republicans from hamming it up about Hunter Biden or the border or “illegals” but it shouldn’t fall to individual rank-and-file members, with little institutional heft behind them, to say ‘don’t insult our intelligence by pretending you do these things because you give a shit about the rule of law.’

People will not recognize or long remember the GOP’s rotten nature unless they are reminded frequently and systematically by The Democrats™—the only entity standing between the United States and a fascist takeover. President Biden now recognizes this. It’s been the entire focus of his earliest campaign events. But this needed to be the timbre of Democratic politics all along, and now he needs backup. 

Shortly before the 2020 election, I wrote a long essay about the GOP’s moldering bad faith, and how Democrats, in victory, might make their opponents pay a political price for it. Rereading it recently, I felt a small twinge of pride for having captured the GOP’s nature well, and heavy anguish that things are for the most part unchanged. 

On Tuesday Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America lamented, “I don’t understand why Democrats aren't holding a similar series of oversight hearings to examine Jared Kushner's $2B kickback from the Saudis and money from the UAE. Hunter held no role in government. Jared did favors for autocrats while pretending to be Secretary of State.”

Well, this is why. It’s not that The Democrats lack the appetite; it’s that The Democrats™ don’t understand why joining these battles on the offensive would be in their interest and ours. Even if it “seems” partisan. Even if fart-sniffing party wisemen fear it would distract from kitchen-table issues. It’s been obvious for many years now that their indifference—their willingness to leave attacks unanswered, and stifle attacks of their own—would damage Biden while giving Trump the clearance he’d need to rehabilitate himself. And here we are:

The opportunity to pressure and cajole Democrats into taking this stuff seriously is nearly lost. But there’s still time.