There's Nothing Exciting Or Constructive About This
The middle path between real opposition and appeasement leads nowhere.
There are, loosely speaking, two approaches to party leadership. One is to canvas widely and forge a middle path that most or all members will walk. The other is to establish a strategic approach that most members can be convinced is wise, and then dictate tactics down the ladder. Leaders of both parties will use both approaches over time, but as I’ve observed over many years, Democrats prefer the former, consensus-driven model, and Republicans prefer the latter.
In the Trump era—where pro-democracy forces would be well served to form a unified front of opposition, where a posture of outrage and defiance is the only way to draw sustained attention to the seaminess of MAGA—I think this has served Democrats poorly.
That’s why I wrote earlier this week about Hakeem Jeffries and his insistence on dismissing questions about Donald Trump’s most deranged cabinet nominees. He’s the leader, he chooses the approach, he bears ultimate responsibility. But one reason he chose this approach is that it strikes a balance between Democrats who want to do real opposition politics, and those who want to do Vichy “opposition” politics.
Here’s a sampling from the latter group:
Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO): “I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov. He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health.” (Polis later hedged his support.)
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) similarly pretended RFK Jr.’s nomination has something to do with healthy food, rather than vaccine bans, quack science, and cuts to Medicaid.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) painted the Trump/Elon Musk plan to arrogate government spending power from Congress as a worthwhile exercise. “They could save tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars depending on how it is structured and what they do, this could be a constructive undertaking that ought to be embraced.”
Polis is a governor, and Booker and Coons are senators, so of course they don’t explain Jeffries’ position as House leader directly. But it’s safe to assume some House Dems feel similarly, and rather than lead them away from a poor approach, Jeffries has decided blithe dismissal of Trump’s cabinet ministers is the best way to unite fighters and quislings.
This is misguided for many reasons, not least of which is that it takes the heat off Senate Republicans, who should now face a difficult, binary decision, knowing Democrats won’t be there to provide them cover. Stopping Trump’s worst nominees isn’t simply about dealing Trump a setback (though asserting Congress’s coequal powers against an aspiring tyrant is important for obvious reasons). It’s to protect the country from incompetent people of low character who stand to assume enormous power.
And the way to do that is to make Republicans think about what they will be taking on if they assent, actively or passively, to these nominees.
TAKE IT TO THE MATT
Consider Matt Gaetz, Trump’s scandal-plagued attorney general nominee, who inspired Jeffries’ riff about “distractions.”