…the 4-year-olds who want the keys to the car
Romper Room
The Republican caucus that Kevin McCarthy pretends he leads is coming apart. Like children fighting over the keys to Daddy’s car, the danger is real no matter which one wins. The House of Cards Kevin McCarthy has built teeters with each tantrum- governance occurs in fits and starts if at all. None of us should take pleasure in that. A real opposition party would be a godsend about now. We call it a clown show and find satisfaction in their bumptious behavior- Gaetz sporting his bad haircut-cheap suit look; Jordan getting all bad boy, like a lightweight Arnold Schwarzenegger sniggering out his little lectures in double speed to give his lies a head start before the truth catches up.
While Boebert gropes and in turn is groped, and MTG buys Kevin’s used ChapStick for $100,000 at a GOP auction during the debt crisis, the nation suffers because they would rather do this than govern. No, it isn’t funny at all- the GOP is a burlesque mocking the common good.
As we await the next election to bring us some relief, the jig may well be up. Our choice is whether to throw out the loutish crowd next November or whether voters will decide they prefer a circus. Right now we live with the pretense of a democracy, a semblance of what made us better or different from the others. 2024 gives us a second chance to make it right- or no chance at all. It is truly a watershed election.
This week the evidence of the nation being near the end of its tether was evident both domestically and in foreign affairs. The GOP’s attempted mugging of Merrick Garland was pure show for the rabble Republican Party base. It began with fake outrage and torrents of lies all whipped up in a confection of old and debunked conspiracies. CNN fact-checked Jim Jordan’s opening remarks regarding his version of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid:
Facts First:Jordan’s claim that Trump did “everything” the Justice Department asked him to do is incorrect. When the Justice Department obtained a May 2022 grand jury subpoena demanding that Trump turn over all documents with classification markings, Trump did not do so. Instead, Trump’s indictment alleges, he turned over just 38 documents with classification markings in June 2022, far fewer than he possessed; the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago found 102 additional documents with classification markings. In addition, the indictment alleges that, upon producing the 38 documents, Trump intentionally had one of his lawyers sign a document that falsely certified that all the documents demanded by the subpoena had been produced.
- CNN, “Fact check: Jim Jordan makes false claims about Trump, Hunter Biden to begin hearing on handling of the federal cases against them”
The truth never deterred Jordan’s committee members who made outrageous claims and assailed Garland and the DOJ with vitriol once reserved for our enemies abroad- conveniently forgetting that the very obscenities they raged about occurred under the Trump Administration DOJ headed by Bill Barr. They referenced the Durham Report which was thoroughly rebuked in two trial losses that gained unanimous acquittals for Durham’s charged defendants. To add insult to injury, Durham’s lead prosecutor, Nora Dannehy, a day after Republicans used Durham’s deflated probe as fodder for their baseless claims, destroyed their arguments in her nomination hearing before the Connecticut Senate for a seat on its Supreme Court:
“I simply couldn’t be part of it. So I resigned, “ Nora Dannehy told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing as a nominee to the state Supreme Court. It marked the first time Dannehy has spoken publicly about her sudden resignation from the probe overseen by former special counsel John Durham.
…I had been taught and spent my entire career at Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner,” she said. “In the spring and summer of 2020, I had growing concerns that this Russia investigation was not being conducted in that way. Attorney General Barr began to speak more publicly and specifically about the ongoing criminal investigation. I thought these public comments violated DOJ guidelines. “ (emphasis mine)
- Politico, “Former prosecutor who quit Trump-Russia probe says she left over concerns with Barr”
Tuberville’s Rabbit Hole
Even in the minority, the GOP refuses to do the job they were elected to do. Coach Tommy Tuberville holds up promotions and nominations for military leaders by conflating national security concerns with abortion rights, preventing women in the military from receiving medical support while serving the nation. His unmitigated disdain for the lives of women soldiers is stubbornly attached to his ignorance of the laws he is asked to uphold. Abortion rights under Dobbs are left to the states to regulate- women, then, have a right to choose where to seek medical care and where to live. Women in the military serve the nation and the military controls their assignments. Tuberville, the coach from Alabama who lives in Florida because he chooses to, denies soldiers their rights to medical care without a sniff of concern for their lives:
“Taxpayers do not want to pay for anything to do with abortion,” Tuberville said. “Their tax money should not be paying for that. And it’s paying for travel and three weeks off for military members to have abortions, and their dependents…
When you dictate laws, you know what that’s called? Communism. You’re telling the American people what you’re going to do without a vote,” Tuberville said.
Tuberville’s worldview dates back to medieval times when leeches were the latest medical breakthrough and ignorance was a valid excuse for malpractice. In this case, the Senator’s ignorance and his party’s acquiescence replace their dread of 20th-century “communism” with the reality of 21st-century fascism.
We are living in Wonderland with an orange-coifed joker instead of the Red Queen in charge. Donald Trump and the GOP have taken us all down the rabbit hole with them. While it may give us some satisfaction here that we aren’t the crazy ones, we also should refrain from blaming the Bidens, Schumers, or Democrats in general for our plight. The truth is that every Democratic vote is not enough to end this. We are back to relying on the whole village. And as Republicans refuse to govern, their recalcitrance needs support from the same village. Thus, the watershed moment we face as a nation.
Our most difficult realization is that our battle is not with “MAGA”. but with ourselves. Joe Biden’s age should be of less concern than whether his candidacy can unite a winning coalition next year. Winning a coalition among independent voters and disaffected Republicans will require burying some real and imagined differences that divide us. Among Joe Biden’s strengths is a wisdom he exhibits that draws from among other things his past failures. He understands the practical dimensions of political power while sharing our impatience. If there is to be a comparison of both parties over the course of the past century it is that Republicans have adopted the philosophy of conservatism- a hold on the past and a reluctant acceptance of change because it is unavoidable.
Biden’s Punctuated Politics
Democrats, on the other hand, accept that change rather than unavoidable, is inevitable and to be embraced. From FDR to Joe Biden the course of Democratic policy can be described as gradualist. Gradualism is a term borrowed from biology. A newer theory of evolution has arisen that identifies change among the species as being punctuated rather than slow but steady:
Gradualism in biology and geology refers most broadly to a theory that changes of organic life and of the Earth itself occur through gradual increments, and often that transitions between different states are more or less continual and slow rather than periodic and rapid. Gradualism has been ascribed to the manner in which Darwin inferred the origin of one species from another over geologic time, or the “transmutation” of species. — Oxford Bibliographies, Gradualism, by Melanie Hopkins, Scott Lidgard
versus:
Punctuated equilibrium is the idea that evolution occurs in spurts instead of following the slow, but steady path that Darwin suggested. Long periods of stasis with little activity in terms of extinctions or emergence of new species are interrupted by intermittent bursts of activity.
- History of the Concept: Punctuated Equilibrium, by Eldredge and Gould 1972
The Democratic philosophy post-1932 is a political version of punctuated evolution in its acceptance of the reality that change is not easily managed. It is a force of its own agency and can only be accommodated. Biden is the quintessential gradualist of his time. Like it or not, like him or not, it is the reason why he has been relatively successful despite facing the headwinds of MAGA inertia. He accommodates the evolutionary changes that are inevitable- call them doable changes. Unlike biology, however, the politics of today allow for regression in the form of fascism. It is why David Ignatius and the Biden deniers within his party are mistaken. Biden is not so old- but too wise to push aside. He may not be what all Democrats want but he is what the nation needs to defeat Donald Trump or any of the other leading Republican candidates.
For Democrats to cool our heels and our ardor for Biden now because we want someone younger or someone more progressive in his place forget that he is the first presidential candidate to choose a black woman as vice president and who has built a coalition of younger voters whose ascendance in time will foster faster change. A more nuanced view of what has transpired in politics since 2008 will appreciate the tensions of real change occurring before our eyes. The Obama-Biden-Harris era was an inevitable outcome politically for a nation that is undergoing demographic change that upsets the current white majority. MAGA is the regressive pushback fueled by fear of change and ignorance. If one needs more recent comparisons of the differences in leadership capabilities, one needs only to compare the previous administration’s handling of the pandemic to the Biden Administration- or Trump’s position with regard to Russia and Ukraine and Biden’s support of the fledgling democracy with a fearless leader. In both cases, the differences range from criminal to competence.
The coming election is not a time for Dems to quibble over Joe Biden’s actuaries when those of the nation are at stake. Our choice as Democrats is not between finding our best candidate or even a better one- a stronger one or a younger one. It is a choice of whom we hand over the keys to the car.
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on September 23, 2023.
