“The ship has weather’d every rack,” Walt Whitman wrote in “O Captain! My Captain!” his poem after the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, born 216 years ago today. Of course, we haven’t weathered every rack yet; lots more racks are on the way. There’s no safe harbor in this storm, and every Democrat is seasick.
Is there anything we can take for that? Having been burned last week after mistakenly believing that Republican Senator Bill Cassidy — a physician and strong advocate of vaccines — might sink Bobby Kennedy Jr., I hesitate to offer cheering thoughts amid a coup.
But as Gene Kranz’s character (actually screenwriters Al Reinert and Bill Broyles) says in Apollo 13: “Failure is not an option.” A mighty force of democracy defenders has already filed more than 50 lawsuits aimed at making sure that J.D. Vance’s view of the Constitution (a monarch/CEO in charge, per Curtis Yarvin) does not prevail. The good (or less bad) news is that the plain language of the Constitution — and recent Supreme Court decisions — suggest that at least some of DOGE’s work is flatly unconstitutional and will be rendered so, even by a high court that favors Donald Trump. Remember, in late 2020, the court refused to review any of the more than 60 cases Trump brought to overturn the election. Can the court now turn itself into a pretzel and reverse last year’s decision that curtailed the power of agencies to make big decisions without congressional authorization? Sure, but I’d bet against it.
The big question will be whether Trump, per Vance, will defy court orders ala Andrew Jackson’s famous line, quoted favorably by Vance: “Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Trump is already slow-walking compliance, but we don’t know yet how far his defiance will go. Call me Charlie Brown trying to kick the football as Lucy snatches it away, but I don’t think he’ll be able to ignore the Supreme Court, which, in the chief justice’s year-end report, issued a stinging rebuke to those who would challenge the rule of law. If Trump does, it’s curtains for our 249-year-old democratic experiment.
In the meantime, here are four ways to hold the line as Democrats regroup and prepare for critical gubernatorial contests this year in Virginia (trending blue, thanks to all the federal employees) and New Jersey (where Republican registration is way up) and for the midterms:
Power of the Purse Deal
After a month of wrangling over lawsuits and funding interruptions, the debt ceiling debate will come to a head on March 14. Former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski argues in The Contrarian that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries should tell the GOP:
If you can’t keep the government open because of your own embarrassing internal differences, and you ask me to help, I’m going to need a guarantee that the president will respect the budget — even if it's a Republican budget — that Congress passes.
This means that if we give Trump $100 for Meals [on] Wheels, or to run a community health center or to feed hungry kids around the world, he will spend that money exactly as Congress directs. Period, end of story.
It means Elon Musk and his gang taking over government agencies are done — Musk can no longer cut anything Congress funds or fire anyone needed to carry out our instructions. And anyone unlawfully fired, whether FBI agents or USAID officers, is reinstated.
I like the way Malinowski thinks but fear it won’t work out this well. While the Supreme Court is unlikely to uphold an end to birthright citizenship or eviscerate the 1883 Pendleton Act (establishing the civil service), it may well declare the 1974 Impoundment Act unconstitutional and reverse Humphrey’s Executor vs. U.S., the landmark 1935 decision that upheld the independence of certain agencies, boards, and commissions (against FDR’s encroachments). That means Trump may well have his way with the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Kennedy Center, among other institutions assumed for decades to owe their allegiance to the public, not just the president.
For all of the great work underway by 21 attorneys general, this momentous legal wrangling will leave Americans dazed and confused, which is just what the authoritarians want. The antidote is to just keep suing, which offers the chance of a successful defense and at least a small measure of justice.
Which brings us to….
Bust the Muskrats
Under last year’s appalling Supreme Court decision, President Trump cannot be called to account. He is immune from prosecution for “official acts,” which no doubt contributes to the utter impunity with which he violates his oath. But the immunity decision says nothing about the people who work for him. If they don’t comply with the temporary restraining orders that have already been issued, judges should wipe the smug smiles off those pimply faces with a series of contempt citations. Some of the Muskrats are literally camped out in federal agencies that Musk wants “put through the wood chipper,” as this billionaire vandal said about USAID and other agencies that have dared to probe his empire. The kids need to make sure their knapsacks have more than one change of clothes — for more than one night in jail. And, of course, their even more contemptuous Heil-Hitlering Afrikaner boss deserves to join them, sans “Little X” or whatever he calls that prop-child Trump was babysitting in the Oval Office.
Message Discipline
Chuck Schumer recently echoed Beto O’Rourke’s 2022 apt characterization of Greg Abbott’s governorship: “Chaos. Corruption, Cruelty.” (I’d add a fourth “C”: Cowardice.). O’Rourke lost, but not because of that line, which is a good summary of our present predicament. The problem is that I found almost no one who followed the Leader on this useful alliterative talking point. If these were marching orders, no one marched.
That’s one of the Democrats’ big problems. It’s not just that they have no strong counterpart to the GOP’s media ecosystem; it’s that they have no game plan for making sticky content stick. Compare the fate of “Chaos. Corruption. Cruelty” to “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” a line attributed to Einstein that Bill Clinton popularized in 1992. After Trump’s proposal for Gaza last week, I heard Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Senator Lindsey Graham, and two or three other Republicans repeat the insanity line as a way of suggesting it was time to do something different in the Middle East. Given the insanity (or plain cruelty) of Trump’s ethnic cleansing proposal, one might have thought that morning’s GOP talking points would have included a different metaphor. But the point is, they have talking points for their surrogates; Democrats apparently do not.
It reminds me of Al Franken’s old line: “Our bumper stickers usually end with ‘continued on next bumper sticker.’” Maybe his fellow Minnesotan, Ken Martin, the new head of the DNC, can do something about that with a messaging war room. Until Democrats stop being bored by repetition (one of Trump’s strengths) and annoyed by the very notion of “discipline,” they won’t win.
Smart Lobbying
Democratic lawmakers are upset with “the groups” — party activists besieging Capitol Hill in such numbers that they're overloading the phone system. While it always helps to hold your own side’s feet to the fire, the Republicans are the only ones with the power to stand up and do anything real to stop Trump’s runaway train. My question for cowardly Republicans is this: Why did you go into politics in the first place? Is it really worth all of the sacrifices in salary and family time to be a powerless rubber stamp for arrogant tech interns?
To give these members a stake — and the rest of us a fighting chance of survival — constituents need to contact their elected representatives in a smart way. That means focusing on Republicans. Snail mail is preferable to calls as long as the letters are not part of an orchestrated campaign, which legislators tend to discount. A short, personal, thoughtful typed letter with reference to the member’s good constituent work (e.g. on hospitals wrecked by NIH cuts) will often reach the House member or senator directly. That’s the best way to make them see the political downside of complete capitulation.
None of this is rocket science, and that’s the point. Musk thinks that because he’s really smart about rockets and cars, he’s smart about everything. He isn’t, and his meat cleaver cuts are both illegal and irrational. They can be stopped — and Donald Trump checked — with a loud and disciplined campaign in the courts and the public arena. We’re edging closer to one now.
Jon,
Excellent ideas all but I’m concerned that all these efforts will fail because the Trumpian politicians can’t (won’t) stand against this tyranny.
I believe the heroes on the front lines in federal agencies need to be highlighted and lionized by our leaders. It will take resistance, civil disobedience, strong action in myriad ways to resist…..an organized, non violent revolution that affects all our day to day activities.
If “the silent majority “ wakes up and resists, we can prevail.
If not, no amount of litigation can stop the madness.
What sort of guarantee do you expect Jeffries to get for Dems votes that would be actually honored????? by this group of liars and autocratic enablers?