A House Democrat spotlights his party's worst instinct

My absence today is unattributable to Pre-Traumatic Trump Syndrome, even though I and 75 million of my fellow real Americans — we should reclaim that status — are suffering from it. Instead, a morning appointment will take the day.

Before leaving I do want to note a seemingly insignificant occurrence that in reality said a lot about why Democrats lose.

Last night the BBC interviewed a Democratic member of the House Ethics Committee. The anchor asked if the committee's vote on releasing the Gaetz material failed along partisan lines. The congressman demurred, saying he'd leave comment on that to a House colleague.

If the situation had been reversed, a House Republican would have ripped into his Democratic counterparts for concealing information vitally important to the public on a president-elect's attorney general nomination.

Even the increasingly timid NY Times opened its report on the vote in straightforward partisan terms: "Republicans on the House Ethics Committee blocked the release of a report into sexual misconduct allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz." (Italics mine.)

So the press reports a damaging partisan fact, but a partisan who stands to gain from it does not — yet another instance of a Democrat surrendering before the first shot is fired.

Wars tend to be lost that way. 

Comments

[Anne J]

I don't like the way it seems like democrats are just going to lie down and take being stepped all over like doormats for the next two to four years. Who is going to stand up for the people who didn't vote for this nightmare? And the only people I'm referring to are Harris voters. Non voters and third party protest voters were equally as complicit as Trump voters.

[ssdd]

Wars may indeed be so lost, but as for this particular battle, Gaetz just threw in the towel. So score one for the good guys. Cheers!

[VoiceOfReason]

And the new buzz is that Rudy will get the nod, though I wonder how the Senate would swallow having a disbarred lawyer running DOJ, not that it matters, since Trump will just fill the post with recess appointments--each one worse than the preceding one.

[Uncle Billy]

Why should anybody stand up for them? They're a bunch of losers, who repeated the same mistake they made in 2016 and expected a different result, which is insane. Not gonna happen in today's America. A woman will never be President, and especially not a black woman, especially when so many women seem to hate women as much as the MAGA men hate women. Sure, Hillary was right about everything; Kamala was right about most things. America will forgive just about anything in its politicians, but being right is not among them. The harsh things that happened to the country in Trump's first term were not harsh enough to overcome America's inbred prejudices, and for that, we deserve what we're going to get, as H.L. Mencken said. Perhaps it'll hurt badly enough this time that the lesson will finally sink in.

[ssdd]

Oh my gawd Rudy would be an even bigger stinkbomb than Gaetz!

[J.P. McJefferson]

So many explanations of what went wrong and how serious it is for the future of the Democratic Party, but we need to maintain perspective. To win the 270, Harris only lost by 231,646 votes -- WI by 29,417 votes; MI by 80,618; and PA by 121,611. There is almost no reporting on this, only reporting about a shattered Democratic Party. Harris just needed a little more work in WI, MI, & PA & less in other battlegrounds & she would have won. http://www.270towin.com. Yes, they narrowly lost the popular vote, but Harris only had a short time to spread her message to the masses & was in a difficult spot in trying to establish her own identity in the shadow of Biden. Some improved messaging could have also helped. Democrats need to better define their product & sharpen their message to sell it.​ Oh yeah, then there's the fact that 90 million didn't vote and 10% of them said they didn't think their vote would count. We've got some work to do there. tinyurl.com/bdmhv44x

[VoiceOfReason]

I think though, that this is just a rumor started by a lefty troll, which I fell for.

[Anne J]

Look. I never was a Trump supporter and I am a non-college educated white woman. We are not a monolith. I need my life saving health care and I yes I will die without it. I don't appreciate being lectured about deserving the pain that's about to come. I even talked about it with my Trump supporting older sister with the Master's degree and she said I wasn't hearing things right. I don't need to be lectured by both sides.