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Offering feeble excuses for why their top-down selected Presidential
candidate in 2024 lost badly to an individual they held in the deepest
contempt and
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Democrats: Neither an Alternative nor an Opposition
Winslow T. Wheeler
Offering feeble excuses for why their top-down
selected Presidential
candidate in 2024 lost badly to an individual they held in the deepest
contempt and why in 2025 the party-anointed candidate lost – again badly
- to a left wing, Muslim neophyte in the
New York City mayoral primary, the Democrats are struggling to find the
right formula for political success. A Democratic Party that can
successfully compete with the Trump machine is nowhere in sight. That
is largely because they think it is a formula they
need for victory.
I worked in the last decades of the previous century on the staff of
four Members of the US Senate (both parties), and I believe the systemic
deterioration there from then to now illuminates the problem. The
Senate is now a mostly empty hall with literally
nothing going on, interrupted infrequently with someone reading from a
script, culminating in a vote the outcome of which is pre-ordained.
There are some exceptions when a handful, or less, dissent from their
party’s directives, threatening an unsanctioned
outcome. Not to worry; it virtually always turns out that enough
miscreants fall away – having been bought off or cowed into submission –
to permit the commanded outcome. It is exactly this Kabuki dance that
just played itself out in the Senate’s consideration
of the Trump machine’s biggest – so far – legislative initiative, the
“One Big Beautiful Bill Act” [sic.].
Importantly, note that whatever transient
drama occurred on that bill was only in the Republican caucus, with the
last-minute folding of Lisa Murkowski (R.-AK) allowing a tie, broken by
Vice President Vance casting the Constitutionally
allowed deciding vote. Where was the Democratic opposition?
Truthfully, there was none; none that that amounted to anything. But
there were rituals. The
official
record shows
about 30 technical motions and at least 10 amendments offered by
Democrats; all failed; almost nowhere did any Republicans cross over.
In addition, at the start of the proceedings, Minority Leader Charles
Schumer (D-NY) exercised a Senator’s right to have
the entire 900+ page bill read out loud by staff, delaying things about
a day.
None of this Democratic palaver was anything that Majority Leader Thune
(R. SD) had to worry about. It was the form of opposition without the
substance: with their motions and amendments the Democrats were doing
nothing more than “positioning” to provide fodder
for political ads and fundraising. Nothing of significance in the
Republican-desired version of the Senate bill was changed. Of course,
the Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, people argue; that
makes a voting Democratic majority in the Senate
impossible. Right?
Not so fast. When the Senate was a functioning legislative body,
argumentation back and forth were routine, and outcomes were anything
but predetermined. A Senator going to the floor with a staff prepared
speech to articulate a position would win smirks of
derision from the professional staff lining the back and side walls: no
command of the facts without a staff-written crutch; clueless; needs to
be spoon fed. As the back-and-forth debate unfolded, the majority and
minority leaders would have to make continuous
headcounts on important measures to see not if votes were changing but
how many and in which direction. Neither party was in lockstep with
itself; the Republicans had a significant liberal faction (the
“Wednesday Group”); the liberal Democrats struggled to
overcome their conservative old bulls. If a caucus leader were to
discipline a Member not conforming to party dogma (if there were one),
there were going to be consequences in the future – for the leader. It
was not how the game was played.
What about the filibuster? Didn’t that make almost anything impossible,
except for a very small number of truly must-do bills? In fact, when
debates were real, filibusters were almost non-existent. After the Dark
Ages when Southern Democratic racists used
the filibuster to oppose civil rights, the device was a non-occurrence
for daily business. They were so rare that junior staff would pile into
the public gallery to watch the talk-a-thon. Now, the minority party
(whichever that happens to be) considers the
modern filibuster, which requires no long-term speechifying, on almost
any bill or amendment to be both a tradition (which it is not) and an
automatic right. When the majority switches, they also switch the
speeches, and each side opines what they previously
derided.
Also, they pretend the 60-vote requirement encourages bipartisanship;
that is a luminous lie. Instead, it is a device for the Majority and
Minority Leaders to keep caucus members in line. Without the 60-vote
threshold only three or four votes, or less, (not
the unachievable ten or so) might be needed to comprise a working
majority on any real controversy. The temptation to step out of line
would be irresistible for those who harbored real dissent - or just
wanted a moment in the spotlight. It would make the
central control of the two caucus leaders infinitely more difficult.
The Democrats betray their allegiance to this broken system by refusing
to seek genuine bipartisanship with Republicans. There are less than a
handful of exceptions, such as ultra-liberal Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who
has co-authored a few important bills with
knuckle-dragger Chuck Grassley (R-IO), but one or both of them
routinely wash their hands after a quick joint press conference with the
other and escapes to another venue where rancor against the other side
makes it plain the exercise was just that, and no
one need fear they have a habitual miscreant in their midst.
There have been some who did habitually object to Democratic
homogeneity. They get primaried and thrown out of office, if they don’t
resign first. Ask former Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) or Krysten Sinema
(D-AZ) want they think of the Democratic caucus’ unwritten
club rules. The Democratic caucus would rather risk shrinking its
number than tolerate recurring dissent.
To survive in the mainstream Democratic Party is to say, think and act
in narrow, allowed confines; some safe divergences are allowed (even
encouraged to ape independence), but being habitual about it or getting
too far beyond the outer edge of allowed dogma
on major issues will cut off large chucks of under- and over the table
campaign contributions and earn you nervous looks in the elevators in
the Capitol from fellow Democrats who might think it could be catching.
The result is the absence of meaningful policy alternatives that
threaten to catch a majority in the Senate. When the One Big Beautiful
Bill Act started to take shape, where was the comprehensive Democratic
alternative? By that I mean not a bill that cobbled
together all the favorite Democratic budget-related hobby horses, but
one that effected a real appeal to the few existing moderate and loose
cannon Republicans to realistically address the deficit problem that all
economists (except the MAGA ones) warn the
OBBBA miscreation profoundly exacerbates. That, of course, would have
required some heavy intellectual and political lifting – as it did when
President Clinton and the Republicans virtually eliminated deficits in
1997. By the way, the two sides did so then
with as much personal and political animosity as we see today.
Instead, we see the Democrats throwing up fluff in the form of motions
and amendments that are wholly meaningless, except for their political
campaign and fundraising potential. We also saw the same behavior when
Democrats used various devices to “get” Trump
in his first term: the embarrassingly hollow Mueller inquiry, the
attempt to impeach and convict Trump for a relatively minor and
routinely corrupt effort to expose Hunter Biden’s corrupt enrichment of
himself, the double standard exercised in prosecuting
Biden and Trump’s illegal retention of classified documents and so much
more.
The Democrats do not attempt to defeat Trump with the majority of votes
in Congress or in elections; instead, they attempt to “get” him with
various legal, legislative, and political stratagems. Their track
record is awful; they have lost at every turn, even
when he attempted a violent coup.
And what of the Republicans? They are beneath contempt. There is no
longer a Republican Party. Instead, we have a feudal hierarchy with one
lord at the top, insisting that his every whim is genius policy and any
in the realm who cannot offer abject prostration
are to be – quite literally – banished, past sycophancy
notwithstanding. They, except for the banished, can be dismissed as
useless fluff seeking to survive, even grope to the top, through abject
groveling – repeated on demand.
Recent
polling shows that the
Democrats in general are even less popular than during the Kamala
Harris/House/Senate fiasco in 2024. The current party plan appears to
bank on economic stagnation plus inflation thanks
to Trump’s tariff and legislative shenanigans, leading to a Democratic
comeback in the midterms in the House and/or Senate. But what if the
economy turns out not so bad as some
middle
of the road economists opine?
If Trump breaks the mold and survives the midterms in OK shape, what is
to prevent him from using the loophole in the 22nd Amendment to allow
himself a third term by running as
Vice President with a willing non-entity as the titular Presidential
candidate? Straight lining the current Democratic mind-set guarantees
him a good chance.
At this point, there is nothing to stand in Trump’s way.
Winslow T. Wheeler handled national security issues for four US
Senators, the Government Accountability Office and the Center for
Defense Information for over 40 years.