What It Is vs. What It Looks Like
Why Democrats always choose the next fight over the present one
When eight Senate Democrats caved on the shutdown fight, I got a lot of email from readers. Every single email had at least one exclamation point, and many used Chuck Schumer’s name in ways that I will mercifully call “unflattering.” And I agreed with every one of those emails for one simple reason. Sometimes, when choosing to back away from a fight, we not only lose in the present, but we just about guarantee a loss in the future. Grade school bullies taught me that, and those same bullies just took our Senate Democrats’ lunch money.
We The People just handed Democrats a massive election night victory. Freedom loving Americans coast to coast were celebrating the wins and looking forward to more. The energy was everywhere. And then, at that moment, a moment I would call the very best time to get in the fight, ball up those fists and throw a punch for working people … that’s when eight Senate Democrats in safe districts chose to sell us out.
Now, I’ve read the think pieces about how this is really a win for Dems and how Democratic leadership is playing the long game, and I’m just not buying it. Neither are my neighbors. And we’re not buying the lie that these eight Democrats did this on their own. The Shameful Eight, as I have chosen to call them, are all Senators who are either in what they think are safe districts, or they aren’t up for election anytime soon, giving them time to let us forget their betrayal. Neither of those bits of information is a coincidence, just as Chuck Schumer’s vote against the plan is not a coincidence. The Shameful Eight were almost certainly chosen by leadership, just as Chuck Schumer’s vote against the plan to end the shutdown was a strategic step designed to shield him from responsibility.
Supposedly, the fight will continue, and Democrats have promised to fight hard for our healthcare now that the GOP has everything they need to destroy it. But we’d be fools to believe what the Democratic Party is telling us.
Let me tell you all how this will end.
When that next fight comes, either in December during the floor vote on healthcare that was promised but will probably never arrive, or when the continuing resolution to fund the government once again ends in January and we face yet another shutdown, Democrats will cave again. They may appeal to some other greater fight down the road, but at this point, American working people have no reason to think that Democrats will step up. They may extract a concession or two before they cave, but cave they will, and for much less than any of us will be happy with. I don’t know much, but I know that.
American voters are not simpletons, but we aren’t that complicated either. If someone pokes you in the chest, and you fold, then everyone watching learns something about you. Like it or not, that’s how conflict works, and there are a lot of Democrats who need to find careers in fields other than professional politics. The game has changed, and the geriatric academic elites no longer belong. Let them spend the rest of their days on porches in rocking chairs, bemoaning the downfall of civility and compromise in our politics. Civility is gone, and that is a shame, but we still need people who can operate in today’s political environment, and there is a very good reason that the more combative and unafraid members of the party are ascending, and the old guard is hurtling downward like a lawn dart.
An old crook once told me, “If there’s a street fight, a Democrat will hold your coat for you.” I can think of no better sentence to describe the state of Democratic politics in today’s America, and until it changes, we are all well and truly f----d.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.