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Jamelle Bouie
By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
Democrats may be in the minority, but they are not yet an opposition.
What is the difference?
An opposition would take advantage of each and every opportunity it has to demonstrate its determined position against the new administration. He would do everything he could to try to capture the public’s attention and exploit the president-elect’s efforts to put anarchy in the way. of the American government. An opposition would highlight the extent to which Donald Trump is aimless at delivering on his promise of lower costs and greater economic prosperity for citizens and is brazenly colluding with the billionaire oligarchs who financed and led his crusade to hollow out the economy. social safety net and lift anything resembling Hooverism from the ashes of history.
An opposition would view the proposed appointment of figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth as an early opportunity to paint a temporary Trump administration as detrimental to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans. This would prioritize agility and competitiveness. leadership over an unwavering commitment to seniority and promotion to the next in line. Above all, an opposition would perceive politics to be a matter of shock – or, as Henry Adams so aptly put it, “the systematic organization of hate” – and would reject methods of aversion to threats from beyond in favor of of new blood and new ideas.
The Democratic Party lacks the energy of a determined opposition — it is adrift, listless in the wake of defeat. Too many elected Democrats seem ready to concede that Trump is some kind of avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people. They’ve accepted his proposed nominees as legitimate and entertained surrender under the guise of political reconciliation. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, for example, praised Elon Musk, a key Trump lieutenant, as “the champion among big tech executives of First Amendment values and principles.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware similarly praised Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a glorified blue-ribbon commission, as a potentially worthwhile enterprise — “a constructive undertaking that ought to be embraced.” And a fair number of Democrats have had friendly words for the prospect of Kennedy going to the Department of Health and Human Services, with credulous praise for his interest in “healthy food.”
“I’ve heard him say a lot of things that are probably true,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said last month. “Clearly I have considerations about the leaders of our country that do depend on science and facts. But he continued, “when you talk about the disorders that I just talked about, we’re talking about the same model. “
And at least two Democrats need President Biden to pardon the new President Trump. “Trump and Hunter Biden’s affairs were both, and pardons are appropriate,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania wrote in his first post on Trump’s social network.
Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina also said that Biden should consider a pardon for Trump as a way of “cleaning the slate” for the country. “If we keep digging at things in the past, I’m not too sure the country will not lose its way,” he said in a conversation on MSNBC with Jonathan Capehart. Unmentioned was Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, which did not clean the slate of American politics as much as it made legal and political impunity the lodestar of Republican presidential politics.
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