In defense of what the Democrats are (and aren’t) doing about Trump
I love House Democrat Al Green, and not just because he shares a name with one of the greatest singers of all time. Representative Al Green has never hesitated to speak up and do what’s necessary to get his point across. That included interrupting Donald Trump’s speech this week in order to protest Trump’s planned Medicaid cuts.
A lot of people are asking why more elected Democrats aren’t following Al Green’s lead. If you want to know the answer, all you have to look at is how the Al Green story is now playing out. The media is fully ignoring the fact that Green was defending Medicaid, while still largely ignoring the fact that Trump plans to cut Medicaid. Instead the media has turned this into a debate over decorum. It’s become a referendum on whether Green was right to be so rude. And it’s a waste of a news cycle.
This is why the Democrats aren’t all out there getting themselves thrown out of Trump speeches and such. There’s no strategic point to it. All this kind of thing does is backfire. When the Democrats let Trump be the focus, the media hammers him accordingly, which knocks him down a peg. But whenever the Democrats do something as newsworthy as Trump’s antics, the media merely uses it as an opportunity to “both sides” it, which gives Trump a free pass for that news cycle.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Al Green did what he did. It helped fire up the base. And it managed to spark at least a minor discussion about Medicaid cuts. But there’s a reason Al Green got himself thrown out, and not, say, Hakeem Jeffries. Green is respected, but he’s far enough removed from the Democratic leadership that he can wave his cane and yell at Trump without it blowing back on the Democratic Party at large. If a leader like Jeffries (or Pelosi or Schumer or Schiff or Swalwell) had gotten themselves thrown out, the media would have spent a week bashing the entire party, thus giving Trump the advantage.
What you need to keep in mind is that these kinds of things are often strategized by the Democratic Party in advance. There’s a good chance Al Green had the Democratic House leadership’s blessing before he got himself thrown out. And as for the ten House Democrats who voted to censure Green, that’s all choreographed as well. These are House Democrats in 50-50 swing districts, where they need to look reasonably “bipartisan” in order to get reelected – and their seats will primarily determine the House majority in the midterms. They just managed to score points with the moderates in their districts, in a matter where their vote wasn’t going to change the outcome anyway. The ten of them surely had the Democratic House leadership’s blessing to vote this way. They may have even had Al Green’s blessing. Green certainly wants the Democrats to retake the House majority next year, which would make him a committee chairman.
The Democrats are doing a lot. Mainly they’ve been stopping Trump in court again and again these past six weeks. They’ve also put on a show such as holding the Senate floor all night, and leading protests in their own districts. But if you’re mad at the Democrats for not all getting themselves thrown out of Trump’s speech, I would ask you to state what that would have specifically accomplished. It would have been a fun moment for you, but it wouldn’t have hurt Trump in any way. All it would have done is save Trump from a week’s worth of negative headlines, as the media feasted on the Democrats instead.
As I’ve said many times over the past decade, politics does not exist for your entertainment. The job of the Democrats is not to make your socks roll up and down. If you need constant motivation from your elected leaders, you’re probably not cut out to be a political activist to begin with. But I think most of you understand the stakes and are plenty motivated of your own accord. So I would ask you to understand that the Democrats’ job is not to set their own hair on fire. Their job is to win. If you look at the Democrats’ recent track record in court, they’re winning. If you look at the way the Democrats have ensured that nearly every news cycle is a negative one for Trump, they’re winning. So let’s get behind them, instead of complaining about them. Put another way: do you want to spend your time complaining about the Democrats, or do you want to spend your time knocking Trump down a peg? You can’t be effective at doing both. I know which one I consider more important.
