Democrats need an executive, not a legislator.
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. . ."Hamlet, indecisive, in Act Three, almost midway through a long play, speaking to himself.
This blog is not fixated on Trump. I am fixated on the dynamo creating action and reaction in the American political world for the past decade.
That happens to be Trump.
Trump is the swashbuckling devil-may-care action hero/anti-hero of American politics. He is interesting because he is so willful. So selfish. So desperate to be the center of attention. So willing to fill the void of a weak Congress and a Supreme Court captured by sycophants. He is smashing the status quo.
Trump is selling an idea of the fearless man of action:
Democrats need an action hero of their own. A leader. An executive. A person willing to change the Democratic brand from ineffective to bold. This isn't dumbing down America. Americans want a can-do president. This isn't wrong of them. FDR took action.
During the four years of the Biden administration Democrats needed a counter to Trump. Instead, we got an alternative to Trump, a Silent Cal, working largely offscreen. Biden had the heart of a get-along legislator, one capable of pulling together a governing coalition by campaigning as a moderate but governing as an Elizabeth Warren-style liberal. Biden could not sell anything and his staff kept him out of sight. America needed a Democratic narrator. Trump filled the void, saying what Biden was doing was bad for the economy, bad foreign policy, bad trade policy, bad for working people, and bad for normal, White Christian Americans.
Democrats need a point man. A politician on point is admired, scorned, followed, disagreed-with, laughed at, and shot at. He is in the news and social media. We become familiar with him. We hear his narration of events. We form opinions.
Democrats do not have a huge bench. It only looks huge. Most Democrats eliminated themselves by their inactions over the past five years. Democratic senators have a branding problem. They stayed silent and loyal to a Democratic Party that allowed Joe Biden to rig the Democratic primary so that he and only he would be nominated. Democratic senators did not step up to fill the void of narrator for Democratic policies. They were waiting like good little schoolchildren, asking permission to lead.
Former cabinet officers are also disqualified. Pete Buttigieg is an extraordinary talent, but he played the role of teammate and enabler, not point-man leader filling the void. The time for him to have made a bold move, separating himself from the Hamlets of the Democratic establishment was two years ago. He did not establish his brand as a can-do executive. He did not go to East Palestine, Ohio when the train derailed. Trump -- out of office --went there.
Trump has shown us what bold leadership looks like. In Trump's case, it is dangerously out of control, cruel, hyperpartisan, and destructive of America's role in the world. But there is a get-stuff-done quality to it. Congress is ineffective and weak, proven by its consent to being steamrolled by Trump. That proves Trump's point. If Congress won't solve America's problems, the executive must step up, notwithstanding the Constitution. Trump is all too eager to do it.
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| Newsom, in July in South Carolina |
I see movement starting to create a new Democratic brand. California Governor Gavin Newsom is acting like a leader in opposition. Newsom has structural defects as a candidate related to having been a California liberal for decades, but he is doing what leaders do, and he is adjusting to a new role as a national leader. He isn't waiting for instruction or permission from the old Democratic party represented by Biden, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic National Committee. That party is the Hamlet party.
We are in the midst of discovering the future leadership of the Democratic Party.
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4 comments:
The problem here is that the Republican party is a bunch of degenerates, and there is pressure to sink to their level. Though I applaud his fighting spirit, Gavin Newsom is making a mistake with his all caps trolling.
Biden was flawed, certainly poorly advised, but he WON, I think, mainly because in 2020 he was the best symbol we had of an earlier, better time, not the least of which was the Obama presidency. The Democratic party represents the ideals that actually make America great, not the racist, bigoted cynicism of Republicans and certainly not the realpolitik defeatism of some Democrats.
Democrats could have chosen moderate Josh Shapiro as VP, but then they've proven to dislike Jews. Democrats tends to flock towards freaks and extremists. NY Mayoral candidate Mamdani is illustrating what the Democrats are about.
Also, it was reported that Epstein told his butler that he was offered a job in the first Trump administration. While uncorroborated, one does wonder why this person, who admittedly admired his boss, would offer this story. Another mystery...
Our own Senator Wyden is pursuing financial transactions involving payments by Epstein to women and others. From his report:
"Treasury’s Epstein file details 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion flowing in and out of just ONE of Epstein’s bank accounts. If you ask me, that’s 4,725 potential lines of investigation right there.
Hundreds of millions more flowed through other accounts -- that’s even more to investigate.
The file shows Epstein used multiple Russian banks, which are now under sanctions, to process payments related to sex trafficking. A lot of the women and girls he targeted came from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan. You shudder to think about the kinds of people who must have been involved in trafficking these women and girls out of those countries and into Epstein’s web of abuse."
I always thought Hamlet got a something of a bum rap on the "indecisiveness" front. Also in Act III, now fully convinced after the play-within-the-play of Claudius' guilt, he's poised to take Claudius out but catches Claudius mid-prayer, which would thwart the revenge as intended. Later in the same act, he springs into deadly action when he hears Claudius hiding behind a curtain in his mother's bedroom, only to discover it's Polonius he's stabbed instead.
On Democrats, the sad (for them?) reality is that the new, vigorous leadership hails from the far-left, young-Bernie wing of the party--AOC, for example. These are open socialists. These are folks for whom moral rectitude increases in direct proportion to their unrelenting disdain for America, Israel and Judeo-Christian traditions and values. It won't sell in '28, in my opinion. I could see Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear instead, or Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
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