Let’s get real
I spent the past four years sounding the alarm about the sheer number of people on our side who were so addicted to feeling defeatist outrage, they couldn’t even focus on the fact that we won the 2020 election. They couldn’t focus on trying to help their own side win any battles the previous four years, or help their own side win the 2024 election, because they were too busy sitting around ranting in defeatist fashion about Donald Trump instead. Now that Trump has won, these same people are insisting it’s proof that they were right to spend four years yelling “Trump is going to get away with it all!” But in reality, because these types spent the election yelling defeatist things instead of trying to help us win, they’re one of the big reasons we lost.
I bring this up because we’re now in a very vulnerable position. We lost. Now the monsters are in charge. The lunatics are running the asylum. The criminals are writing the rules. Phrase it however you want, this is a nightmare. But the reality is that there are still a number of crucial battles to be fought and won or lost. Whether this is a nightmare we look back on, or ends up being a nightmare forever, depends on whether we bother to fight back. And fighting back means trying to win, not sitting around ranting in defeatist fashion.
Yet the same defeatist outrage addicts on our side who just cost us this election are now turning around and trying to build their brand based on how “right” they were that we were doomed the whole time. These people are, needless to say, poisonous. And if we give into their logic that sitting around expressing defeatist outrage is the only pure form of activism, then we will lose everything.
Of course these merchants of defeatism on our side always start by pushing the same lie: that the Democrats are cowards who aren’t doing anything. The con artistry goes like this: “The Democrats are worthless, so you should only listen to me and not them.” It allows pundits on TV and Twitter, who have absolutely no insight or strategy to offer, to somehow portray themselves as the only virtuous people on our side. It’s disgusting. And it’s dangerous.
The sheer prevalence of this kind of dishonest Democrat-bashing on our side always ends up forcing people like me to jump in and defend the truth of the matter. I then get tagged as a Democratic Party “apologist” or “cheerleader” but most of the time I’m merely pointing out how ridiculously off the mark the Democrat-bashers are.
For instance right now the merchants of outrage have decided that Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn is a coward because he suggested that President Biden consider pardoning Trump, and that Democratic Senator John Fetterman is corrupt because he’s buttering up Elon Musk. Clyburn and Fetterman are two people who have been fighting for our side for years. Yet now suddenly the merchants of outrage are trying to convince us that these two honorable men are garbage who should be discarded.
To that I say turn your brains on. What I mean by this is that given the totality of the situation, it’s ludicrous to presume that Clyburn and Fetterman are traitors who are selling us out. So let’s try applying some brainpower to the situation instead.
Why would Clyburn be floating the idea of pardoning Trump? For one thing, if Trump were to accept such a pardon, he would by law be confessing to his guilt. This would open up Trump to other legal problems. So Trump would be in a bit of a no-win situation as far as whether to accept the pardon. And just by floating the idea, Clyburn has goaded the media into talking more about the fact that Trump is indeed a convicted criminal.
So maybe, just maybe, a guy who’s been fighting savvily and fearlessly for our side for decades actually knows what he’s doing here. Maybe James Clyburn is indeed smarter than the average dumbass on Twitter who’s accusing him of being a coward. Do I think Biden should pardon Trump? No. But I’m not opposed to Clyburn floating the idea. After all, Clyburn is the only reason the media is even talking about Trump’s crimes anymore.
Then there’s Fetterman. Why would he suddenly be buddying up to Elon Musk? Hmm, let’s turn our brains on again. We all know that the Trump-Musk alliance is not built to last. Trump only likes people who are openly subservient to him, and yet Musk has zero social skills when it comes to that kind of thing. How long before Trump gets tired of Musk’s showboating and fires him from his imaginary new government agency? Months? Weeks?
Has it occurred to anyone that Fetterman may be publicly buddying up to Musk in the hope it’ll get under Trump’s skin? Trump has got to be looking at the fact that a Democratic Senator has his arm around Musk, and seething over it. After all, no Democratic Senators are buddying up to Trump.
Is this what Fetterman is doing? Almost certainly. The alternative explanation would be that Fetterman has suddenly become as corrupt as Joe Manchin, and there’s zero evidence to support such a notion. Fetterman isn’t adopting Republican positions. He isn’t threatening to withhold his vote. He’s basically just buddying up to a Trump sidekick in the hope of turning Trump against that sidekick. I wrote a couple weeks ago that the smartest thing we could do was to push Musk so far out front that Trump fires him, and now Fetterman appears to be doing exactly that. I love it.
The bottom line is that if you’re going to be a political activist or enthusiast, you have to be thinking strategically at all times. Otherwise you’re just wasting everyone’s time. There’s no point in passionately yelling things on social media unless you understand what it is you’re yelling about. You also have to presume that your own party’s top elected officials are savvier than you are. That’s why they’re where they are, and why you and I are sitting at home watching them.
Whenever the Democrats do anything, always presume there’s a strategic reason for it unless they show you otherwise. Don’t presume that any given Democrat is the next Manchin or Sinema unless they show you that they are. Short of that, give them the benefit of the doubt. Trust that they’re doing the right thing and that they know what they’re doing. Don’t allow yourself to get baited into instantly turning against them and joining the pitchfork brigade against them. In such case all you’re doing is sabotaging your own side’s leaders before you even get a chance to see whether their strategy has a chance of working.
One of the reasons our side loses so many battles is that the Democrats are left fighting on their own, while so many folks on our side just sit back and bash the Democrats the whole time. We have got to learn to work with our own party, trust our own party, and amplify our own party, rather than anointing ourselves the judge and jury against our own party. After all, this is about winning. And you never win anything if you spend the whole thing sitting around ranting about your own side.
