Everyday Erinyes #143

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

This is going to be purely an opinion piece (as opposed to last week when I used up my quota of links for heaven knows how long.) As such, anyone is welcome to agree with me, or not. But I have been around a while, and I have seen Democrats make gains before, and then lose them, and I have some fairly passionate opinions, and now that we know, more or less, what we have accomplished (at least we know the minimum we have accomplished – it could get better), I want to weigh in on what we need to do to keep what we have and even build on it.

I have a lot to say about what Democrats should be doing, but much of it can be summarized by saying that Democrats have an image of overpromising and underdelivering which MUST be addressed. I call it an image, not a pattern, because much that has contributed to it has been from attempts to deliver things which are simply not possible to deliver. Mostly those had to be attempted because they were the right thing to attempt, but the message to voters was not handled well.

For that reason, we need to spend every moment between now and January formulating what we will be able to deliver, and then presenting that in such a way that our promises are as forceful and convincing as possible. Starting in January, we need to start doing whatever it takes to deliver on those promises. All the while, we need to make sure our messaging is consistent – consistent with itself, and consistent with our promises and actions.

I wrote the last two paragraphs after reading an article on Tom Steyer and his project “Need To Impeach.” I love Tom Steyer, but what he is recommending does not fit with what I just said.  Sure, we could promise to impeach. We could even deliver a resolution of impeachment in the (newly Democratic) House. But we CANNOT DELIVER A CONVICTION from a Republican Senate. So few people understand the difference between impeachment and conviction! So we had better not promise an impeachment when we cannot deliver what people want from it. On the other hand, we CAN deliver honest committee investigations in the House. That’s what we should be explicitly promising, and later doing. Adam Schiff’s statement “We will uphold the rule of law” was aimed at that point, but – sorry Adam, I love you too, but – it needs to be made more explicitly than he made it.

Adam, Elijah Cummings, and Maxine Waters – three giants – have been the ranking Democratic members on three committees which will have a lot to investigate, because there has been and is so much criminal activity in this regime. I refer, of course, to Intelligence, Oversight, and Financial Services. They and other party leadership need to come together and sketch out the scopes of their prospective investigations – not to limit themselves, certainly, but to limit voters’ expectations. Because we need to start underpromising, or at least  overdelivering. That is how one (an individual or a group) gets a reputation for being responsible, and boy, do we need that reputation now.

Okay, so investigation is something we know we can and must do, whereas impeachment is something we know we almost certainly had better not do. It is not totally impossible that sometime in the next two years the nation will come to a point where the Senate would convict – stranger things have happened – but we absolutely cannot count on it. (Not to mention that impeachment would remove him from office, but that is all it would do. It would not put him behind bars. Other paths we could take might.) Neither of those things is related to legislation, which is presumably the primary purpose of the two legislative bodies.

I have no objection to our introducing legislation into the House, and passing it, though we know it will not get past the Senate nor the – what did someone call him? the pimp in the White House? On the Contrary, I think we should draft and pass as much really sound legislation as we can, PROVIDED we present and push the clear message: “This is what we COULD do IF we had a veto-proof majority in the Senate. This is what it looks like.” Medicare for all is probably a given. Strengthening Social Security (including Scrap the Cap). Tax reform. Election integrity.  And other things. We have good ideas and good plans; I’m not too worried about blowing that.

But in getting out the message, we do need to (no pun intended) press the advantage Orange Judas has given us by antagonizing the media in general and specifically so many of its members. Heck, even some very conservative media columnists have turned into never-Trumpers this year just watching his goings-on. We need to build on this. We have two years to make our case. We can’t afford to blow anything, certainly not anything big.

One BIG danger I see is that there is some talk of “bipartisanship.” No. We need to quash that once and for all. That might be something to consider if we were dealing with a normal human being in the White House. We aren’t. Not being a medical professional (and even some of them disagree), I’ll avoid the terms narcissist, psychopath, sociopath, cult leader, delusional, dictator wannabe, fascist, and all the others, and simply state (in all caps) that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE DEALS WITH A MADMAN. The only way we can win that game is not to play. We actually have a mandate. We need to use it, and one way we need to use it is to not give in. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that we could lose up to half of the party if we even flirt with it.

This means we will be accused of “gridlock.”  Of “not getting anything done.”  So we’ll need to be repeatedly pointing out that “not getting anything done” is vastly superior to getting evil done.  And that sometimes, and this is one of those times, the closest you can get to moving forward is just not moving backward.  The more colorfully and memorably we can phrase this point, the better, not only for us, but for the future of the country.

I’m going to ask Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone to have the backs of Democrats, elected Democrats at every level, and also just Democratic voters. It’s been a tough election. But now is when it REALLY gets tough. Time for the tough to get going.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.