For a decade or so/more, Democrats (at least, elected Democrats) played the role of “the adult in the room” - a generation/cohort of Pelosis, Schumers, Obamas, Kennedys, Clintons, Reids, Warrens, Bidens, Reids, etc.
But now, with the intensifying opposition to Trump, the deep polarization of the Trump era, the older Democrats all reaching retirement age, the way that new and young Democrats differ from their elders…etc… I am concerned that we are going to see a whole lot more Ocasio-Cortezes, Tlaibs, Antifa-type folks, etc. - new Democrats who have no interest in being “the adult in the room” anymore than Trumpers or Republicans. We’ll have two major parties, ***both ***of who want to be tantrum-throwing toddler, and ***neither ***of which wants to be the grown-up. Democratic politicians who will fully reject Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high” approach.
When Tlaib, the newly elected Congresswoman, crowed, “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker! (Trump,)” she was condemned by most of her Democratic peers in Congress. But I have a feeling that we’re eventually going to get to a point where the majority of Democrats won’t consider Tlaib’s behavior something to be condemned, but rather, something praiseworthy. A “When they go low, we go equally low or even lower!” approach. When Republicans go dirty, Democrats are then going to try to gleefully play just as dirty or even dirtier. Where a majority of Democrats in Congress will echo and promote sentiments and statements along the lines of “we’re going to impeach the motherfucker!”
If neither side wants to be the adult in the room, then the nation can only be headed down a reaaally dark place. The only viable alternative would then be a major 3rd party (the Sanity Party) that would try to win on the basis of appeal to “respectability the way things used to be, when parties played by the rules of civility” but it’s mighty hard for a 3rd party to rise up in the two-party system.
Here’s my bottom line: when Democrats take over the presidency, I want them to prosecute the opposition. For the longest time, I thought that was a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Even if you thought your predecessors were corrupt, Gerry Ford set the example.
No more. I want as many Republicans involved in this administration prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law…assuming the law returns.
You know, speaking truth through the right-wing lies isn’t immature, or juvenile. It’s about time, is what it is. Democrats have spent way too long indulging the GOP’s decades-long temper tantrum. I find it immensely refreshing to see some of our Congressional delegation telling you people about yourselves for once.
I feel like my post is misunderstood or poorly written. I’m not asking whether Republicans “deserve it” or not - that’s a separate, different issue. I’m asking, if Democrats decide “F*** the high road, let’s go super low and tantrum-ish,” and both parties behave that way, then where does that put America? As far as I can see, only down a really ugly path.
It would be funny except that it’s the truth. Republicans have demonstrated they are completely morally bankrupt. If I believed in Hell I’d say “May God have mercy on their souls”. Since there is no divine retribution the only moral thing to do is to thwart them at every turn.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Nah – I think concern about a space alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse would be a less fantastical, and more fun, phantom menace to speculate about.
I was thinking about posting this as a separate thread, but wonder if it suits this one. Will the new far left become the Dems’ tea party?
The Dems have been moving centerward since - at least - Bill Clinton. I don’t consider myself radical, but on many issues, Obama was ore conservative than I would prefer. But I also have faith in governance from the middle - with rational persons on both sides of the aisle compromising for the best of the country.
I felt more radical following McConnell’s “oppose EVERYTHING Obama” stance. But I’m not sure that is the best longterm approach either for liberal causes or for the country as a whole.
These days, you have more centrist Rs refusing to compromise for fear of being primaried by some far right teapartier. I’m wondering if a similar effect will occur on the left?
Look at the right wing response in this thread: obsession with AOC, a junior representative from Queens, NY, knee jerk dismissiveness of other people’s points without offering counterpoints and immediate parroting of GOP talking points. Use of the term adults in the room is apt, Red Sate America is acting like children. They want a wall, although it is bad public policy, and they want the American taxpayers to pay for it, even though their president said Mexico was going to pay for it. They have the attention spans of children and they choose to forget inconvenient facts. Every election cycle, some billionaire shows up to promise them coal jobs and gets them fired up about some form of bigotry or other: gay people getting married; black people kneeling; or people not using the bathroom assigned to them by the invisible man in the sky.
The problem isn’t that the Democrats will stop being the adults in the room, the problem is that there aren’t enough adults. Because of red staters’ hostility to birth control, abortion, and sex education, their ignorance is only exceeded by their bug-like rate of procreation. It’s not enough that they want jobs digging coal out of the ground with no government oversight, they want their children to carry on this proud tradition and their hostility to education and science means that this is all their children will be prepared to do with their lives.
The o.p. has appeared to model his beliefs after the John Litghow character in Footloose and is just trying to save us all from a collective car wreck, while meanwhile cheering on the two parties in their glacially slow game of ‘Tractor Chicken’ in which the Democrats find their shoelace entagled in the footbrake and thus unable to leap to success. So, yes, Ocasio-Cortez, a junior Representitive representing the East Bronx and Queens (e.g. the least influential district in NYC save for Staten Island) of whom even the Democratic leadership is largely dismissive is an insidious threat, what with her dancing and enthusiasm and her fiscally unworkable social policies that approximately 0.0% of a chance of ever seeing the House floor for a vote. She could upset everything, so of course, let’s start an entirely new political party of radical centrists who profess the utmost love of country and national pride because when has that ever gone wrong?
Don’t you want to hear more about this ‘Sanity Party’, which will doubtless be the Chinese way of using the United States in a proxy propaganda war against Russia as vengence for long-standing resentment for its part in crushing the Boxer Rebellion? His newsletter is probably the most entertaining thing since InfoWars, especially if he can do a vblog for it that is just forty-odd minutes of alternating screaming rants and pitches for comically unworkable patent medical supplements made from weasel excrement.
You felt a need to lump AOC with the slightly violent Antifa?