The ever-incisive Joan Walsh has just laid out an essential part of the reality facing Democrats right now, and the appropriate way to respond. In filling his roster of cabinet picks with a gang of millionaire-billionaire insiders, Donald Trump has presented the Democrats with an embarrassment of riches to choose among as the Senate begins to debate the nominees. As she notes, "Not only will it be the richest [cabinet], ever; it features plutocrats who've presided over the hollowing out of the working class Trump pretended to care about." Beyond picking one or two nominees to oppose, she suggests highlighting the basic starkness of Trump's collective choice, and notes that "right now, Democrats are missing an opportunity to brand the president-elect as a man who's betraying his base, right out of the gate."
It is in fact not just disappointing, but deeply unsettling, that the Democrats are not yet doing a better job of connecting the dots and offering a broad critique of Trump's direction so far, particularly when he's giving them such a gift-wrapped package of Cabinet choices. This was not a normal election, Trump is not a normal president, and this is not a time of normal politics. Frankly, I don't know how we get back to the old normal, as crapulent as it was. But the first rule in fighting the dark forces of Trump and right-wing Republicanism is understanding that going big is part of the solution. Fighting hard against one or two Trump nominees might or might not manage to block those appointments; but the more important effort is to make all possible efforts to show that the overall direction Trump and the Republicans want to take the country is opposed by a solid majority of our population, and to provide an alternate vision that would benefit this majority.
Whether it's a Labor Secretary pick who opposes workers' rights and minimum wage increases, or the repeal and non-replacement of Obamacare, or the unfolding project to kill Medicare and gut Social Security, Republicans are working to implement highly unpopular ideas that also happen to fly in the face to the promises Trump made to disaffected white working class voters who pushed him over the top of the electoral college. More than this: they're working to implement legislations that wouldn't just hurt millions of middle- and working-class Americans, but fundamentally change what sort of country we are - from one where we use democracy to advance our common interests and help all move forward, to one where government is used as a cudgel to strip the vast majority of the country of hard-won gains in order to empower the uppermost classes of our country. In this context, an across-the-board opposition makes more sense politically for the opposition party. It's not normal politics for one party to attempt to decimate the basic framework of social support for the American people; and the opposition can't act like it is, particularly when the media is doing such a bad job of framing the conflict.
I keep thinking back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and its slow, terrible build-up that reeked of manipulation and lies. President Bush chose a catastrophic course of action that Democrats should have opposed unanimously; instead, too many went along, giving it a bipartisan sheen that makes it difficult for Democrats to fully criticize to this very day. I feel we're now at an analogous crossroads. There is no great mystery about what Trump is doing: he's going full-core right-wing and pro-1%, with a bit of populist window dressing like the Carrier deal thrown in to make people think he cares about the working class.
Once again, we find that the application of the term "conservative" to the modern Republican party is a misnomer. Conservative would be protecting the generations-old programs of Social Security and Medicare. Conservative would be making sure people have at least the basics of life covered, like health insurance. Conservative would be protecting our planet for future generations. What we're seeing instead is free market zealotry, a pitiless agenda of siphoning wealth to the upper reaches, and frankly a heartlessness that leaves me chilled to the bone; a more proper word for these people is "radical." They are indeed going to the root of things, looking to extirpate from our society basic notions of public good, collective endeavor, economic security. It's not too complicated to see where this comes from: they're protecting the interests of the richest among us, and an ownership class that sees the vast majority of Americans not as equal citizens embarked on a common enterprise, but as raw labor and consumers to be exploited, conned, and ripped off.
Trump seemed to offer the possibility of an off-kilter check on these traits - after all, he made no mention of Medicare or Social Security cuts during the elections, and his emphasis of unfair free trade deals suggests he may still surprise us with pro-worker moves - but at this point, given the company he keeps and the inclinations of the Republican Congress, this theoretical moderation is not nearly sufficient. Besides, he's all on board with the other key part of the Republican agenda: increasingly targeting the fictional crime of voting while Democrat.
What is in fact needed is for the Democrats to get off their duffs and start fighting back like their political lives depended on it, because they do. What Trump and the Republicans have in store represents an obliteration of the best things the Democratic Party has stood for since the age of Roosevelt, an unraveling of the remaining Great Society and New Deal advances. A party that doesn't recognize an existential threat to its reason for existence doesn't deserve to be a party.
This is not normal politics. These are not normal times. Whether or not people are willing to recognize it, we are in a state of profound crisis.