I wanted to flag Josh Marshall’s spot-on analysis of the East Palestine train derailment political fight (you can get the gist of it from the title). He captures the absurdity of the Republican attacks on supposed Biden administration incompetence, but more importantly, the clear space that’s been created for Democratic action on the actual issue of rail safety:
Republicans are simultaneously calling out corporations for not caring about ordinary Americans while carrying their anti-regulatory water on Capitol Hill. Democrats should run a freight train right through that contradiction. Only good things can come of it.
Democrats should pound on the fact at every opportunity that the Trump White House not only rolled back those regulations but Trump literally bragged about doing so on Twitter.
Marshall suggests that Democrats should immediately put forward legislation that enhances railroad safety regulations, as a clear example of doing the right substantive and political thing in one fell swoop. Indeed, as much as the Biden White House seems to have been caught flat-footed with the way the right-wing outrage machine has seized on the accident to air fantasies of a Democratic administration indifferent to the suffering of the derailment’s working class white victims, you can make the case that the GOP has extended itself way beyond any realm of credibility. As Marshall reminds us, we’re talking about a derailment plausibly attributable to GOP regulatory inaction that occurred in a GOP-governed state. It is, furthermore, an accident to which federal authorities did respond promptly, despite the obfuscations of local officials and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s decision not to ask for additional assistance when asked by the White House.
This is not to say that the Biden administration doesn’t deserve criticism for not strengthening rail safety over the last two years — but Marshall’s correct in that the best solution now is. . . providing solutions. As he suggests, there may or may not be enough Republican support for getting such a bill out of the house, but it would at least set the record straight on which politicians believe in rail safety and which ones prefer corporate profits over public health. Seeing as the majority of GOP politicians are ideologically opposed to federal regulation, this should be a clarifying exercise for the public’s understanding as to which party actually cares about getting something done (for a less jaundiced view on the possibility of support within the GOP for regulatory actions, check out this Greg Sargent piece). Indeed, it’s been an incredible spectacle to see elements of the GOP pretend it’s a party that believes in bringing powerful industries to heel and protecting the little guy — a sort of populist palaver indulged by Trump, copied even less authentically by his acolytes and allies, and not likely to survive first contact with either actual legislation or public scrutiny.
As on so many other political fronts for the Democrats, the best defense is a good offense. There’s no need to keep playing the GOP blame game — and as Marshall also makes clear, this is a case where, for Democrats, “the policy and the politics line up exactly.” This is no time for Democrats to be on the defensive; time to change the game in ways that aim to serve the public interest and reward the Democrats for doing so.