I started off this week talking about Joe Biden’s weekend pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, and what a truly bad idea this was. I won’t recap all my arguments here, but I want to follow up on one particular aspect that, more than any other, truly bugs me about our outgoing president’s action. Many of those defending Biden from the predictably bad faith GOP attacks point to how Biden did the right thing by showing that Democrats are no longer afraid to break norms and can fight fire with fire. As someone who’s literally been begging the Democrats for years to take the gloves off and act not just to defeat but destroy the MAGA movement, I’m something of an ideal audience for these arguments. A huge part of the problem, though, is that Biden has chosen to break norms in a situation where not only are his motives rightly suspect (in granting mercy to a family member who was legitimately convicted, even granting the corrupt origins of his persecution), but apparently in a one-and-done fashion. As I said before, what about breaking some norms to protect the rest of us? For good or ill, the pardon highlights the degree to which Biden and the Democrats are otherwise not fighting with all the tools at their disposal.
It appears I’m not alone in this critique, as Brian Beutler is out with a piece picking up on this same constellation of concerns: among other things, he raises the question of why Biden and the rest of his party aren’t using the power they still have to shine a harsh light on the corruption of Trump and the rest of the GOP. Beutler is well enough acquainted with the details of the prosecution of Hunter Biden to do a deep read of the president’s statement that accompanied the pardon. He picks out the points where Biden clearly understands the GOP malfeasance that was involved in the pursuit of Hunter Biden, but where the president holds back from providing adequate detail to clarify for the ordinary reader the depth of GOP corruption. As part of the larger picture, Beutler notes how for years the Democrats refrained from the obvious step of investigating subversion of the Justice Department during the first Trump administration, writing:
This “weaponization of government” could on its own have formed the basis of a concerted congressional inquiry, starting in the second half of Trump’s first presidency, continuing into Biden’s. On the basis of all this wrongdoing, Garland could’ve terminated the Hunter Biden investigation, or fired Weiss, or reassigned the case, or launched new investigations of criminal activity in the first Trump administration.
In a truly perverse twist, Democrats’ earlier lack of initiative has now led to Biden feeling that he has no choice but to pardon Hunter, with all the dubious ethics and predictable GOP and political media backlash that has brought.
Beutler is also spot-on in pointing out how the pardon was a missed opportunity by President Biden to talk about Trump administration plans to subvert the rule of law:
He did not mention Trump’s dictatorial campaign themes. He did not mention the warnings from Trump’s former allies that he intends to subvert the rule of law much more than he did in his first term. He did not mention Trump’s implicit promise to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, or his explicit promise to give that job to Kash Patel, or that Patel literally keeps an enemies list.
This enumeration of missed opportunities really drives home the hollowness of Democratic celebrations of the pardon as an outbreak of Democratic toughness. As has happened far too often, it was a half-measure at best, with Biden choosing not to escalate it into an illuminating and full-throated attack not only on past GOP subversion of the rule of law, but the further subversion that is sure to come - an escalation that would have potentially put the GOP on the defensive rather than providing an obvious line of attack for Republicans to pursue about Biden’s own alleged corruption.
Without a doubt, this is not a time for political caution. Donald Trump has nominated a worst-case gallery of frauds, incompetents, and conspiracy-mongers to the highest positions in government, whose potentially dire effects on everything from public health to national security should be easily grasped. The incoming president is already engaging in open corruption, with no plans to recuse himself from his businesses and shady schemes like his crypto venture acting as obvious conduits for what we used to call bribes. He apparently intends to impose tariffs that will spike inflation, and enact mass deportations that both undercut the economy and promise massive human rights abuses that will surely do harm to both immigrants and citizens alike. He stands ready to sell out Ukraine and our NATO allies to Vladimir Putin for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting the United States. And he seems set on turning the Justice Department and the Pentagon into agencies of vengeance against both elected officials and ordinary American citizens.
A president who clearly intends to break his oath of office the instant he takes it deserves no honeymoon, no second chances, no benefit of the doubt.
It may be too much to ask that an 81-year-old retiring president break the cautious habits of a lifetime and act with the forthrightness that the moment calls for. But it’s certainly not asking too much for sitting Democratic senators and congressmen to act with the aggression and righteousness that are some of the most powerful weapons for a party currently cast out of national power. As Josh Marshall notes, “One of the benefits of being out of power is clarity. Democrats are outsiders to all the decision-making right now [. . . ] Democrats have total freedom of action to oppose on their own terms.” Trump is making no attempt to hide his authoritarian and retrograde intentions, making his current efforts to set up a new administration a veritable shooting gallery for a political opposition willing to take off the gloves and fight for the country. And as Beutler reminds us, the Democrats still have the power of the presidency and the Senate to do all manner of exposure and investigative work.
Unfortunately, it is becoming ever clearer that our crisis of democracy is not just a matter of a MAGA-fied Republican Party. Democratic elected officials who decline to rise to the moment and engage in baseline behavior like doing what they can to highlight the GOP’s corruption, contempt for basic American freedoms, and disregard for working people are abdicating their duties. If this crop of senators and representatives can’t bring themselves to fight for us — and it is increasingly looking like this is the case — then it’s going to be up to the public to exert what pressure they can now to change their torpid attitudes, while recruiting candidates who give a damn to oust these cowering incumbents come 2026 and beyond.