The Democrats Need to Stop Appeasing and Start Opposing

The Extreme Right Had a Project to Break the Democrats’ Spirit With Violence and Hate. It Succeeded. Can it Be Undone?

I’m going to write a pompous sentence — forgive me. The gravest threat to American democracy at this juncture might well be the inability of the opposition to oppose. I was gratified to read recently that 80% of Democrats support impeachment. There’s just one problem. The Democratic Party…doesn’t. Won’t. Can’t seem to bring itself to.

Why not? What the?

There’s a word for the strategy the Democrats are employing to deal with the extremists that have hijacked the American state. It’s not a pretty word — it’s an ugly one. It brings to mind all the mistakes of history. That word is appeasement.

Because the Democrats are appeasing the bad guys, America’s authoritarians, kleptocrats, fascists, and theocrats are having a field day. They are laughing, getting rich, doing the worst things they can think of — and then some (hello, putting newborn kids in cages?) Yet the job of an opposition party is to (wait for it) oppose — not appease. What’s the difference? Everything.

Let’s begin with smaller things — and then end with impeachment. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the bad guys are winning at every level of American politics right now. Southern states are passing abortion bans that would make the Taliban proud — literally putting women in jail for having miscarriages. The Supreme Court latest addition was a crying, whining, raging bro, better worthy of a frat party. The flunkies and cronies are making mega-deals to empty the coffers of the people. And so forth.

And yet the Democrats appear to have no organized plan, no agenda as a party, no real structure, no willingness, even whatsoever to fight any of this. They simply roll over, time and again.

Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody in the Democratic Party fails to oppose — but it does mean that that’s the party policy, attitude, stance, which is set from the top. Sure, there are plenty of passionate and fierce people in the party — but they are stymied, time and again, by its failed leadership. That leadership’s strategy can be summed up…