We Need To Elect Better Democrats

In a few hours, Trump is going to get a pass from the senate for committing the most impeachable offenses that a president can commit. And we’re all rightfully enraged at republicans, but they didn’t do this alone.

I know that no one wants to hear what I’m about to say, but it’s important and you need to hear it so that this doesn’t happen again.

For the past 50 years, republicans have been on a mission to expand presidential powers. By definition, this means they take power away from congress. And you know what? Congress has been fine with that. Regardless of who has control of congress, they’ve ceded power for decades. I’m going to go through the big ones over the past 40 years.

Iran Contra. For those who aren’t familiar with that situation, I’m going to give you the broad strokes, but here’s a detailed chronicle of what happened. In brief, the Reagan administration illegally sold arms to Iran in order to fund the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. They did this, even though congress passed The Boland Amendment specifically prohibiting this type of interference in foreign conflicts. This was a president defying a law passed by congress, and there was never any serious talk of impeaching Reagan for it. Not ever. In fact, of the handful of people who were convicted of crimes for their involvement were subsequently pardoned by George HW Bush with the help of Bill Barr (yes, that Bill Barr).

Next came the George HW Bush presidency. He and he alone authorized an invasion of Panama in 1989, completely absent congress’ approval to go to war. He also deployed troops to Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War to push Saddam and his forces out of Kuwait. Congress didn’t do a fucking thing to push back and assert their powers of advice and consent even though democrats controlled the house for both the Reagan and Bush presidencies and had the senate for most of those years.

And then we go to George W Bush, for whom congress just straight up gave up their powers by passing the Authorization for Use of Military Force bill. That basically gave Bush the power to do whatever the fuck he wanted abroad without troubling congress with it, as long as we were still scared of terrorism (no, really). And then they gave him The Patriot Act, which enabled him to do whatever the fuck he wanted domestically, including unprecedented surveillance of American citizens. All American citizens, not just suspected terrorists. No warrants or judges were ever asked for, or reviewed or weighed in on that process.

Democrats had control of congress for Bush’s final year, but Nancy Pelosi didn’t want to “look back” at any of Bush’s crimes so all of those unprecedented expansions of presidential power went unchallenged, which meant that they were now precedent and basically codified into law. She failed us in a spectacular way, and set the stage for everything that’s happened under Trump. I will get to that later.

Obama came in and thoroughly made use of the powers Bush handed him. He continued the mass surveillance of Americans, but liberals were suddenly not outraged by this anymore. We had a republican congress through most of his presidency, so they pushed back on shit that would resemble invading Panama but he really took executive orders to a whole new level. He also assassinated a US citizen with a drone strike. That should have been really fucking disturbing to liberals, but it wasn’t because this shit is okay as long as the president doing it belongs to your tribe. Republicans didn’t push back because they just like this sort of crap and the victim was named Anwar al-Awlaki and that sounds super brown so who gives a shit? Plus, Obama hid behind that pesky Authorization for Use of Military Force bill.

Are you starting to see the pattern here? Each president takes all of the power that the previous president has garnered for them plus a little more. In the case of republicans, it’s a lot more, but it’s always more. And congress never, ever does anything to take those powers back.

Does anyone really think we would be here if one or two of the last 3 criminal presidents had been impeached?

And now we have Trump, a mind boggling unintelligent malignant narcissist and career criminal in the white house. He has all of the power that Reagan, Bush, Bush and Obama handed him, and he’s taken even more with the help of Bill Barr who has been a cornerstone of building a unitary executive. Lev Parnas was right, Trump didn’t really have power until he got Bill Barr on his side. He had the power, but he was surrounded by clowns and amateurs who didn’t know how to use it. Bill Barr came in to finish the job he started, not necessarily to cover for Trump and he knows that his legacy will outlive both he and Trump.

When Pelosi failed to address all of the obstruction that Mueller handed her, she paved the way for more obstruction by allowing a precedent for obstruction to be set. That’s a new power on top of all of the other power that she allowed Trump to take from Bush. Do you realize that congress still hasn’t seen all of the underlying evidence behind Mueller’s report? Did you know that? Why? Because Nancy hasn’t taken to the courts to fight Barr for it, thereby increasing presidential powers more. And Barr knew that the no consequences Trump suffered from the first round of obstruction was going to be a winning strategy for him again. Thanks Nancy!

I know that a lot of democrats are on the Pelosi train, but she has played a significant part in getting us to where we are now. I can’t think of anyone who has benefitted from the soft bigotry of low expectations more than Nancy Pelosi. I really can’t. She needs to be stopped, and we can stop her by electing better democrats. It’s time to stop blaming the other party for mess we’re in, and start taking a good hard look at our party. This team mentality that the country has had for the past 40 years has created an endless loop where shitty things happen, and everyone blames the other party.

Guess what? It’s easier to clean your own house, than it is to clean someone else’s. Republicans will never do anything to stop funneling power away from congress, and into one single person’s hands. Yes, they will curtail democratic presidents, but not by making systemic changes. They will challenge democratic presidents in a very narrow way that stops the immediate problem at hand without diminishing executive power. Personally, I want a system where hundreds of people are involved in making the big decisions. Hundreds of people who (in a perfect world) are accountable to their constituents every 2 or 6 years. But the electorate has to wake the fuck up.

We need to elect better democrats. We need principled democrats who aren’t working for the same corporations that republicans are working for. We need democrats who believe that the American people should have more power than we do in our elections. We need “unlikeable” democrats like Ilhan Omar, and Rashida “we’re going to impeach the motherfucker” Tlaib. We need democrats who are a thorn in the establishment democrats’ side like Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez. We need more of the kinds of democrats that Nancy Pelosi has pushed back more forcefully than she’s ever pushed back on any republican. Fortunately, we have primaries happening right now. I’m not talking about the presidential election. I’m talking about democratic primaries in your state for house, senate, and state level positions.

For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to focus on telling you about some excellent democratic candidates who are challenging shitty incumbent democrats like Joe Manchin and Henry Cuellar, who vote with republicans more often than they vote with democrats. In Cuellar’s case, he’s voting squarely against his constituents’ wishes but he has a “d” behind his name so he’s been flying under the radar in a very blue district.

It’s time to end this vicious cycle, and the only way to do that is to elect better democrats.