The constitution is completely gone at this point, as an unelected billionaire who just did a Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration a couple weeks ago has taken over the functions of the federal government. As Dave Levitan has reported extensively these past couple of weeks for Splinter, Elon Musk and his minions are overruling basic constitutional checks on executive power to destroy the foundations of American science and more. Musk also has gained control over immensely sensitive payment systems that sources inside the Treasury have described as an “apocalyptic” set of circumstances. He could crash the economy in an instant if he wanted to, and he might. The notion that we live in a democracy is utterly gone, as we are living through one of the biggest constitutional crises in the history of this country.
And how is the “opposition party” responding? By proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that its “leaders” are just as unfit to lead the United States government as Donald Trump. Chuck Schumer proved to everyone what unserious schlubs he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are when they gave their legislation about this apocalyptic Treasury situation an infantile name that made Chuck chuckle.
Schumer: “Today Leader Jeffries and I are joining together to push legislation to prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department’s payment systems and protect Americans across the country … we call our legislation, ‘stop the steal'”
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 4, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Democrats love doing this stupid shit, revealing to everyone how constitutionally incapable they are of meeting the gravity of this moment. It’s an ode to how hopelessly poisoned by cable news they all are. They repurpose Republican talking points in unfathomably lame ways like this to wink to the cameras like they’re Jim Halpert, but instead all this does is prove Democrats to be fundamentally unserious people who don’t speak in straightforward terms. This is a crisis and Chuck is out here making fucking jokes for the gerontocrats to laugh at because he represents the most out of touch people mankind has ever produced. All that this cutesy bullshit does is communicate to voters that it must not be that serious if they’re cracking jokes and laughing. Elon Musk in his deepest k-hole has more coherent politics than these kinds of Democrats.
I say “these kinds of Democrats” because there is a clear split in the party emerging, and it has nothing to do with ideology. The central tension in the Democratic Party is no longer left versus center, but between people who understand the fight that has been brought to their doorstep and the grave responsibility they signed up for, and the people who just want to tuck their tail between their legs and go back to their fancy D.C. cocktail parties.
Senator Ed Markey went to the steps of the Treasury Department to demonstrate how he was denied access, and then called on Democrats to vote no on all nominees until this constitutional crisis is resolved. There are people in the party, institutionalists even, who are meeting the moment. Sen. Chris Coons, the most boring, feckless centrist to ever centrist in the Democratic Party, is even getting off his ass and fighting back, writing on the regime propaganda platform that “Doug Collins is qualified to be the VA secretary. I hope he’ll lead the agency well, and I hope to work with him going forward. But I’m still a no on every Trump cabinet nominee until Trump walks back his disastrous executive orders.”
And yet, Bernie fucking Sanders (again I ask, what the fuck man?), Angus King, Richard Blumenthal, Catherine Cortez Mastro, Dick Durbin, John “someone please primary me” Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, Kristen Gillibrand, Maggie Hassan, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Mark Kelly, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Ray Luján, Jon Ossoff, Gary Peters, Jacky Rosen, Adam “world’s most cynical fundraiser” Schiff, Jeanne Shaheen, Elissa Slotkin, Raphael Warnock, Peter Welch and both of my home state Senators who I will definitely be reaching out to, Michael Bennett and John Hickenlooper, all voted to confirm Doug Collins, a man who once said “no” when asked if human activity is contributing to climate change. If you saw one of your Senators’ names in this paragraph, you can find their information to call them here and tell them to stop aiding Trump’s agenda.
These feckless Senate Democrats who cast these go along to get along votes for Trump’s nominees are doing it in part to try to win goodwill from Congressional Republicans for dealmaking later on, but Congressional Republicans just agreed to let Elon Musk wipe his ass with the Constitution. Anyone who thinks the GOP will give the minority party they are actively trying to purge from government anything in the future is more gullible than every single person who bought Trump’s NFTs. Stupid is too kind of a word for these votes. It is not inaccurate to say that these Democrats who voted for Collins quite literally endorse some degree of climate denialism.
Chris Coons is proving he gets it and is more useful than all 24 of these people! Chris Coons! This is the cutting edge of the Democratic Senate now!
The Democrats will never take serious power again so long as they remain a social club for gerontocrats and careerists who specialize in cowardice, as former Barack Obungler aides David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel just helpfully demonstrated again. They pitched a novel idea to Politico: let Trump trample the constitution while again admitting to the whole world that the party is run by cowardly barnacles so incompetent that they cannot win a presidential election unless the Republican Party hands it to them on a silver platter through a generational crisis.
Very serious Democratic strategists advise the party to allow Trump to illegally dismantle USAID — a decision that will result in the unnecessary deaths of people around the world.
www.politico.com/news/magazin…
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— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 4:38 PM
There is no constituency that well-off white Democratic consultants aren’t willing to feed into the woodchipper in service of their own Very Serious vision of the world that has been disproven several times over by now. Donald Trump has demonstrated a better grasp on reality than the braindead Democratic consultants who fail upwards and continue losing elections centered around a strategy of telling every voter that “we will not fight for what we say we believe in, and we won’t hesitate to throw you under the bus at a moment’s notice if we think it’s politically expedient.”
We would be less fucked if Democratic leadership wasn’t filled with gerontocratic losers who love losing like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin (the latter of whom per a former Dem Senate staffer, “purposely gaslights everyone” about his ability to slow things down). There are Democrats fighting back, and it’s not just the more youthful wing of the party filled with people like Jasmine Crockett who had to grow up under the failures of the gerontocracy. As detestable as it was for the Democrats to sideline their biggest star in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a 74-year-old undergoing treatment for throat cancer for one of the most publicly visible positions fighting back against Trump, Rep. Maxwell Frost said that Ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Gerry Connolly called to subpoena Elon Musk today, and the Republicans scurried in like rats to save the man who illegally nullified the power they have worked their entire lives to gain.
Republicans ran into the room to SHEILD Elon Musk from having to come and speak to Congress. They want their billionaire takeover done behind closed doors. The people deserve transparency. No one elected Elon Musk.
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— Maxwell Frost (@maxwellfrost.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 8:34 AM
The problem in the party is more highly concentrated in the Senate, which makes sense because the institution’s entire raison d’être is to be an obstacle to progress. We are now at a fork in the road for many deluded Democratic institutionalists, as all the “please primary me” Democrats who have voted for Trump’s nominees now must prove to their base that they are not the enemies to the cause their votes suggest them to be. This quote from the classic brave anonymous elected Democrat really drives home how little these cowards are willing to risk fighting for what they supposedly believe in: “what more do they want us to do? Handcuff ourselves to lampposts and get arrested?”
If that’s what it takes. Given that Tennessee made voting against Trump’s immigration policies illegal, Congressional Democrats may get handcuffed eventually anyway. This is a moment that needs people who will risk their own personal comfort to help others, and if you are not willing to do so, then functionally speaking, you are aiding the billionaire-led autocratic takeover of the United States.
Senate Democrats need to get their shit together and gunk up the gears of the Senate, like how Brian Schatz has called for an end to unanimous consent and to “do maximal delays until this is resolved.” Congressional Democrats have little power to actually stop Trump and his lemmings in the GOP, but as Mitch McConnell demonstrated during the Obungler years, there are plenty of ways for the minority to slow things way down. It just takes a determination to not treat this moment as business as usual, and many Democrats are showing their true colors right now.
Many of them are revealing them to be yellow, and Democrats like the seven de facto climate denialists who voted to confirm an oil executive as head of the energy department might as well put an R next to their name because they are proving themselves to be allies of Trump’s fascist project (Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Ben Ray Luján, Martin Heinrich, Ruben Gallego, and both my home state Senators who are doing a great job of convincing me to lead a local movement to primary them out of government forever, Michael Bennett and John Hickenlooper).
This is a moment that if there are generations to come, historians will portray as one that defines their present. Institutionalist Democrats love waxing poetic about this “history will remember” shit that doesn’t matter to anyone alive today, so to those who continue to act like we live in normal times as they grease the wheels for Trump’s authoritarianism, consider how future Doris Kearns Goodwins will write about you. Do you think they will portray you alongside the fighters in your party like Chris freaking Coons, or will your legacy be summarized as the avatar for how the Democratic Party succumbed to its own delusions and joined the Whigs in the dustbin of history?
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