If you missed it, big ole’ JB Pritzker was the keynote speaker at a pricey fundraiser the local Proglodytes threw themselves. I’m sure they raised some dough and, with Act Blue headed to federal and state courts over its disregard for campaign finance law, they may need it. The big Guy (Pritzker, not Biden) made national news when he told the assemblage to get in Republicans’ faces. Don’t let them rest.
Not sure you noticed, but Trump has outpaced the entire Liberal Industrial Establishment. They need a rest, but Trump isn’t about to give it to them. As for tactics, as I noted here, “telling Democrats to be assholes is like telling fish to swim.” Waking up is reason enough. But not everyone in the demolitioncrats manifold thinks this is a great idea. The New York Times, the progressive paper of record, has called for less in-your-face and more building.
Near the beginning of the piece, the editors tried to be nice, but they went ahead and ripped off the band-aid: “The patriotic response to today’s threat is to oppose Mr. Trump. But soberly and strategically, not reflexively or performatively.”
Uh oh. “Not reflexively or performatively” meant, stop calling him Hitler.
From that awkward low point, it only got worse for progressives. The editors counseled Democrats to work with fair-minded conservatives. Even more shocking to liberal sensibilities, the editors sternly advised that the building of such a coalition of resistance “should start with acknowledging that Mr. Trump is the legitimate president and many of his actions are legal.”
Whew. It went on: some of those actions, the editors lectured fellow liberals, “may even prove effective.”
The Times’ Editors have not lost their minds. They still oppose the presidency and want everyone to fight for “the Democracy,” but in what can only be framed as a sober moment, they realized that the Tesla-burning, mostly peaceful protest badgering is more likely to drive people back to Trump, even if things go sideways.
Trump has a long list of accomplishments in the first 100 days, including getting Democrats to defend waste, fraud, abuse, immigrant gangs, vandalism, did I mention waste, fraud, and abuse?
It is quite the contrast to Pritzker, who echoes the Party Machine’s internal rhetoric. Crass combative rhetoric versus moderated debate and an admission that Mr’ Trump has the authority to do a lot of things he’s trying to do, and they are not all bad.
The building of this coalition should start with an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump is the legitimate president and many of his actions are legal. Some may even prove effective. He won the presidency fairly last year, by a narrow margin in the popular vote and a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. On several key issues, his views were closer to public opinion than those of Democrats. Since taking office, he has largely closed the southern border, and many of his immigration policies are both legal and popular. He has reoriented federal programs to focus less on race, which many voters support. He has pressured Western Europe to stop billing American taxpayers for its defense. Among these policies are many that we strongly oppose — such as pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, cozying up to Vladimir Putin of Russia and undermining Ukraine — but that a president has the authority to enact. Elections have consequences.
New Hampshire Democrats are now forced to decide which path to take—vexing assholes or thoughtful critics.
I’ve only lived in the Granite State for 35 years and only been politically attentive for a few years short of twenty. Being an expert on the local crop of Marxists may not be a claim to which I’m entitled. I can tell you this. They want to rob one man of his property to bribe another. Their ideology cannot exist absent systemic theft. It undergirds their false morality and feeds their sense of self-worth. Taking that from them pisses them off. Disassembling any system unfairly favoring their presumed constituencies or protecting their paths to power is inexcusable.
Trump is undermining all of that. He is making it illegal to discriminate under the false flag of Diversity and Inclusion. He is neutering crippling climate regulations that make energy a luxury and keep people poor—attacking the practice of transgender conversion therapy. He has even broken the sacred wall protecting elites from arrest for breaking the nation’s laws (arresting a judge, but mayors who violate immigration law are rumored to be next).
No two-tier justice system? No taxpayer to NGO to Dem campaign laundromat?
They have plenty to be mad about. Their political paradigm and the fruit they fed on, which it bore, are being uprooted. So, maybe the Times isn’t so much saying play nice as trying to temper the outrage before it ruins their chances in the Midterms?
They’re going to need more than one editorial for that.
And maybe, probably, don’t drive your Teslas to work.
