A general rule of life is that the more things change the more they stay the same. In a 1994 episode of The Simpsons we get a look inside the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Inside the Republican National Convention, banners with “we want what’s worse for everyone” and “we’re just plain evil” are suspended above the stage, and inside the Democratic National Conventions the banners reading “we hate life and ourselves” and “we can’t govern.”
I was reminded of this episode in the hours and days after the midterm results when it became immediately clear that the Democrats did not have any real interest in forming a proper opposition to Trump. In a pathetic attempt to portray themselves as the ‘grown-up’ party, Democrat politicians immediately started talking about how they are willing to “work with” the Republicans, with Hakeem Jeffries saying that the “American people don’t want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf because life is way too expensive.”
There you have it, the Democratic establishment is not interested in any accountability, or the dismantling of the structures and institutions that Trump has put in place. The only thing they seek to do with their control over the House and Senate is “affordability.”
The collective psyche of the Democratic establishment is one addled by schizophrenia; it’s absolutely crucial to vote for them no matter how incompetent, uncharismatic, or immoral they may be to stop the threat of fascism posed by Trump, but when they are in a position of power to challenge said fascist, all they are concerned with is reducing the price of diesel. The strongest demands the Democratic House Committee on the Judiciary has made of ICE so far is to take off their masks, turn on their body cameras, and answer for their inefficient spending.
This is the horizon of their imagination: ICE is not seen as an organisation that is only 23 years’ old that could be abolished, but instead as a perpetually existing institution, only susceptible to the slightest amount of change.
It’s easy to infantilise politicians that appear to be “on our side,” and to argue that their behaviour is the result of incompetence, of poor political strategy, and even poorer imagination. It’s also essential that we do not.
These failures to provide a proper opposition are not because they don’t know how to but because they simply do not want to. Their opposition to many of the worst crimes of the administration is purely strategic. How can you expect the party that committed the Gaza Genocide to hold Trump accountable over Iran? Not only are they largely in support of these crimes, but heeding calls for accountability would hurt them and theirs as well.
There is no moral basis to their criticism. For them, the Iran war is bad because it was badly handled and became expensive for Americans.
Fundamentally, their issue with Trump is that he is embarrassing and a bad manager of the American empire. On the global stage he makes them look like fools, and his demented incompetence threatens the brutal American hegemony that the likes of Hillary Clinton and Obama worked so hard to maintain.
Image is in the public domain.
