5th Update: Those Who Kneel to The Men Who Sold The World
Standing Up to a Boorish Boer, a Neo-Nazi Vassal and a Geriatric Loon
2nd Update 3rd 4th 5th Update:
Who knew that this would be an issue I would ever have to call out Democrats on? Three times today. Discrimination by any other name on any group…
Case in point?
House Democrats set to hear from governors, pollsters and more at issues conference
The House Democrats' annual retreat is threatened by a looming government shutdown deadline.
House Democrats are set to hear from pollsters, governors and a former ambassador to the United Nations at their issues conference later this week, according to a schedule obtained by POLITICO.
They need pollsters to see where they’re at vis-a-vis the public at large? Hoooookay!!
And…
LGBTQ groups call on Democrats to ‘do more’ to protect their rights
““Some have suggested a strategy of appeasement: that compromising with a little bit of discrimination against a particularly misunderstood and powerless segment of our community could satisfy anti-equality opponents,” they added. “We have fought these same opponents for decades, in state houses, in Congress, and at the ballot box, and we can say unequivocally that this strategy will not work.””
Continue reading at The Hill
From 'hell no' to hmm
On Sunday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) posted on X that the House Republican spending patch was a "Hell no" in his eyes. But on Monday, he would not rule out voting for it if it were the only way to avoid a government shutdown at midnight Friday.
"I hope the House realizes this is not a good product," Kaine said in a brief interview Monday. But if it's the only option on the table come later this week? "Ask me after they vote," he said.
Virginia is home to about 145,000 federal jobs, according to the Congressional Research Service, and Kaine has argued strenuously against prior shutdown threats.
Continue reading at Politico
Party discipline much, Mr. Kaine?
Here’s my fourth update. This time, a different Democrat complains about…
Centrist House Dems say Mike Johnson is ghosting them
Why it matters: This isn't a new problem, some Democratic moderates say. "There's been no outreach all year," Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) told Axios.
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) said it is "very telling" that GOP leadership is trying to get members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus to back the spending measure rather than Democrats.
Say what?
Incredibly, today, when House GOP votes were sufficient, this happened:
Lone Democrat to back House GOP spending bill explains decision
Golden’s “yes” vote, to be sure, was not decisive, since Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — with help from President Trump — rallied enough Republicans to pass the measure with or without the lone Democrat.
But the support from Golden — who represents a district Trump won in 2024 — dealt a minor blow to House Democratic leadership, which formally urged its members to vote against the measure and was hoping to showcase united opposition to the continuing resolution.
“We’re working to make sure that every Democrat votes no and is here and present on the floor,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Calif.) said ahead of the vote on Tuesday.
In a statement following the vote, Golden — a moderate Democrat from Maine who has a history of breaking from the party — argued that while the GOP’s legislation was not ideal, a shutdown would be more harmful.
“This CR is not perfect, but a shutdown would be worse,” Golden said, using an abbreviation for continuing resolution (CR). “Even a brief shutdown would introduce even more chaos and uncertainty at a time when our country can ill-afford it.”
Continue reading at The Hill
More news about Democrats in today’s news (March 11th)
The voice of the Democratic opposition:
Slotkin says Trump has Democrats ‘on their heels’ since election
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) argued that since the election, President Trump has had Democrats “on their heels.”
“Look, I mean, people know me, I’m pretty straightforward. I don’t think it’s a secret that Democrats have been on their heels since Trump won the election, right?” Slotkin said. “I don’t think that’s … something hidden.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Sen. Slotkin says Democrats and Republicans ‘need to do better and act like adults’
This, in essence, captures where national Democrats are at this moment, along with at least one governor, mine, who are veering right as a response to Trump’s win of the presidency and both houses of Congress. Forget about what Musk is doing. Forget about how much Trump won by. Forget about what voters wanted. Forget about everything.
Is the destruction of everything what voters wanted, whether they actually voted or not?
Is the whitening of government what Black voters wanted, even if they voted for Trump? And, mind you, that whitening is in your face. No shame on display here, not with the swift disappearance from DOGE of Vivek Ramaswamy back in December, or now with the removal of such petty things as the pictures of Black soldiers from the Pentagon literally on the eve of Bloody Sunday. And… forget the disappearance of ALL women from the top echelons of the military.
and… there’s this picture.
Yes, it has the word “gay” in it. Gay used to mean happy before its use was extended to describing people who are not heterosexual. It has been a surname. Still is. It still means happy. But racist people aren’t the smartest and their AI algorithms are even dumber because, in the end, machine learning is not a replacement for human intelligence, and human-written software can’t be any more intelligent than those who created it. Not to mention their capacity for cogent thought is in serious question. It may in the future, but for that you still need a well-educated populace, steeped in a well-rounded font of knowledge; something Trump, Musk and their retinue of cretins have zero appreciation for, as evidenced by their relentlessness in completely doing away with the Department of education.
“More than 70 percent of Senate Democrats hold degrees from private colleges, compared to 37 percent of Senate Republicans, a more significant split than in the previous Congress.”
“In the prior 118th Congress — currently finishing its term — 62 percent of Senate Democrats and 42 percent of Senate Republicans attended private colleges. In the House, those shares were slightly lower: Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans.
Such institutions represent only 25 percent of American colleges overall.”
With the lone exception of Markwayne Mullin who attended Missouri Valley College in 1996, but did not graduate, absolutely everyone in the current Congress went to college. Many of them went to one of the Ivies. This applies to both sides of the aisle.
The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, holds a juris doctor degree from Louisiana State University.
There isn’t a Republican in either house who doesn’t appreciate, on a personal level, the value of a higher education degree.
While I have no doubt that some Republican members of Congress, both in the House and Senate, are current members of the Ku Klux Klan, I have serious doubts that most of them have always had the intent to destroy the education system completely as one of their primary goals. I could be wrong. That said, to a Republican, the common goal has always been to minimize the federal role when it comes to the funding and setting standards in education. By eliminating the federal Department of Education, that goal would be exceeded, as funding and supervision would go away, heightening the risk of decline at the local and state level as programs end. I don’t need to explain what happens when we stop feeding millions of children who depend on school meals for at least half of their food intake. Short answer; it’s not good.
Just these aspects of what Trump is doing should have prompted Democrats to rise in unison and publicly denounce the destruction of government in an organized way, daily, in front of cameras and in front of their workplace, as well as in front of the White House. We’ve seen a few such gatherings. A few.
The list of things that are being cut or will go away is pretty long. The current budget proposal, a stopgap bill, includes items that will reduce healthcare funding or access to it by means of not keeping the current (inadequate) level of funding for Medicare and Medicaid doctors, for example. This means fewer doctors are likely to remain providers and take lower fees, if funding is going to decrease. This is cutting by attrition.
For a new senator like Andy Kim (D-NJ) to even hint at the possibility of voting for this budget package, with this or that tweak put back in, turns into a joke the whole notion of having an opposition party.
What more need Republicans get on board with for Democrats to become the opposition?
Slotkin and Kim aren’t the only wafflers. My senator, Adam Schiff, had this to say:
“Look, I played in sports. Our kids played in sports. I want all young people to have the experience of playing in sports, every young person,”
“And I want those sports to be fair,” he continued. “I want those sports to be safe, and I have confidence that local schools and local communities can make those decisions without the federal government making them for them.”
What? Whatever happened to this part of our Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Rights that apply to all Americans, bar none, are not to be set at the local level. Those are federal rights, covered by the constitution and impervious to the abomination that is States’ Rights. Schiff, a lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law (with a BA from Stanford University) knows this better than most.
Then, there is Ami Bera:
Ami Bera defends Al Green censure vote: ‘We need radical civility’
“The Hill Sunday,” anchor Chris Stirewalt asked Bera what he would say to Democrats who argue that the president “won’t play by the rules,” so “Democrats shouldn’t have to either.”
“I’d say we need radical civility,” Bera responded. “We need to stand up for the American people.”
“I’m all about let’s [protect] Medicaid,” he continued, “but what Al did became a distraction. Our caucus can’t be a distraction.”
Green was escorted from the chamber just minutes into the president’s address on Tuesday, after standing up and shouting at the president, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid.”
That ANY Democrat feels free to talk this way is intolerable. That only a handful of Democrats are opposing in any kind of meaningful way in the situation we find ourselves in is intolerable. These two are not the only ones. There is also Ro Khanna, whom I wrote about recently and who has since walked back some of his pro-Musk commentary but still displays the kind of sickening fungibility of moral principles that no Democrat (definitely not a supposed progressive) should display, ever.
But this is on full display. It has been on full display. It will continue to be on full display until such time as all of our Democratic congresscritters hear from us sufficiently to fear our wrath more than the wrath of their corporate donors.
It is our collective duty, not only out of self-preservation, but out of sheer fury, to call, email, tweet, skeet all of our members of Congress and put them on notice that, should they continue to avoid opposing Musk and Trump, they will be voted out, either by primary or by the same attrition (absence of votes) that lost them so many seats in 2024.
If angry Republicans can do this, so can we all.
You can look up your congresscritter using these tools:
Sandy Hook Promise’ lookup page
Please, contact them in both the house and senate.
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*Methodology
Data in this story were compiled from the Congress Bioguide, which serves as the legislature’s official directory, and Ballotpedia, and fact checked against politicians’ campaign websites.