It's Scorched Earth Time

Day after day, Democrats file into the chamber to vote yes on Republican bills. They stand at their microphones, preening about their statesmanship and dedication to bipartisan cooperation. They smile and nod, convinced they're winning Republican goodwill, building bridges, and storing political capital for some mythical future moment when it will all pay off. This is the slow suicide of American democracy.

These people would feed a crocodile, hoping it would eat them last. While their opponents openly plan the end of American democracy, Democrats respond by drafting strongly worded committee reports. While the right promises retribution against its political enemies, the left carefully tallies its bipartisan credentials. While their opponents mock democratic norms as a weakness to be exploited, Democratic leaders write earnest op-eds about the importance of those very norms.

The Democratic leadership has convinced itself that each yes vote on a Republican nomination somehow banks political capital for the future. What future? When your opponent announces their intention to end democracy as we know it, what exactly are you saving your political capital for? It's like carefully maintaining your credit score while someone plans to empty your bank account.

You hear their rationalizations in the halls of Congress, delivered with the rehearsed gravity of someone who thinks they're in a West Wing episode. "We have to show we can govern," they say as if they're not handing tools to people who have announced their intention to dismantle governance. "We have to prove bipartisanship can work," they insist as if they're not the only ones still playing that game.

This is worse than naiveté. This is political malpractice on a scale that beggars belief. Every Democratic yes vote on a Republican bill isn't just a failure to resist – it's active collaboration with forces working to destroy democratic governance. Each bipartisan vote reinforces the fiction that this is politics as usual. Each compromise adds another brick to the wall of normalcy that obscures the clear and present danger to democracy.

The Democrats' strategy amounts to negotiating with a tornado about which part of their house it would like to destroy first. "Look," they say, "we voted for their infrastructure bill. Surely they'll remember that when they're deciding whether to certify the next election." They're polishing the brass on the Titanic after it's already hit the iceberg, proudly maintaining their standards as the water rises around them.

The time for playing nice is over. The time for strategic cooperation has passed. The time for proving our commitment to bipartisanship is dead. When your opponent declares total war, you don't respond by helping them pass their transportation bill.

What would real resistance look like? Start with the obvious: Vote no. Vote no on everything. Vote no on good bills. Vote no on bad bills. Vote no on bills you helped write. Vote no on bills you support. When someone announces their intention to burn down your house, you don't help them organize their matches because you like how they've arranged them.

No more attendance at performative hearings. No more lending legitimacy to sham investigations. No more careful amendments to bills designed to destroy democracy. No more pretending that this is just another round of normal political competition. No more self-congratulatory speeches about reaching across the aisle to people who want to saw the aisle in half.

This isn't about policy disagreements or competing visions of government's role. This is about survival. The Democrats need to stop acting like they're in a friendly game of chess when they're actually in a cage match. They need to stop pretending their opponents are playing by the same rules when those opponents have openly declared their intention to flip the table.

Tomorrow, Democratic legislators will file in to vote yes on another Republican bill, still deluding themselves that their collaboration serves some higher purpose. They'll explain why this vote is different, why this bill deserves support, and why, this time, their cooperation will surely be remembered and rewarded. They'll store up political capital for a future that will never come.

The choice facing Democrats couldn't be clearer: fight or die. Resist or surrender. Stop helping your executioners sharpen their axes or accept the consequences. There's no middle ground left, no room for half-measures, no space for strategic cooperation.

This is the moment. This is the test. This is where Democrats either find their spine or lose their democracy. The stakes aren't just high – they're existential. And right now, the Democratic Party is failing. They're still playing by rules their opponents abandoned years ago, still fighting the last war, and still pretending this is normal politics with slightly higher stakes.

It's not. This is a battle for the survival of American democracy itself. And you don't win that battle by helping your opponents load their weapons.

In 2025, democracy will drown, one bipartisan vote at a time.