Democrats are setting the table for fascism, convinced their courtesy will be remembered by the criminals sharpening their knives.
Week after week, since Trump's inauguration, Democrats have filed 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 and building bridges.
But they're storing up nuts for a winter that will never end. It's the slow suicide of the American opposition.
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 weaknesses to be exploited, Democratic leaders write earnest, self-congratulatory op-eds. Chuck Schumer and his crew would feed a crocodile, hoping it would eat them last.
The Democratic leadership has convinced itself that each yes vote on a Republican bill somehow earns goodwill points 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 empties your bank account.
Their rationalizations are 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 itself. "We have to prove bipartisanship can work," they insist as if they're not the only ones still playing that outdated game.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.
"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 a commitment to extinct bipartisanship is dead.
When someone announces their intention to burn down your house, you don't help them organize their matches out of polite adherence to good manners. When your opponent declares total war, you don't respond by holding the door open for their thugs.
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 actually support.
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 masturbatory speeches about reaching across the aisle to people who want to flood the aisle with scorpions.
The Democrats need to stop acting like they're in a friendly game of chess.
This is a cage match.
The idea that collaboration serves some higher purpose is a conceit. The choice facing Democrats couldn't be clearer: fight or die, resist or surrender.
There's no middle ground left, no room for half-measures, no space for strategic cooperation.
This is the moment, the test, where Democrats either find their spine or lose their democracy. And right now, the Democratic Party is failing. They're still playing by the rules their opponents abandoned years ago, fighting the last war and 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.
Democracy dies one "bipartisan" vote at a time.
Now, more than ever, the world needs an independent press that is unencumbered by commercial conflicts and undue influence.
By taking out an optional founding membership, you can help us build a free, accessible, independent news platform firewalled from corporate interests.
Support The Index
