And Chuck Schumer doesn’t have much of either
Dear Senator Schumer:
As the leader of the party in opposition to a lawless regime energetically inflicting authoritarianism on a democratic population, you’re responsible for the way your people vote before binding the rest of our democracy with their decision. The eight “moderates” could not have reached a final vote this way, locked away in a closed session on a Sunday evening, without your approval. That you allowed this betrayal of democracy to happen, or were helpless to prevent it, demonstrates your unfitness for leadership as most of us resist hard-charging American fascism.
You could have insisted on more debate before the final vote, and got more weigh in from citizens affected by the shutdown (many of whom were determined to fight Trump’s terror tactics). These eight electorally invulnerable “defectors” were clearly part of a larger group, they voted “yes” so others could take the principled stand you took in voting “no.” This is politics at its worst and a betrayal of democratic ideals. As opposition leader you should have put the urgent political context of this moment starkly before your party and postponed a vote until you had unity in line with the vast majority of Americans. Instead, you participated in an organized betrayal.
You could have stopped the Sunday night session before eight members of your caucus had the last word, defied the will of the electorate and the national majority on the existential matter of cutting essential services for tens of millions to enable a tax break for billionaires and funding a vast unaccountable armed force to enable a police state. As party leader in the Senate, you had a duty to prevent this destructive, demoralizing vote. Instead, you expressed moral outrage after the dirty deal was done and told America you’d voted no.
When Cheney, Bush, McConnell and company passed that December 2006 law revamping the Postal Service, on a voice vote and by unanimous consent, crippling the US Postal Service in perpetuity, they voted in the dead of a Sunday night the week before Christmas. The lame duck Bush signed it into law the following Wednesday. The law, with one unconscionable provision, the requirement that USPS pre-fund employee benefits for USPS employees not yet born, succeeded in hobbling the USPS well into the future. [1]
Recall that the GOP insistence on imposing this unheard of pre-funding of retiree benefits 75 years into the future on our Post Office was the whole reason the lame duck Republicans forced this law through. The success of this slick, secretive maneuver with its highly unpopular, hugely lucrative outcome (to USPS’s private sector competitors) is what right-wing think tanks, PR firms and judicial fraternities and American fascists dream of, plan, and inflict on all of us, completely circumventing the consent of the governed. Call it what you like, it’s the opposite of democracy.
You allowed eight selected “moderates” (coincidentally none in immediate electoral jeopardy), to vote to capitulate to Project 2025 without getting a single concession, unannounced, and apparently not postponable because of some unnamed pressure, and the “pain” of millions, in the wake of a hope restoring Blue tsunami, an election victory you could not even wholeheartedly embrace.
You allowed this vote on a Sunday night, when switchboards were closed, when the voice of the people was reduced to an impotent series of passionate phone messages. You betrayed democracy as well as every Democratic voter and every American who gets health insurance on the ACA marketplace.
Your floor speech after this feckless surrender, following the principled Bernie Sanders, repeating that you voted “no” and condemning the administration’s cruel and punitive policies around health care and nutrition, was a nice performance. Hollow, but nicely done. Farce, performed as serious drama. Bravo, your performance even took me in for a minute.
But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Chuck. You know you were responsible for this treacherous vote taking place on a Sunday evening, and for the way it turned out. That you voted “no” and gave that fiery speech afterwards? Bravo, again, well done, old boy.
Leadership calls for resoluteness in the face of adversity, and standing up to bullies. These are two qualities you lack, at a time when actual Nazis are prominent members of the Trump/Heritage Foundation Administration.
Your recent timid offer to reopen Russel Vought’s government — just one year of funding the ACA subsidies (not even a peep about the 42,000,000 facing sudden food insecurity, Medicaid cuts closing rural hospitals or Trump’s unlimited, incontestable right to recission and impoundment, to use the public fisc as his whim dictates) was craven enough to offer to a president and Congress who had already told you they wouldn’t negotiate with you. Thune immediately told you to bugger off when you made this pusillanimous offer. This was all days after Democrats won a blue tidal wave election coast to coast, even in places like Mississippi. Momentum was finally on our side, after the largest political protest in US history. The bullies were on the ropes, and rightfully so.
Then you acquiesced to this sickening kowtow. Way to undermine faith in the re-energized Democratic party! That vote makes the party you lead no better than the party that brought us the secretive, midnight, “bipartisan” atrocity of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act in 2006. I’m sure airline lobbyists and other philanthropic donors made sure all the proper senators got paid in full for their votes. The consent of the governed is an externality to the billionaire CEOs who buy our elected, corporately owned representatives, people like you.
You are not equipped to fight the desperate real-life peril your constituents face, the concerted, well-funded threat our democracy faces every day. You negotiate against yourself before falling into a supine surrender pose, then strike a falsely defiant tone after making sure your shameful work is done by surrogates.
You don’t know from history that it is futile to try to placate actual Nazis? Why not try to keep the peace by simply giving them Czechoslovakia? Why would Trump, Johnson, Thune or any of the other MAGA leaders lie or renege on their pinky swear to hold a later Senate vote on ACA subsidies that Democrats don’t have the votes to win? After all, the second Trump administration calls itself the most transparent and truthful administration in history (comparable only to the German version 1933-45). Who could doubt them?
It’s time for you to step down and let somebody with courage and integrity take your place as leader, if this long, noble experiment in democracy you care so deeply about is to endure.
Eliot Widaen
[1] You will recall:
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was approved during the lame duck session of the 109th Congress, and approved via voice vote in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. Republicans insisted on a provision that the USPS pre-fund its retirement benefits to cover USPS workers not yet born, a legal requirement designed to disable the postal service. Wikipedia:
Impact on the Service
Between 2007 and 2016, the USPS lost $62.4 billion; the inspector general of the USPS estimated that $54.8 billion of that (87%) was due to pre-funding retiree benefits.[13] By the end of 2019, the USPS had $160.9 billion in debt, due to growth of the Internet, the Great Recession, and prepaying for employee benefits as stipulated in PAEA.[14] Mail volume decreased from 97 billion to 68 billion items from 2006 to 2012. The employee benefits cost the USPS about $5.5 billion per year;[15] USPS began defaulting on this payment in 2012.[13]
Only took them six years to financially hamstring USPS, the length of a senator’s term…
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