We’re Not Asking For Much, Angus

The degradation of American politics and the Supreme Court’s strategic undoing of basic constitutional norms means we’re left to request the barebones basics from elected representatives. 

This isn’t 2008, when Democrats had every chance to shore up the health of American representative democracy from an increasingly radical right wing. It’s not even 2020, when voters did what members of Congress refused to do and unseated an aspiring tyrant. Political discourse today includes very little cajoling of congressional Democrats to support cool shit like public healthcare options or universal pre-K or protecting basic labor rights or finding ways to extract wealth from those who have slightly fatter bank accounts than God. 

Our requests are humble in scope: We only want the Trump regime’s opponents to stand up and defend the fundamentals of constitutional governance, and to not budge an inch until we get at least some concessions from those who have outright ignored court rulings against their flagrantly illegal actions. Keep the republic alive so maybe – just maybe – we can fix whatever remains after this SCOTUS-approved assault on constitutional limits on the president's power. That's all we ask. Nothing could be more basic.

But even these modest appeals are rejected by Democrats in the U.S. Senate, the most antidemocratic institution in the western world that has no place in a free society. We woke up Monday morning to watch Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, say on live cable TV the following words: "Standing up to Donald Trump didn't work."

King said this after joining nine other Senate Dems in bowing before our very sleepy god-king and vowing to re-open the government after the longest shutdown in American history.

I logged on Monday morning knowing Chuck Schumer had carefully arranged a total cave-job over the weekend and was prepared to reward the president and his cronies by re-opening the federal government after a 40-day shutdown. It wasn’t the president’s glee in withholding food from working-poor folks across the country that got these Democrats to concede. It was – in my estimation – the prospect of flight delays across the US ahead of the holiday season. Senators, all of them coddled millionaires, all of them soft as tissue paper and utterly detached from the reality of competitive authoritarianism, refused to be inconvenienced. They fly here and there and everywhere, and the sniveling MTV guy who runs the FAA announcing major delays due to the government shutdown was too much for Senate Democrats to bear. 

It was like the most boring Saw sequel ever made, a three-minute motion picture in which Jigsaw threatens a group of pampered Democratic senators with Thanksgiving flight delays and they all fall to their knees in unison and beg their tormenter for mercy. King, whose net worth is north of $20 million – putting him in the bottom half of the wealthiest Senate members – said please no, anything but flight delays, anything but having to read a book for a while in an airport, anything but a small inconvenience for me and my loved ones.

A weaker man they do not make.

King's declaration that standing up to the tyrant does not work comes less than a week after voters in several states said in one voice that all this shit is deeply unacceptable and must be fixed. What we saw in these off-year elections was a wipeout for the regime and a primal scream from those desperate for Someone To Do Something About All This. King's live TV kneeling before the god-king and his monstrous enablers comes one fucking goddamn month after 7.5 million Americans protested with the most American rallying cry, a cry that's hardly political at all: No kings.

Honk If You Feel Alone Against The Leviathan

You aren’t alone in this shit. That’s easy to forget.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

King and (most) Senate Democrats seem blissfully unaware that there exists real and potent opposition to the regime. They appear to be unaware that the president has reached never-before-seen levels of unpopularity. People are on your side, Angus. People with holes in their bellies because the president made the decision to starve them for political purposes were OK with the government shutdown as long as regime opponents got something out of it. And Angus King couldn't tolerate the idea of maybe having a flight delayed around Turkey Day.

It should come as no surprise that two-thirds of Democrats are sick and fucking tired of their party not fighting back against a tyrannical regime that came to power because eggs were expensive in 2022. This fury with the Democratic status quo in a time of extraordinary, unprecedented constitutional emergency has manifested in many ways, including in challenges to those in the party who refuse to acknowledge that we can never return to pre-Trump political norms. People want to fight. Angus King got on TV Monday morning and said no thanks, I'm good.

In a political environment ruled by vibes, Angus King's vibes could not be more rancid. You can smell the stench of his rotting vibes from a thousand miles away. They fill your nostrils, the stink of a man wholly unfit for this moment.

King's comments are jet fuel for doomerism, the worst sort of confirmation that both parties are the exact same, that there is no difference between good and bad things (there is). My Bluesky mentions on Monday were flooded with folks saying King's comment was more than they could bear, that they could never vote for a Democrat again (that King is not a Democrat is another issue, I suppose).

The upside, I guess, is that King's comments made it abundantly clear that no one is coming to save you or me. King did not mince words in his interview with Joe Scarborough: I am not here to help you or save you or rescue out country from this crisis, I'm here to be part of this exclusive little club we call the United States Senate, where we're all so old we can hardly remember our names and we twiddle our thumbs while you burn. Look elsewhere if it's help you want, King said.

Democrats should have kept the government close indefinitely, if that's what it took to inflict political pain on the regime and put Republicans on defense. It wasn't just the coming hikes in Obamacare premiums that should have kept the government shut down. As long as the president’s secret police were terrorizing opposition strongholds, dragging teachers and daycare workers and community leaders into unmarked vehicles and throwing them into the bloody jaws of the illegal deportation machine that does not recognize the humanity of those the regime hates, the government should have remained shut down. 

As long as Pete Hegseth continues killing random people in boats for social media content, the government should have remained shut down. As long as the regime dictated what can and cannot be taught in college classrooms, the government should have remained shut down.

Stop using our tax money to fund the regime's terror. It's hardly a big ask. It's actually the smallest possible ask.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.