Democrats, Wherefore Art Thou?

Three weeks ago, in this very newsletter, I posed a question: Would the Democrats waste the opportunity at hand? The opportunity I had in mind was the cavalcade of extremists and inexperienced wackadoodles (to use a technical term) whom Trump was picking for critically important jobs in his second presidency.

He had decided to put in charge of the US military a TV blowhard utterly unqualified to head the largest organization on the planet, and who also happened to have been accused of sexual assault and assorted misconduct that could make him a perfect target for blackmail. To lead the nation’s public health sector, he tapped a conspiracy crackpot who has declared no vaccine is safe or effective and who has called for an eight-year pause on the development of new drugs, which presumably would include medications to combat cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and other ailments. (What happens when the next pandemic comes along?) His choice to be the top law enforcement official in the nation was a fellow investigated (but not indicted) for sex trafficking involving a minor. Then there was his proposed chief of the entire intelligence community—another Fox pundit, who has echoed Russian talking points and disinformation.

This is nuts.

And let’s not forget the billionaires he’s been handing out jobs to and assigning the task of slashing government and gutting regulations that prevent corporations from screwing workers and consumers, polluting the environment, and engaging in financial chicanery. He’s also gone full nepo, dispensing diplomatic posts to relatives and friends of the Trump family (including at least one grifter who pretended to be a billionaire and a crony who was indicted—but not convicted—of illegally lobbying for the United Arab Emirates).

It’s all...political ammunition.

Yet the Democrats are mostly mum. Perhaps they’re nursing their wounds and wondering why so many voters no longer like them. Yet just about half of the electorate voted for Kamala Harris and the Ds because they did not want to see this Trump Horror Show. They deserve some representation these days. Alas, few Democrats are making noise about Trump’s intention to turn the US government over to extremists and know-nothings likely to wreak tremendous harm. They are not decrying the ludicrous and dangerous appointments. They are not warning about the assault on government that’s being initiated by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two alt-right billionaires who have each pushed absurd conspiracy theories, via their misnamed Department of Government Efficiency. (It is not a department; it is an advisory council.)

One issue is obvious: Who are the leaders of the Democratic Party right now?

Joe Biden has acted as a lame lame-duck president. He traveled to Africa and announced that the United States would provide more than $1 billion in additional humanitarian assistance to address food insecurity and other urgent needs of refugees in 31 African countries. He had an overly polite meeting with Trump at the White House. He gave a speech on economic policy. He pardoned his son Hunter. On Thursday, he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people convicted of nonviolent crimes. But he has withdrawn from the political hurly-burly. I’m not sure he’s up to the task of effectively decrying Trump’s actions and plans, and, no doubt, this man of tradition and decorum might find that distasteful. He’s probably not the best choice to mount a Democratic counterattack at this time. And perhaps the same can be said for Kamala Harris. Though she received nearly half the vote, could she lead the opposition now without coming across as a sore loser?

Who does that leave? Democrats eying a 2028 run, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has done wonderful work in recent years jousting on Fox News? The top Democrats in Congress: Sen. Chuck Schumer or Rep. Hakeem Jeffries? Other prominent congressional Democrats? There’s no obvious leader to grab the reins at this perilous moment. Still, the Democrats need to show that a fight is at hand—for decency, economic fairness, and American democracy—that they haven’t vanished simply because the election is over, and that they can rise to the occasion. They ought not yield the field to Trump.

Trump’s appointments and statements demonstrate he is poised to take radical and authoritarian actions once he’s in office—see Project 2025, which he no longer distances himself from. Yet I see little in the way of urgency coming from the Democrats. It’s as if they believe they can hunker down for a while and perhaps return to the pitch after Trump assumes office. But that allows Trump weeks to establish the narrative before he initiates his war on government, his war on migrants, his war on the “woke” military, and his other assorted battles. That doesn’t seem wise.

Meanwhile, there are some Democrats and progressives who have been talking about how they can work with Trump and his minions on particular issues. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on MSNBC, “Twenty years ago [Trump] wrote a book where he said he’s for the Canadian health care system. I think he understood back then how broken the system is, and if he really cares about working people and middle-class folks, will he fight for what he said was the best system?"

Waitaminute—is there a chance in hell that Trump will support a Canadian-style national health care system? If not, why bring it up? Khanna also said that he’s looking to collaborate with Musk and Ramaswamy, as long as they chase after wasteful spending in the Pentagon.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proclaimed that he is ready to partner with Trump on certain matters: “If Trump, for example, follows through on his proposal to limit interest rates on credit cards to 10 percent, which is what he campaigned on, absolutely I will be there.” He also gave Musk a boost with a tweet: “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.” A Sanders spokesperson said that the senator had “not made any decisions on how he will vote on President Trump’s nominees. He believes firmly that—no matter who is in the White House—all cabinet nominees deserve fair public hearings from Congress and transparent private meetings with Senators.” And a couple of House Democrats have offered to join the House subcommittee being set up by Republicans—to be chaired by MAGA kook Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—that will work with Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE.

I can understand why some Dems and Sanders are hoping to take advantage of this or that Trump statement and the DOGE effort and try to exploit them for progressive ends. But this has a distinct downside: These efforts can help make Trump look reasonable. Hey, he once had a good position on health care, and he criticized high credit card interest rates. Such characterizations create the impression that this deceitful fascist who tried to destroy American democracy is not all bad.

Regrettably, we live in a world in which impressions are often more important than substance. The last election proved that. So statements that make it seem as if Trump cares about the public good—he once wanted a better health care system!—could bolster him in the public eye, just as he revs up to mass-deport millions and degrade democracy. There's no reason to contextualize him in this fashion. I doubt that pressuring him to propose a single-payer system will lead him to unveil such a proposal. Should he or Muskaswamy actually suggest Pentagon cuts or productive health care reform, Democrats can feel free to support such measures. But praising Trump’s ideas from 20 years ago or his better promises of 2024 seems more beneficial for Trump than for the rest of us.

Some Democrats might argue that now is not the time to go full “resistance” on Trump. It could strike voters as too political or seem unfair to be so confrontational before confirmation hearings on the nominees. In political fights, timing is crucial. But we often see that the unacceptable over time becomes acceptable. (Making that happen is one of Trump’s superpowers.) In fact, if you don't call out the crazy early, the crush of time normalizes almost everything. Granting Trump’s bonkers nominees a free pass for weeks will probably make it tougher to rally opposition.

This is especially true when a successful challenge depends on a few GOP senators turning on Trump. Assailing Trump for his choices is not what’s most necessary. He won; that ship has sailed (or crashed). The best current path for Democrats is to attempt to make Republican support of these appointments the issue. Is a GOP senator who claims to be an ardent champion of the US military going to put an inexperienced extremist in charge of the military? Or allow a Putin-friendly novice to run the entire intelligence community? Or Make Polio Great Again? This is the context that must be established sooner than later.

There are plenty of critiques out there asserting that the Democrats are “rudderless,” on the verge of permanent minority status. Indeed, long-term problems exist that the party needs to address. In the meantime, there is a powerful and pressing story to be told: Trump is empowering cranks and oligarchs and endangering American families and American ideals. (He now even concedes he can’t do much about the price of groceries, showing much of the electoral case for Trump was a lie.) Fiercely telling that story is how the Dems can prove they are not moribund and demonstrate to their tens of millions of supporters—as well as non-affiliated voters—that they are fighting for the nation’s wellbeing and its future. If they cannot convince people of that, they will be cooked.  

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

This week, Donald Trump announced he would name Harmeet Dhillon to the important post of assistant attorney general for civil rights. The person in this job has the responsibility of protecting voting rights for Americans. Yet Dhillon, a lawyer, frequent Fox News guest (of course), and former GOP official (who ran unsuccessfully to be Republican Party chair), supported Trump’s efforts in 2020 to overturn the election results. She’s been a crusader against DEI initiatives and a promoter of conspiracy theories. Over the years, she’s been involved in many right-wing causes. At one point she partnered with a MAGA extremist who would become a top Stop the Steal organizer. This fellow would also advocate for the “execution” of Trump’s foes and be arrested at the January 6 riot carrying a hatchet.

That man’s name is Alan Hostetter. In January 2021, I uncovered a video of him the previous month declaring at a pro-Trump rally that Trump’s political opponents should face “execution.” A few weeks after that event, Hostetter, a police chief turned yoga instructor and a QAnon fan, was a key figure at the insurrectionist January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Through a nonprofit organization he ran, the American Phoenix Project, he helped organize a pre-march rally on January 5 in front of the Supreme Court, where many of the sedition-pushing stars of the Stop the Steal movement spoke. The next day, Hostetter, who was associated with the right-wing Three Percenters militia, was in the crowd that stormed the Capitol. He was subsequently arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison for his participation in the attack.

Months earlier, in May 2020, Hostetter’s American Phoenix Project joined the Center for American Liberty, a conservative legal outfit Dhillon launched, and the Dhillon Law Group to file a lawsuit against California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials that challenged Covid lockdown restrictions. At that time, Hostetter was mounting protests against these public health measures. He was even arrested at a rally in San Clemente against stay-at-home orders and accused of inciting a riot, destruction of city property, trespassing, and resisting arrest. Hostetter’s group paid Dhillon’s Center for American Liberty $50,000 to bankroll this lawsuit; there was a question at the time about where he got the money.

The Hostetter-financed lawsuit did not fare well. A federal judge essentially tossed Dhillon out of court, saying the case raised “no serious questions.”

How did Dhillon, a member of the GOP establishment, get involved with a far-right radical and future insurrectionist who would call for murdering political opponents? When I first wrote about this in 2021, a Dhillon spokesperson emailed me this statement: “The American Phoenix Project made a single donation to support one of the many civil rights lawsuits filed by Center-supported attorneys last year. The Dhillon Law Group has no connection to or representation of either Mr. Hostetter or the American Phoenix Project.” Still, the relationship between Hostetter and Dhillon is another sign of the overlap that exists between the Republican Party and violent extremists.

We’re going to say farewell to 2024 with another Our Land Zoom get-together on Wednesday, December 18, at 8 p.m. ET. You know the drill. These sessions are only open to premium subscribers. On the day of the gathering, these readers will be emailed a Zoom link. Click on it at the appointed hour, and our highly trained Our Land bouncers will grant you entrance. As we head into 2025, I think we all may need a dash of camaraderie, and I hope to hold these events more regularly. If you’re not a premium subscriber and would like to join this community and participate, please sign up here. And let me once again thank our premium crowd for parting with a few dollars each month to support this newsletter. In return, they get a bunch of extra features in each issue, the opportunity to join me and their fellow Our Landers for these conversations, and, I hope, the satisfaction of knowing that because of them we can keep the lights on.

The DCotW judges tend not to pay much attention to ad copy—which is often riddled with falsehoods and ridiculous rhetoric. But they came across this ad for the new Trump cologne and perfume for “Patriots Who Never Back Down” and could not resist citing it.

The website describes the perfume for women “as more than a fragrance—it’s a symbol of determination.” Yes, from the man who once boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy” and who was found legally liable for sexual assault. And is the cologne the scent that the thousands of brownshirts who assaulted the US Capitol should’ve been wearing? From gold sneakers to $100,000 watches to NFT trading cards to autographed (trademark-infringing) guitars to crypto, the Trump grift never ends. It's only $199 a bottle.

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson sparked a wave of dumb reactions, mean memes, and extremely bad-taste jokes. One that stood out came from Matt Gaetz. Remember him? He was the (unindicted) target of a sex-trafficking investigation whom Trump believed should be attorney general. In response to this murder, Gaetz tweeted: “My female friends keep asking one question about the United CEO assassin: IS HE SINGLE?”

No surprise, Gaetz next month will join the far-right One America News Network (OAN) as an anchor. The OAN press office noted, “Matt Gaetz has earned a reputation as a relentless champion of conservative values.” That is, if conservative values include alleged sex with underage girls.

An absurd comment came from a spokesperson for Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur and conspiracy theory-monger whom Trump has selected to run the FBI. As I reported earlier, Patel has been supportive of the batcrap-crazy QAnon movement. And when CNN days ago ran a similar story, Patel’s unidentified mouthpiece said, “This is a pathetic attempt at guilt by association.” No, it’s not guilt by association when Patel has gone on podcasts and praised QAnoners. Which is what he’s done.

As for first place, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made it easy for the judges this week. He gave a simplistic, wrongheaded, and potentially dangerous explanation for why Hamas attacked Israel:

So why do they hate them so much? Well, they hate them because they hate God. If you hate God, you hate anyone he puts his hand and blessing on. Like it or not, God has put his hand and his blessing on the Jewish people. So if you’re Satan, not that you are. If one is Satan, his goal is to destroy that which God loves. So that’s why we’re seeing it. And to try to explain any other way will never make sense. The only explanation is the biblical explanation and that is this is a demonic uprising against God and his people.

This is the man whom Trump has selected to be US ambassador to Israel. Certainly, Hamas committed an evil act with its attack on civilians last year. But if Huckabee believes the cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a “demonic” hatred of God on the part of one side, he sure isn’t a fellow who will help broker a productive resolution of that conflict.

There was much positive feedback concerning the issue that explained how Kash Patel served as a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin by cooking up the false narrative that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax.

Lynn Caporale wrote:

Thank you for this important column, at an important time, to remind everyone. One question. You wrote, "Steele had written his memos as a consultant to an opposition research firm paid by a law firm working for the Clinton campaign.” Am I wrong to (vaguely) remember that this actually was started by someone during the Republican primaries and then offered to (and accepted by) the Clinton campaign, but not started by them?

This is a misconception a lot of people have. The Trump opposition research project run by Fusion GPS, a private research firm, was originally funded by a Republican client who opposed Trump. But when it became obvious in spring 2016 that Trump would be the GOP nominee, this Republican stopped financing the company's oppo work on Trump. Fusion GPS then found another client to pay for this operation: a Democratic law firm working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was after this point that Fusion GPS retained Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer, to research Trump's links to Russia. 

Mark Putney was not as encouraging about my Patel-and-Russia rundown:

That's all a bit too sophisticated for the average or willfully ignorant voter to digest. Tough to put all that on a bumper sticker except as "Russian Hoax!"

I agree. The Democrats screwed up by not driving the point home initially that Trump covered up Putin's attack on the 2016 election by denying it was happening. At first, the Ds leaned too much into the collusion allegation. Then they invested too much in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which was never going to be a full account of Trump wrongdoing. His report was supposed to be no more than an explanation of whether he had unearthed crimes for which there was sufficient evidence to launch prosecutions. Trump's betrayal—both denying and encouraging Russia's covert assault on American democracy—did not easily fall into the category of a prosecutable crime. Mueller, however, did note that Trump likely engaged in multiple instances of obstruction of justice. But by then, Trump and his allies (including Attorney General Bill Barr) had managed to so muck up the story that Trump’s betrayal never fully resonated with the public.

Larry Roth emailed:

If you really want to get a handle on just how bizarre a character Kash Patel is, take a look at his children’s book, The Plot Against the King. He stars in it as “the Diligent Discoverer” who unravels the Russia conspiracy in defense of Trump. If you thought his Government Gangsters book was crazy, this takes it to the next level—along with brightly colored pictures. I'd rather see Dr. Seuss nominated to head the FBI.

Dr. Seuss’s books were closer to reality than Patel’s.

Margaret Reis sent us this missive:

I enjoy reading your letters. My take on the Democratic Party is that it is broken and unfixable. They have become so concerned about fundraising that nothing else matters to them except appeasing their donors who just happen to be the same donors who give to the GOP. The only thing to save our country from the takeover is the uprising of the people which may happen when the right figures out that they have been lied to over and over again.

Margaret, while it’s true that corporate and fat-cat funding of the Democratic Party has inhibited its development as a fully progressive party, I don’t believe the Ds and the Rs have entirely the same donors. At times, there has been overlap. But case in point: Elon Musk, who pumped $250 million—maybe more—into Trump’s campaign. There was nothing equivalent on the Democratic side. I’m not looking for the Democratic Party to save our country. But as I explain above, the battle would be easier if it fights.

“Moxie, don’t you think Pearl looks a lot like you?”
“But I don’t know what I look like.”
“You’ve seen photographs of yourself and your reflection in that big hallway mirror.”
“I really don’t comprehend representational images.”
“Yeah, I don’t understand that.”
“Neither do I.”