In response to strategies to deal with Donald Trump and his nefarious agenda, Blue Dog/New Dem type Democratic members of the Senate are capitulating in advance:
While congressional Democrats were certainly slow to come to grips with Donald Trump’s election and therefore appeared hesitant to back the calls for resistance that flooded the streets in major American cities in the immediate aftermath, they’ve since embraced their role as the loyal opposition. But even as most Senate Democrats gear up for confirmation battles with a whole host of questionable Trump Cabinet picks, some of their Democratic colleagues are already willing to kowtow to the president-elect’s most fundamental decisions.
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Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown argued for a strategy of Democratic obstruction to a Trump agenda by pointing to Republicans’ past intransigence. “We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified? It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs,” he said. Brown pointed out that Republicans have “been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice,” referring to the nearly yearlong delay of hearings on President Obama’s nominee to succeed deceased Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.
Still, nearly all the five Democratic senators facing re-election in 2018 in states that strongly supported Trump — by 19 percentage points or more — apparently disagree with their more progressive colleagues and have rushed to signal their willingness to cooperate with the new regime.
“That’s just bullsh%$,” West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, [Whose daughter was (until it became public0 given a phoney degree and also runs Mylan which gouges people on EpiPens] whose state supported Trump by 42 percent, said of his fellow Democrats’ strategy of opposition. “I’m going to help [Trump] when I can. But I’m going to be holding him accountable when I need to,” he added.
“When I need to,” means “I will never hold him accountable.”
North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was quick to suggest that she is ready to work with Republicans on legislation to invest in “clean coal” technologies, as she praised a decision to boot oil pipeline protesters from Standing Rock. Heitkamp was one of the first Democrats to meet with the president-elect and his transition team at Trump Tower last week. Trump won North Dakota by more than 36 points and there’s speculation he is considering Heitkamp for secretary of agriculture or energy.
Supporting police brutality against Indian protestors forever. Gotta love it.
Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, who is also up for re-election in 2018 and who represents a state that went for Trump by 19.3 percentage points, has already said he is ready to work with the incoming Trump administration on military mental health care issues, curbing the exodus of U.S. jobs to foreign countries and combating the opioid epidemic.
“We can’t just say ‘no’ because the idea comes from the other side of the aisle,” argued Montana Sen. Jon Tester last week. Tesler has long signaled a willingness to work with Trump. He chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that failed to orchestrate his party’s wresting control of the upper chamber from the GOP.
In May, Tesler said about Trump that “he’s got some pretty goofy opinions, but hopefully we’ve got some stuff we can work on,” Tesler is now up for re-election in a state that preferred Trump by 20 points.
I have identified the differences between conservative Democrats and liberal (moderate) Republicans:
A liberal (moderate) Republican will:
- Talk about the need to work across the aisle.
- Plead for moderation.
- Chastise his party for extremism.
- Sometimes vote against his party.
- When the vote is close, and it is important, he will vote with the Republicans.
- Talk about the need to work across the aisle.
- Plead for moderation.
- Chastise his party for extremism.
- Sometimes vote against his party.
- When the vote is close, and it is important, he will vote with the Republicans.
So-called experts are puzzled as to why voters, “Vote against their own interests,” for Republicans.
It’s simple: With people like this in our party leadership, they know that we’ll never deliver on promises to make their lives better.
Hell, Hillary Clinton’s whole f%$#ing campaign was a promise not to make ordinary folks’ lives better, and we saw how well THAT worked out.