Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive
Knives were out last week within the Democratic Party over the passage of a GOP bill to keep the government funded through Sept. 30. After four years of supporting the oldest and worst president (whoever he/she/they really was) the progressive wing of the party now looks to eat their elders. Main course: 77-year-old Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The day before the vote last Friday, Sen. Schumer said Democrats were “unified” against it. Then, a few hours later, he said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had cobbled together enough compliant Democrats to pass the legislation because if the government shut down, it would serve only to empower President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to do more damage to the federal workforce.
Progressive Nevadans will be unhappy to know that among those senators he convinced to vote for the Republican bill was the most compliant Nevada senior Sen. Catherine Cortez Mastos.
Progressives lashed out and threatened to primary Schumer with fellow New York congresscritter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called Schumer’s reversal a “betrayal” of the whole party, not just for progressives.
A crowd of Democrats in front of the Capitol chanted: “What the f*uck, Chuck, alas to no avail.
In a recent CNN poll of Democrats (taken before the budget capitulation to Republicans), 57% said their leaders should mainly work to stop the Republican agenda.
Social media condemnations reflected that poll. Here are three:
— (Schumer) is the head of the party and lacks perhaps the most spine amongst them. If it were AOC or Jasmine Crockett in the big chair, it would be less worrisome. But Schumer is a spineless worm that can’t be trusted to stand his ground for more than a few hours, if that.
— It is time for a coalition from Bernie Sanders to Elise Slotkin to Cory Booker to Chris Murphy to take over. Depose the weak, the feeble and the dumb. This is a moment for lions. The only thing that the American people see are Democratic sheep-grazing on Trump’s lawn. Congrats again, Senator Schumer.
— Dems are spineless corporate shills. We need to replace both sides at the midterms with Bernie/AOC progressives.
Hard to know whether this rebellion of young communists goes anywhere within the Democratic Party, but when I think about the idea that the party’s new leaders being AOC and Jasmine Crockett, I can’t help but think somewhere in bars across the state, from Sparks to Hawthorne to Mesquite bands of Republicans are popping a tariffed bottle of French Champagne and shouting:
Viva la barbeque!
C’MON, MAN!
This is how the Democratic Party dies: Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, lecturing Republicans for being “obsessed with culture war issues” and scolding them for being “weird and bizarre.”
Dude!
You were “Tim” before you became “Sarah.” You’re standing up before the nation dressed like a lady saying others are “weird and bizarre” for noticing?
C’mon, man!
This kind of self-righteous finger-wagging provides yet another sign that the end is coming for Democrats as a national party. As Bill Maher predicted last week, we may have seen the last Democrat president.
Almost two months into the Trump Revolution, Democrats still have no line of opposition that resonates with the average voter. What do they stand for — government waste, foreign aid that promotes trans life in Central America, continued deaths in Ukraine, a Social Security accounting system so antiquated it still has 150-year-olds in the system?
Is the symbol of today’s Democratic Party Al Green, a 77-year-old shaking his cane at the State of the Union address? Or is it Maxine Waters and a gaggle of elected officials with television cameras performing outrage at the door of the Department of Education? Maybe it’s the young protesters keying Tesla cars or paid protesters pretending to be constituents disrupting Republican town halls.
This is, may I suggest, the death rattle of the Democratic Party.
ONE MORE THING
(You can read more from Sherman Frederick at shermanfrederick.substack.com.)
