Bud and Lou must go
Congressional leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are two people in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s as though Abbott and Costello launched their act in the late ‘60s, just after the Tet offensive. Anodyne and well-meaning enough, they don’t exactly meet the moment.
This is a moment that needs to be met.
“Anodyne and well meaning” are words that could be used to describe Democratic leadership in a lot of places for a long time. Frankly, our followership is pretty good; it’s the leadership that’s been feckless.
It’s a Democratic leadership that rolled over and played (?) dead every time Donald Trump wanted more money for (war crime) boat strikes and the (war crime) war in Iran, or every time we’ve stuck a shiv in Ukraine, in spite of our obligations under the Budapest Memorandum to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Have you ever heard Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries mention the words, “Budapest Memorandum?” I haven’t. I know it’s hard to get things done when you are in the minority, but these guys are rhetorical zeros. Did they ever make a memorable speech – or even a soundbite? How about even a sign of life?
Who among you has been moved to do anything: write a letter to your congress member or a letter to the editor, attend a rally, or make a contribution as the result of the stirring words of Schumer or Jeffries? I include the locust swarm of text messages these charmers have loosed upon us by their favorite consultants. Drop a comment if you have.
We’re standing by.
Oh, their supporters say, look at the candidates they recruited. Yes, like Angie Craig or Haley Stevens. Or the ones they failed to support, like Angie Nixon in Florida, who damn near won without a dime from Schumer and the DSCC (Democratic Senate Campaign Committee).
Schumer and Jeffries supporters cannot prove that they caused the blue wave. They confuse correlation with causation. Personally, I believe that Trump was the cause of the blue wave; Schumer and Jeffries were just lucky bystanders.
I really hope none of you gave money to the DSCC. I got text after text from them begging for money. I didn’t mark them as spam, so I could always reply: Get rid of Schumer and we’ll talk.
Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan (I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of that), along with other members of the Senate’s freshman class, don’t want Schumer as their leader. The clueless Schumer himself calls the election a “generational remake of the Senate.” It’s not your generation, Chuck. Chuck didn’t notice.
I ask you to imagine this scenario: you have been seriously injured in an auto crash, an industrial accident, or an environmental catastrophe, and your case has come to trial. Your lawyer, your champion, rises to deliver a summation of the case; you have pinned your hopes on this person. It’s Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries.
The next two years are your case.
We can depend on Schumer and Jeffries to take a fulsome piss on the sparks of a nascent progressive movement. All the people who swung to the Democrats will swing back to the Republicans.
Just watch.
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A postscript: I don’t have any illusions that we will avoid this catastrophe; I know just how Cassandra felt.
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