Toon: Beyond Waving Their Little Paddles

I've seen a lot of editorial cartoons, opinion columns, and social media posts complaining that the Democratic Party isn't doing enough to resist the onslaught of ruinous actions from the unelected bureaucrats at DOGE, facilitated by the Brazenly Corrupt Trump Maladministration™, the Freakdom Caucus in Congress, and the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court, and the Quislings in legacy media.

Well, there's a reason for that.

Given the way the U.S. governing system here are significant tactical advantages Republicans have over Democrats. When Republicans were in the minority in Congress, they had the power to gum up Democratic legislation by threatening to shut down the government. 

Now we have demonstrative proof that shutting down the U.S. government was never just a tactic; it has been the #1 goal of the Republican Party since the days of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

Democrats, on the other hand, are the party of a functioning government able to get things done. What are they going to do when it comes time to raise the debt ceiling, if preventing it forces the government to default on its loans and shut down? Send Chuck Schumer out to chant cringe-worthy slogans again? Flood my e-mail with twice as many dozens of daily pleas for donations?

Even if Democrats can win in 2026 and 2028, despite the baked-in advantages red states have over blue ones, new Republican roadblocks to suffrage, and the mischief Elon Musk and his merry Muskrat minions are making in federal databases, repairing the damage Trump and the Republicans will have wrought will be a formidable task. 

They will need to flood the zone with an agenda every bit as audacious as Trump's gish gallop has been.

Firing Trump as head of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts will be easy, even if Democrats replace him with Laverne Cox or Elliot Page.

But it will be a heavy lift to restore the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, USAID, Occupational Safety & Health Agency, Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Labor, the Civil Rights Divisions of every surviving cabinet department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, National Parks, Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Heck, we'll probably need Congress to authorize re-application for membership in NATO.

In the meantime, if Mitch McConnell really wants to be useful in his waning months in the U.S. Senate, maybe he could give Chuck Schumer some tips on how to be an effective leader of The Opposition.