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Do You Wonder _Why_ Democrats Have Such a Hard Time Responding? [1]

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Date: 2025-02-02

Have you wondered why our Democratic elected leaders have such a hard time responding?

It’s because liberal democracy has no answer for fascism. It never has. It’s not that liberal democracy isn’t a good for humanity. It’s that the whole point of fascism is that it’s immune to attacks from liberal democracy.

I cannot locate the source of this quote. I believe it is an adaptation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote on freedom never being given voluntarily by the oppressor.

Think of how the fascist regimes of the 20th Century ended. It wasn’t at the ballot box, or through well-reasoned arguments by liberals.

I’d like the share this essay from Josh Marshall on Messages and Morale:

I’ve tried to balance two things. One of those is trying to keep people focused on what an opposition can actually do and what it can’t. The other is that you can’t simply be, in effect, yelling at people who are bewildered and scared. ... Adam Schiff was on Bluesky or Twitter last night announcing the new Saturday Night Massacre of prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the January 6th cases, denouncing it as illegal. And he was greeted not with a surge of outrage at the Trump administration but outrage against him. “And what are you going to do about it? I bet you’re going to fire off a sternly worded press release.”

And that bewilderment and fear is shared by our elected officials. I will excuse it… to a degree. We recently had a series of diaries back and forth (here, here) on whether the bewilderment and confusion of our elected leaders constitutes weakness, or the need to suddenly adapt to the almost unreal nightmare in which we find ourselves. I would say the answer is both.

As a contrast, Josh Marshall goes back to the 20th Century, and looks at how Winston Churchill* responded to fascism.

… I think back to Winston Churchill taking over the prime ministership with the fall of France in June 1940. He really didn’t have anything he could do other than try not to lose. The only plan was to hold on, not lose or to try to lose as little as possible and try to get the Americans into the fight. And in reality, though we can look at it differently in retrospect, there was every reason to think Great Britain would lose, or at least be forced into a humiliating, subservient peace. The U.S. ambassador (who, remember, was John Kennedy’s dad, freakshow RFK Jr.’s grandfather) was saying “these guys are totally going to lose.” And it was hard to argue with that as a matter of probabilities or logical arguments. But Churchill had a clear message: 1) We’re never going to give up. Literally, never. 2) We’re going to battle back with these tools. And 3) Finally, we’re going to win.

And look at how Pete Buttigieg handles the recent mid-air collision in Washington, DC, the first mid-air collision since 1986.

The tweet starts off poorly, with the usual liberal failings of accusing Trump of bad behavior, not understanding that Trump’s bad behavior is what attracts supporters to Trump in the first place. There is no sense of decency to appeal to here.

Was the mid-air collision Trump’s fault? Probably not. He wasn’t piloting either aircraft or in air traffic control. But because it happened on Trump’s watch, it only took Trump a few hours before he blamed DEI and President Biden to deflect blame from himself. And most democrats then go crying to anyone who will listen that Trump is being despicable, as if that is a bad thing to his supporters.

But then Pete Buttigieg gets it halfway through the Tweet, and comes out and basically all but blames Trump for the disaster. You could almost hear the New York Times groan in pain at a Democrat politicizing a tragedy.

But this is the right course of action. You attack, you fight, and you tell people you are going to win. Pete Buttigieg gets it. And he has a valid point too on the insane DOGE cuts. This is how you do it.

Will our other elected leaders listen, before it’s too late? I don’t know.

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* I understand Winston Churchill is a controversial figure to quote. I in no way excuse his controversial statements on race.

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