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Our challenge goes beyond removing the President [1]

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Date: 2025-05-05

In the natural focus on the daily atrocities of this administration, it’s not clear to me that a majority of the prominent opposition understands the depth of our problems. One of the appreciations I have for Bernie and AOL is their vocalness on addressing the oligarchy foundations of the Republican seizure of the Government. While I don’t expect everyone to lead with that analysis, I find that too much critique is reserved solely for the current administration.

Mother Jones, has an excellent article on the Right’s use of the Unitary Executive Theory being used to justify the current power grab. The short version is that the President has sole control over the Executive and no one within the executive has any ability to have or to effectuate any contradictory opinion, even should that opinion be in following the laws set by Congress. The article is focused on the Theory and its history, well worth the read. But what I wish to highlight here from it is the systemic changes over decades resulting in our current situation.

Over the past 30 or 40 years there has been a split between Republicans and Democrats with regards to following the rules and laws of governance. When Democrats are in power, they generally abide by those norms and laws (certainly not perfectly, but the general expectation is that they will). While when Republicans are in power, they take every chance to twist those rules and laws to their own purposes while still expecting the Democrats to follow the old norms. Just examine Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Hillary’s emails, Obama’s failure to do anything about McConnell’s not holding confirmation hearings on Merrick Garlands SCOTUS nomination, to list a tiny fraction.

As such, it troubles me when some in the Democratic Party limit their critique to this president. “When THIS president sends people to El Salvador...”. Granted the entire list of Republican transgressions can not be listed with every new transgression, if the critique focuses on whichever current problem as if it was limited to just the Trump Administration, it conveys this sense that if we just get Trump out of office everything will be okay again.

Just like we did in in 2020, everything will be instantly okay the moment we vote him out.

Without recognition of the vast structural damage done by 50 years of Republicans going back to Nixon, even should we win in 2028, will we not just be here again in 2032?

This recognition of the depth of our problems is what I want to see out of our Democratic Leadership. When I fail to hear the depth of the changes needed, whether I technically agree with the limited statement is not really the point. I don’t want to hear just about removing Trump. I want the vision of what we will do to repair and reform our system of governance.

I want to hear the slate of Constitutional Amendments we need, and I want to hear a plan about how we will get there. Not necessarily in depth in every speech, but we need a plan and we need to reference it frequently. We need a vision of good governance. What we had from 2021 to 2025 was not good governance. It was some people working by the rules attempting to do their best while being blocked from many different angles by others determined to prevent any progress. It was good intent facing and losing to a hostile SCOTUS. It was good intent combined with a failure to hold illegal actions accountable in a reasonable time frame.

I want OFF this merry go round, not a ticket to hop on it again should we momentarily win power back.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/5/2320616/-Our-challenge-goes-beyond-removing-the-President?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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