Ed Note: There’s an old joke–The masochist and sadist meet up. Masochist says, “Beat me, beat me.” The sadist replies, “No I don’t think I will.” So who wins in the battle of retreat?
Thanks to Mary Jane F.
By James Carville
Mr. Carville is a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC.
The Republican Party is all too often effective at campaigning and winning elections, but there’s another fact about it that a lot of Americans forget: The Republican Party flat out sucks at governing. Even Tucker Carlson agrees with this. For all the huffing and puffing on the campaign trail in 2016, the first Trump administration largely amounted to tax cuts for the wealthy, 500 miles of a border wall and a destructive pandemic gone viral. George W. Bush got us into a harebrained war in Iraq and then tried to privatize Social Security while letting our financial system drive smack into the Great Recession. And George H.W. Bush governed his way into a one-term presidency because of the economy.
For Round 2 in office, instead of prioritizing the problems he campaigned on — public safety, immigration and the border and, most of all, the economy — President Trump is hellbent on dismantling the federal government. To accomplish this, he has put his faith in the most incompetent cabinet in modern history: a health and human services secretary who is already targeting federal vaccination efforts and dumped a bear carcass in Central Park as a fun prank at age 60, a director of national intelligence who was devoted to an allegedly abusive yoga-centered cult, a WWE tycoon turned head of Department of Education and a former cable news talking head as defense secretary. Which will result in one clear thing: disorder. There will probably be more enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicaid cuts hitting a lot of other people, but there is nothing the American public despises more than disorder and a broken economy.
And there’s nothing Democrats can legitimately do to stop it, even if we wanted to.
With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us. Only until the Trump administration has spiraled into the low 40s or high 30s in public approval polling percentages should we make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. Until then, I’m calling for a strategic political retreat. (continued)