It’s easy to forget that when Al Gore was vice president, he was tasked with reducing government waste. Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have the same task with DOGE. Democrats should find a way to constructively participate.
Well, I feel like liberals talk about government reform. I’m not sure they necessarily need to be sold on it so much. I think the kind of reform that we need today is a little bit of a hard pill for liberals to swallow, because we need government to sort of be faster, a little bit less process oriented and more outcome oriented.
This article in The Atlantic is an effort to make that argument.
As a public school teacher, many of my friends and colleagues are progressive. They aren’t nuts. None of them think that boys should play on girls teams or be in girls locker rooms. Everybody gets annoyed with the rapidly changing pronoun game. Most of them still trust corporate media, so believe these issues are not widespread.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, influential progressives in corporate media, politics and entertainment, defined themselves as being against anything Trump was for. That was easy, because Trump was opposed by all of the Democrats and establishment Republicans. Taking that stand was a big mistake.
Trump was never a conservative. He was a New York Democrat most of his life. Trump was publicly in favor of gay marriage when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were not. MAGA, Make America Great Again, is a terrible sentiment for an American politician to be against. They would have a different idea of greatness, but Bill Clinton, Al Gore or Barack Obama could have run on that slogan.
When the Democratic Party embraced being anti-Trump as their organizing principle, they were openly opposed to making America great again. All manner of wicked ideas and policies were embraced. Nobody can logically defend seeking out the poorest and lowest IQ people in the Western world, and settling them in small American towns. That happened in Springfield, Ohio, where the population was increased by 30% with fast-tracked Haitians.
In the 2024 election, Sherrod Brown lost his senate seat in Ohio. Brown didn’t seem crazy. For the most part, he stood for working people and the elderly. Brown sponsored the Social Security Fairness Act that will restore the 60% of my Social Security benefit that was cut by the Windfall Elimination Provision.
Sherrod Brown was an obedient Democrat, so he also voted to authorize the endless political persecution of Donald Trump and didn’t oppose the culture war excesses. Brown seemed sincere and competent, but not courageous enough to push back against the excesses of his party. That cost him.
Everything is different this time. Trump won the popular vote and gained support amongst groups that Democrats thought were locked down. Trump knows what is to be done. Some ideas are out of left field. Where did the “annex Greenland” idea come from? The Democratic Party can be loyal opposition, or become increasingly irrelevant.
America needs Democrats to get serious, and consider Trump’s initiatives. Democrats are obliged to engage with Trump in good faith, and support or oppose policies on the merits. Establishment Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are elderly. Potential Democratic leaders are queer or wacky extremists. Many of the competent and conventional Democrats, left the party, and are working for Trump.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four years, but feel tremendous relief now that we know who is in charge. Millions of Americans feel the same way. For months or years, Biden’s mental decline was hidden from us by an inner ring of advisors who controlled the flow of information to and from the president.
In four years, Trump’s term will be over, but there will still be unresolved issues. It would be great if we have two political parties that want to make America great.