I was on Stephen Robinson’s podcast when I blurted out a personal truth. I have defended the Democrats for years, but since Donald Trump’s victory, I haven’t been in the mood. In fact, I find myself open to arguments I had not been open to.

For instance, the argument about how the Biden administration, namely US Attorney General Merrick Garland, should have prosecuted Trump immediately after his attempted overthrow of the US government. I figured caution was appropriate, and anyway, I believed there was no way voters would rehire a traitor they had already fired.

That caution and belief look different now.

I’m also more open to the argument about how the Democrats must develop and maintain a media ecosystem that’s as powerful as the one that gave the GOP a trifecta. It’s not that I didn’t think the Democrats needed one. It’s that I believed that propaganda never made anyone believe anything they didn’t already believe. If you’re a racist, you’re a racist. A white-power podcaster like Nick Fuentes can’t make it so.

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But I now see the problem in a more nuanced light. 

The problem is that the Democrats don’t have a media ecosystem of their own with which to compete with the Republicans on a level playing field for voters who are not getting, and who are not capable of getting, good information on their own. The Democratic Party trusts, and relies on, the public too much. Facts and history must never be allowed to speak for themselves. The Democrats must speak for them.

So I find myself in a rather new position. I’m no longer in the mood to defend the Democrats (for now, anyway; time will tell), but I’m also not in the mood to criticize them on the old ideological grounds that are familiar to the followers of the Democratic Party’s best-known critics. 

I don’t see a point in the class-based critique of people like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. I don’t see a point in the “centrism”-based critique of people like Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton. The Democrats are already a party of the working class. They are already centrist as a result of already being a party of working-class policy. 

Anyway, America’s backsliding can’t be solved with policy, as the crisis we face isn’t the result of “big dislocations, like a depression with mass unemployment and the legacy of losing a major war,” as Professor Grossman put it. If it could be solved with policy, it would be solved, as Joe Biden flipped four decades of economic consensus on their head. 

No, the backsliding is the result of a lack of good information.

And guts.

So my beef with the Democrats isn’t a matter of ideology. (It’s nothing like what you will find on “Chapo Trap House.”) My beef is a matter of temperament. At issue isn’t “purity,” as Moulton said. It’s courage.

Either the Democrats meant it when they said Trump is a menace to democracy and the rule of law – or they didn’t. Either they meant it when they said that now’s the time for choosing – or they didn’t. 

Honestly, I’m not sure they meant it. 

In response to Trump’s renewed threat to prosecute members of the Congress who investigated his attempted paramilitary takeover of the US government, Adam Schiff, who sat on the panel, and who is now California’s junior senator, said: “I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from a president in a democracy.”

What is this?

Politics or kindergarten?

Schiff went on: “Nor do I think a pardon is necessary for members of the January 6 committee. We are proud of the work we did … It was a fundamental oversight obligation to investigate the first attempt to interfere with a peaceful transfer of power in our history.”

Look, I told you. I have defended the Democrats in various ways for years, especially when they stood up for democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law after Trump’s attempt to overthrow the will of the people. But this is so weak, I can’t defend it. I don’t think anyone can. 

Here’s what Schiff could have said: 

• Donald Trump is a criminal. It was criminal to lead an insurrection. It’s criminal to threaten jail time for his opponents. Trump is a criminal up and down, and criminals are bad for democracy, even when or especially when they are democratically elected.
• A criminal president is going to corrupt, even more than it already has been, the moral and legal fabric of American society. 
• The Democrats, as the party of the rule of law and the Constitution, will do everything in its power to hold criminals accountable and to empower authorities to bring them to justice. 
• The Democrats may lose in the end, but not without a fight.

Schiff could have said any of these things without losing support back home. Instead, we got The Language Police or The Disappointed Schoolmarm, take your pick, who not only failed to show resolve but also validated the allegation that the Democrats are a bunch of pricks. 

Jesus God, January 6 was not “the first attempt to interfere with a peaceful transfer of power.” It was a crime. It was treason. But Schiff couched that fact in abstract multisyllabic words, as if euphemism and understatement were the appropriate mode of presidential discourse.

Worse was what the Senate minority leader said afterward.

“He did a great job,” Chuck Schumer said, referring to Adam Schiff’s performance on the J6 committee. “And it will stand for itself.”

No, it won’t.

With the rightwing media apparatus, Donald Trump erased facts. With a new corrupt administration, he’ll try erasing history. And he will succeed if the Democratic Party does not speak for it and fight.