The president is colonizing the federal bureaucracy, replacing people of skill, competence and integrity with goons and cronies, or no one at all. One of his targets has been the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates the airways and makes sure airlines obey the law. 

Guess what?

The planes are falling out of the sky.

The latest crash was Monday in Toronto. A Delta flight came in for a landing and flipped upside down. It’s a miracle no one was killed, though around 18 were injured. The crash is being investigated. So far, the focus has been on bad weather. An airport official told the CBC News, however, the runway was clear and there were no cross winds.

That’s one of eight crashes since Donald Trump took office. 

Letters from God, a newsletter, compiled a list:

• “1/29: First major crash in 16 years (67 dead in DC).
• 1/31: Learjet crashes in Philadelphia.
• 2/5: Japan Airlines collides with a Delta plane in Seattle.
• 2/6: Bering Air plane crashes in Nome, Alaska.
• 2/10: Learjet slams into a parked jet in Scottsdale, AZ.
• 2/12: Military fighter jet crashes into San Diego Bay.
• 2/16: Plane crashes in Covington, GA.”

I can’t predict the future, but only an idiot would suggest there won’t be more planes falling. On Friday, the Trump administration ramped up its campaign of aggression against the federal workforce with another wave of terminations, this time at air-traffic control.

The US Department of Transportation told the Associated Press that the FAA had “retained employees who perform critical safety functions.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that “zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.” But an unnamed FAA worker told Rolling Stone magazine that he’s wrong. 

“The danger to the national airspace can’t be [overstated]. This is a very real threat to the American flying public,” the worker said, before predicting that in time Trump will be called “President Plane Accident.”

Indeed, the label is already sticking. As California Congressman Eric Swalwell said Monday, before the Delta crash, “no president has had more planes crash in their first month in office than Donald Trump.”  

Swalwell went further in response to a follow-up question from Fox reporter Anders Hagstrom. He said: “Trump is president. President Trump is in charge of air safety. All crashes are Trump’s fault.”

This is the way.

It’s the only way. 

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If the last election has taught us nothing else, it’s that the American people do not respond to a government that actually helps them. Voters do not reward presidents who solve problems or deliver on promises. Joe Biden pulled us out of the pandemic, dodged a recession, sent wages soaring, and kept rates of inflation and unemployment low. It didn’t matter, because Trump gave the electorate someone to hate.

It didn’t matter for another reason. 

The Democrats saved Trump from himself the first time. They saved his supporters. He was on track to presiding over an utterly collapsed economy. As Jonathan Bernstein reminded me, Trump and the Republicans were so desperate they followed Nancy Pelosi’s lead. She’s the one who orchestrated bailouts that Trump later signed into law.

The Democrats saved Trump’s supporters, but got no credit. 

Biden revived the national economy, but got no credit. 

There’s a lesson here.

To be sure, this lesson is almost certainly going to run against the grain of liberals and Democrats who believe issues and policies are more important than politics – who believe partisanship endangers human welfare – and who believe that the solution to the problems that haunt the country cannot be found in continued polarization and division.

But I think the last election did, or should, put the lie to that. 

The solution is pain.

Again, to be sure, no Democrat in Washington or the states should support the Trump administration’s assault on the government, the law or the people. In the Congress, they should vote against legislation that would, for instance, gut Medicaid, a healthcare program that serves more than 80 million Americans. They should vote against any attempt by the GOP to steal from poor and working people and give to the rich.

In general, they should not be the ally of evil.

But if the opportunity ever presents itself, the Democrats should not, as they did during Trump’s first time in office, do anything to prevent the president and the Republicans from hurting their own supporters, even if the cost of Democratic inaction is planes falling out of the sky. 

Joe Biden never blamed Trump for allowing a novel virus to kill more than a million Americans and bring the economy to the brink of collapse. He never blamed Trump for persistent problems, like inflation, that some say is the reason the electorate turned on him.

The Democrats must learn from that mistake. The American people must be reminded. In the right hands, the government can help everyone. In the wrong hands, it can hurt everyone. That lesson will require pain as well as blame. As Swalwell said: “Trump is president. President Trump is in charge of air safety. All crashes are Trump’s fault.”

This is the way.

It’s the only way.