The single biggest question before Democrats is not how to overturn the results of the 2016 election or dissecting what went wrong in the Clinton campaign. It is, how do we proceed? That is a complicated question.

The President-Elect, is a racist, sexist, xenophobic, Muslim-hating, white supremacist enabler. He is totally unqualified to be on a school board, let alone be the leader of the free world. His cabinet appointments include the esteemed senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who is literally named after two separate confederate icons (President of the CSA Jefferson Davis, and General P.G.T Beauregard), and was too racist even by 1986 standards to be confirmed for a federal judgeship) There’s also Former Governor Rick Perry who was nominated for Energy Secretary, one of the departments that he said he’d dismantle if elected President in 2012. There’s of course Ben Carson for HUD, even though he believed that he wasn’t qualified to run a government agency. Then perhaps the most troubling pick, Rex Tillerson for State, who has been awarded the friendship medal by a man responsible for undermining our democracy by interfering in our electoral process.

The Democrats will remain the minority party in the Senate until at least 2020, and it is unlikely that they will recapture the House. Liberal stalwarts like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer could be replaced by nominees of President Trump, creating a right wing court for the foreseeable future. State legislatures are dominated by Republicans, as well are the governorships. It appears that the Democratic strategy of multiculturalism and promoting tolerance, succeeds in winning the popular vote, but has failed yet again to secure the Presidency. Suffice it to say that over the next 4 years, much of the progress that has been accomplished under progressive leadership will be rolled back. As progressives, there is not much to be optimistic about.

Two options for Democrats

The first strategy proposes that progressives band together and unite themselves against not just President Trump, but against any Republican or Democrat who attempts to work with the President. We didn’t lose this election, a foreign power, as well as a corrupt FBI, interrupted our democratic process with the goal of electing Donald Trump. Democrats won the popular vote, and we increased our numbers in both houses of congress, the Republicans do not have a mandate. If the Republicans want to change this country, they can do it on their own, and we shouldn’t make it easy for them. We must obstruct their agenda, and be for Trump what the Tea Party was for Obama. Democratic lawmakers must always vote the party line and be uncompromising, forsaking bipartisanship and never supporting any legislation proposed by Republicans.

If there is one lesson that should’ve been learned over the last 8 years, it’s that bipartisanship is dead, and the minority party doesn’t benefit from compromise. So rather than compromise our principles, why not make our positions clear and force the Republican’s hands into enacting their destructive right-wing agenda? Democrats warned voters what would happen if they gave Republicans control of government, therefore Democrats should allow voters to see what happens when we aren’t there to be the adults. Democrats also should try to delegitimize the Trump presidency in the same way Republicans did for Obama.

We cannot normalize Trump. Donald Trump will be our President, but we cannot act like things are politics as usual. Trump is a demagogue with no clear policy other than ginning up hatred. If we pretend that his is a practical way to lead, then his brand will spread like wildfire.

Most importantly, we must write laws that are explicitly progressive, further left than anything that would’ve been passed under the Obama administration. These bills can’t be without purpose, it must be made clear that their passage would directly benefit the working class and middle class. This would include eliminating the social security cap, a $15 minimum wage, a truly universal healthcare system, and a constitutional amendment that would invalidate Citizens United, among other things.

Finally, Democrats have to force the Republicans’ hands in passing extreme legislation. They want to defund Planned Parenthood, privatize Social Security, bomb Iran and destroy the safety net? We have to make the case against that, while antagonizing them into actually doing it. After those affected see how we never stopped fighting for them, while Republicans were just preying on their fears, then we can get to work rebuilding in 2020. I call this the burn it down strategy.

Damage control

The opposing argument is that Democrats have a responsibility to do damage control. For whatever reason, Democrats and progressive ideals lost in this election, and it was in an environment where we should’ve had the upper hand.

The failure of Democrats to succeed in 2016, in what might arguably have been the most consequential election in a generation, is a burden that will affect us all in unseen ways for decades to come. Not only were we defeated by Republicans, we were defeated by the ugliest strain of populism that has put forward ideas that are antithetical to the America that liberals have been cultivating since the days of LBJ.

Donald Trump wants to burn down the government, and he has no qualms about taking millions of Americans with him. Those white nationalists who cloak themselves in the media-concocted phrase “alt-right” have been waiting for years to bring their neo-fascist world view to the mainstream. If allowed to shape policy for the next four years, unchecked by the old conservatives who have been cowed into accepting the Trump worldview out of fear of primary challenges, we will not be able to imagine the turmoil that will be wrought on this country.

Democrats have to act in the interest of bipartisanship, and sometimes that means voting for a bad bill to avoid passing an awful one. Bad and awful are usually synonyms, but in this case they are superlatives (the argument of accepting a lesser of two evils was especially present this election, and it will not disappear during this administration). A bill proposed by some swing state republican to raise the minimum wage to $8 an hour is not ideal, in fact it does almost nothing to deal with the problem of income inequality. However, when other Republicans are proposing a total elimination of the minimum wage, an idea that Trump is not explicitly opposed to, Democrats have to make a judgement call. This will also occur with appointments. Given the choice of John Bolton or Richard Haass for Deputy Secretary of State, the small differences in ideology matter.

Democrats are going to have to swallow their pride, or whatever remains of it, in order to save this country from itself. Then in 2020, hopefully the voters will reward us for ending the gridlock. I call this the good shepherd strategy.

Now what’s the right strategy? Frankly, I don’t know, and I seriously doubt that the party knows. Democrats are lost in the wilderness, they’re recovering from an election that literally nobody (not even the President-Elect) thought they could lose.

There was never a contingency strategy, there was never a plan to be in the minority. After hearing the party leaders reflect on their loss, and having discussions with members of my own county party, there is only one consensus. We have to try something new, because we are losing state legislatures and governorships and local offices in addition to national races.

Democrats are the party of the people, we have the right policies, and we govern based on facts. Yet somehow we are still perceived as the party of East Coast elitists who are out of touch with reality. In this post-factual America, it will be difficult to overcome that perception, but if we cannot, America may be lost.

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I’ve heard people saying that Donald Trump is destroying the Republican Party. I beg to differ. Trump is just the logical extension of the strategy put in place by the Republican leadership when President Obama was first elected in 2008. At that time, Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that his party’s main goal was to “make Obama a one-term president.” Within the past few months, several Republican members of Congress have been quoted as saying they were ordered to follow instructions from their leadership or face primary opponents.

When a political party makes defeating the president its primary objective and allows all kinds of nasty, false and disgusting comments about the leader of the nation, that party should know that someone like Donald Trump would eventually be considered “mainstream.” Can you imagine him having a polite conversation with the British prime minister or any other head of state we count among our friends? And heaven forbid he should get into a disagreement with a female head of state such as Germany’s Angela Merkel.

The chickens have come home to roost. The billionaires who financed the rebellion against everything President Obama and the Democrats tried to accomplish for the good of the country now have to reckon with a egomaniac who doesn’t need their money.

What goes around comes around, and I’d say “I told you so” if it weren’t for the damage that has been done to our middle class families because of Republican obstructionism.

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What’s the difference between Congress being in session and on vacation? Beats me. If voting for the 40th time to “repeal” Obamacare counts as an accomplishment, then I suppose you could say that the House of Representatives has been very busy. Nevertheless, having accomplished very little of consequence, and having spent most of their time on the job pursuing a nihilist agenda of obstructing anything that resembles governance, Congress has declared itself on summer vacation. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe that’s a good idea…

Here’s how political cartoonists view the 2013 Congressional summer break.

[cincopa AgBApMrV_epJ]

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It’s been a no-win for President Obama since Day 1 of his presidency, when Republican Congressional leaders [and I use that term lightly] met on Inauguration Day 2009 to pledge fealty to their plan to stop anything the President wanted to do, and anyone he wanted to appoint. So far, their plan is working well, while our country is not. And please don’t call it “gridlock.” That term implies that both parties are blocking progress–and that’s just not an accurate description.

Here’s a look at how some political cartoonists have portrayed the Republicans’ just-say-no-to-everything strategy.

[cincopa AYCAJP7NMon-]

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Republicans can try to say it ain’t so, but a newly developed statistical measure says it is: The GOP’s delaying tactics and outright obstruction of President Obama’s judicial nominees have reached epic proportions. According to Greg Sargent, at the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog:

Dr. Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who focuses on judicial nominations, has developed what he calls an “Index of Obstruction and Delay” designed to measure levels of obstructionism.

Goldman calculates his Index of Obstruction and Delay by adding together the number of unconfirmed nominations, plus the number of nominations that took more than 180 days to confirm (not including nominations towards the end of a given Congress) and dividing that by the total number of nominations. During the last Congress, Goldman calculates, the Index of Obstruction and Delay for Obama circuit court nominations was 0.9524.

“That’s the highest that’s ever been recorded,” [says Goldman].  “In this last Congress it approached total obstruction or delay.”

By comparison, Goldman ran the same measurement on the 108^th Congress, from 2003-2004, when George W. Bush was president, and Republicans controlled the Senate. The Index of Destruction and Delay for that period was a much lower 0.6176.

Anybody who’s been paying attention could have guessed that. But it’s helpful to see the hard numbers.

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This is what passes for “thinking” at the leading conservative “think tank,” the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this week [May 2013], the Heritage Foundation’s executive director sent a letter to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging them to avoid introducing legislation and to, instead, focus attention on White House “scandals.”

…we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the internet sales tax or the FARRM Act, which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another “circular firing squad” article.

…Rather than scheduling such legislation for consideration, we urge you to keep the attention focused squarely on the Obama administration. As the public’s trust in their government continues to erode, it is incumbent upon those of us who support a smaller, less intrusive government to lead.”

There it is: the naked truth about the Republican Congressional “agenda,” brought to you straight from the “heart” of the Republican strategy machine: Don’t waste time on actual legislation. Don’t discuss issues. Pay no attention to your job description. Don’t do anything that might be construed as “governing.” Don’t talk about the merits of any issues. Instead: Create scandals. Hold hearings. Investigate. Investigate again. Point fingers. Distract the public from the issues that really matter to them. Destroy Obama. Wreck government. But for gawd’s sake, don’t deviate from the party line, don’t reveal any differences of opinions among yourselves, and don’t legislate. That could be dangerous.

You can read the full letter here.

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