On Tuesday evening, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley took to the Senate floor to begin marathon speech this continued on Wednesday. The theme of his speech was the most pressing: “Tonight I come to the Senate to ring the alarm bells. We are in the most dangerous moment, the greatest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is destroying our Constitution.” For Merkley, the issue literally hit home: “President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and unrest. Because if he can tell the American people there is unrest, he can say there is an insurrection. And if there is an insurrection, he can use it to increase his authoritarian control over our country.”
The president should not be expected to be moved by Merkley's exhortations. And it is unlikely that many Senate Republicans will give in to his initiatives. But there were a lot of people there who needed to hear what the Oregon lawmaker had to say — particularly his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, who haven't been singing the same pro-Democratic anthems lately. Merkley's speech comes at a time when some spines are in need of strengthening.
US Senate: This is where the Democratic Party's ambitions have long been along with democracy itselfhit the skids. There are structural reasons for this: Much fewer voters represented by the GOP majority, and this malapportionment problem is exacerbated by changing demographics that may one day allow 30 percent of Americans will elect 70 senators. But Republicans have long realized that their agenda – giving tax breaks to the rich and breaking up government – requires just 51 votes in most cases. Democratic governance, which includes creation, correction, regulation, preservation and improvement, almost always requires 60 years.
One could already expect that the Democrats would recognize like a Senate filibusterwhich requires them to regularly call out this supermajority is something of a suicide pact. Or that this is a recent innovation that is easy to abandon. Or that it works so contrary to the ideals of the Founders that its very existence must be offensive. But not enough Democrats have made the leap. And the reason is that too many of them suffer from the fact that New Republic member Christopher Sprigman calls “Degenerate Senate Brain“
Having watched the work of this less than respected body over the past several years, I think the main problem with many of our Democratic senators is that they believe their own hype. They all think they have joined a strict debating society – “the greatest deliberative body in the world”, the “chilling plate” of government. They don't seem to have noticed that when it comes to discussion or maintaining a reputation for being reasonable and equanimous, everyone must agree to participate in these ideals. But the Trumpist Republicans don’t do that: they shut down the government. They voluntarily surrendered the power of the purse. They rarely, if ever, question the Mad King's wishes. Do you remember Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy's public agonies over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment to Health and Human Services? And then Cassidy turned out to be humbly approving him, to Cassidy's enduring chagrin? That's about as compelling as it gets for GOP discussions.
The state of the Republican Party means you can no longer have a Senate. Unfortunately, most Senate Democrats still naively believe that they can revive this moribund body through actions that, at best, send mixed signals and, at worst, directly undermine the work of Democrats like Jeff Merkley.
Case in point: This week, amid a government shutdown, 13 Democratic senators joined forces with all but one Republican to nominate Harold Muti for a judgeship in the Northern District of Alabama. Some fun facts about Muti that New RepublicEllie Quinlan Houghtaling assembled: He made every effort to ask questions about the January 6th riots and who was to blame; he practically invented new verb tenses to avoid directly saying that Joe Biden was the duly elected president.
When it comes to deal breakers, to each his own, but what puzzles me is that these weren't some crimson flags for Senate Democrats. But even if this were not the case, everyone should understand that the only role the GOP candidate plays in American life is to serve Trump as if he were their personal legal client and support his wild corruption. For this reason alone, there should never be a Democratic Party name signed in support of promoting Trump judges.
Why did 13 Democrats (and Maine independent Angus King, who I'm too tired to explain to people) do this? My theory is that according to their own distorted Senate view of the world, getting these kinds of votes helps strengthen democracy. That is, whenever they have a small window in which they can make a gesture of civility and bipartisanship, they believe that the right thing to do is to take advantage of it to better demonstrate that the old ship of state is still running, normal business and regular order are possible, and that we are not that far from recovery. Democrats are leaving the door open for discussion. They keep this plate in ice.
Guys, I'd like to believe that a small initiative could be the beginning of a unification of polarized parties in the future. But if watching schoolchildren get shot to pieces multiple times a year doesn't get that communication going, then we certainly won't achieve it by throwing the other side a Harold Muti-shaped bone. The government is shut down, there's a hole in the White House, the President is ordering extrajudicial killings in Latin America in preparation for a regime change war, and citizens are being kidnapped off the streets by Brett Kavanaugh-inspired thugs. The system so beloved by senators is currently disabled! And these votes in support of a strange judicial candidate are just small incentives that only serve to fuel unrest.
Is democracy in grave danger? This week, it looks like Merkley and his allies agree, but 13 other Democrats aren't ready to believe him. But with the midterm elections approaching, everyone in the party needs to be on the same page on the issue to avoid sowing confusion among critical voters. And if they all truly agree that Trump poses a unique threat, we can't have Democrats signing on in double digits to support his agenda—not now, not ever.
This article first appeared in Power Mad, TNR's weekly newsletter written by Associate Editor Jason Linkins. Register here.
