There is no opposition to Trump

There is hostility, which is not the same thing.

Opposition implies a critical analysis and an alternative program, that is, an examination of what is being done wrong, why this is so, and what should change. On all three points, the loudest non-Trump voices offer confusion, distraction, and hypocrisy, not leadership around which a movement could cohere.

What is wrong?

A thought experiment: summarize in a brief statement where the Democrat mainstream/Biden campaign thinks Trump and his “team” are going off the rails. If you are finding this hard to do, you’re not alone. There is no consistent message coming from The Opposition that embodies a fundamental attack on Trumpism. Sniping around the edges doesn't count.

Biden most recently attacked Trump for throwing a “temper tantrum” and for failing to expand Obamacare eligibility. He also said Trump was acting like a king. (Obama signing a kill list every Tuesday wasn’t? But I digress.) Elizabeth Warren released a coronavirus plan (of course) and criticized the Trumpians for “a process plagued by confusion, inconsistency, and potential political interference.”

A group of House Democrats put forward their own proposal for a post-COVID economy that “would ask each state to submit a plan on how to reopen businesses and schools in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services — not just the president’s pulpit.” Nancy Pelosi insisted that her bipartisan “oversight” committee will protect the $2 trillion bailout fund already in Trump’s hands from waste, fraud, and abuse even though House Republicans already say they may turn down the invitation. And just for good measure, Trump announced when he signed the massive financing package Congress sent him that he would swat away carping Nancy like an annoying gnat.

The Democrats’ statements and gestures express distaste for Trump’s grandstanding and dismay at his incompetence. They point out his administration’s lack of planning, administrative disarray, and sloppiness. That’s it—no objection to how Trump is exploiting the crisis to enrich the rentier class and protect corporate looters. That’s because, generally speaking, those are the Democrats’ friends, too.

If Biden/Pelosi/Warren had reservations about what Trump was going to do with the unprecedented pile of money he asked for, they had one chance to impose their conditions: before giving it to him. They didn’t. (Neither did Bernie Sanders although he doesn’t control the House majority.)

Yes, Mitch McConnell and Trump would have had a fit and dashed over to Fox News to accuse the Democrats of wrecking the economy. A real opposition would have said, “And?” Trump needed the bailout desperately; that was their chance to exercise a veto if they had dared. Post hoc complaints are window-dressing to bamboozle naïve voters into thinking that Democrats in Congress were stopping Trump from doing his worst.

For a while, Dems also slammed Trump as an appalling sexual predator, but lo and behold! now that Biden himself has been credibly accused of sexual assault, the indignant feminism so prominently on display during the primaries is nowhere to be seen. Elizabeth Warren, recently the righteous defender of Womanhood, is now so untroubled by the Tara Reade story that she just penned a joint op-ed with Sleepy Joe in the Miami Herald. The fact that Biden employs former Harvey Weinstein flack Anita Dunn attracts no comment from the woke brigades. Corruption, another of Trump's weak spots, could hardly bother a party on the verge of crowning someone with Biden's record of nepotism and corporate shilling.

Why is Trump a disaster?

This is a question Democrats cannot answer because they are complicit. Trump is a disaster because he has accelerated the process of pushing the proceeds of the world’s largest economy further into the hands of the tiny financier elite while they strip what is left of the nation’s productive capacity. He continues the bipartisan policy of rewarding fat-cat crooks with more government welfare. Democrats did the same when they were in office, a bit less obviously, so they have no problem with the process and scarcely criticize it. Yes, they occasionally emit pious rumblings about the sufferings of the downtrodden classes that they still pretend to represent. But they prefer to court suburban Republican voters, convinced that they might be peeled away from Trump, and so avoid unseemly references to social class. The open mockery of Bernie and his supporters is a reflection of this turn to the right and courtship of the professional/managerial class (PMC) voters who object to Trump culturally and stylistically.

By ceding the most dangerous and most obvious of Trump’s many shortcomings, Democrats are left with objections of an aesthetic nature, criticisms of his dumb statements, vainglorious lies, and disrespect of traditions. They can’t answer his nasty mockery because they fear him and his threats to retaliate, and their base is not working people but rather the permanent war-making apparatus, the snooper complex, and the increasingly beleaguered civil service ranks where Trump is carrying out massive purges. Because Democrats don’t represent the majority of average workers and would rather jump off cliffs than call upon them to rise up in protest, they are helpless in the face of the ongoing Trumpian onslaught.

What should change?

Democrat alternatives to current policies are lame, late, and lackluster, and sometimes they are even more conservative than Trump’s. They respond to the massive loss of employer-based health insurance with calls to subsidize the insurance companies rather than pay medical costs directly. Biden answered Trump’s China-baiting over the mishandling of the coronavirus catastrophe with the criticism that he’s a late-comer to the bashing party. The Democrats still can’t admit to the nothingburger of Russiagate and insist that the evil Russkies are plotting to help Trump again in 2020 while the evidence of old-fashioned Jim Crow vote-rigging piles up everywhere. They pretend that the huge blank check they handed to sleazy Trump operatives can somehow be monitored so that it doesn’t enrich the president’s friends but did nothing to ensure that it doesn’t. They plead for assistance to soon-to-be-bankrupt states and cities after giving up any leverage they had to guarantee it. Trump then openly threatens to play favorites and punish states whose governors criticize him.

In short, the Democrat opposition is much more rhetorical than real. Sadly, even Bernie’s consistent criticism falls flat these days as he loyally signs on to the party consensus while trying to push additions and improvements. AOC is a lone voice in the wilderness daring to cast the occasional no vote.

What’s left are endangered and desperate people daring to walk off the job and appealing to their peers for support. We the people are on our own and must find our own way forward without waiting for leadership that doesn’t exist. By shedding illusions to the contrary, we open up new possibilities.

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