The Dithering Democrats of Democracy

I'll let you know how many readers this one costs me...

Today I have a lot of things I want to say and they’re all trying to get out of my head and onto my laptop at the same time, so it’s a lot like all Three Stooges trying to get through a door at once (an uncannily appropriate description) and maybe we should start with how unlikely it is that a Fat Ass like Donald Trump would ever go jogging.

Nevertheless…for the purposes of my cartoon metaphor I drew Trump running circles around the Democrats (the subject of today’s rant) which reminds me of the time my editor objected to a Ronald Reagan cartoon because I depicted Reagan playing golf.

The editor was desperate to find a reason to reject the cartoon because editors can never say, “Because I don’t want to get in trouble” so instead he said, “But Reagan doesn’t play golf” and I replied that Reagan didn’t do any of the other things I’d drawn him doing — flying a WW1 biplane, piloting a ship, reading a book — either.

Turns out, we were both wrong: Ronald Reagan did play golf and like so many other politicians his handicap was believing his own bullshit.

In any case…

The cartoon you saw at the top of this post was inspired by all the articles (and there have been a lot of them) saying the Democrats are back on their heels and don’t know how to respond to all the crap Trump is currently pulling like offering buyouts to 2 million federal employees and letting them know if they’ve ever said anything shitty about him (and who hasn’t and that includes members of Trump’s family) they’re likely to be fired anyway.

It’s Trump’s way of getting rid of disloyal government employees and I’m assuming certain members of his family will be laid-off in the near future.

What strikes me at this juncture (as Dana Carvey imitating George H.W. Bush would say) is Trump (and before him Dubya) doesn’t give a flying fuck what the rules are or what’s legal or what the Constitution says, he’s just doing whatever he feels like doing and daring people to stop him.

Meanwhile, the Democrats can’t decide whether to shit or go blind without conducting a poll: “42% are in favor of shitting, 37% would rather go blind and the remaining 21% are undecided until they hear which one Donald Trump prefers.”

And while we’re on the subject of Sucking Up to Trump, the Sunday Kansas City Star had a story about Democrats pledging to work with President Trump whenever possible, just like the Republicans pledged to work with Presidents Obama and Biden.

Oh, wait.

That didn’t happen, did it?

What the Republicans actually pledged was to act like dicks 24 hours a day, seven days a week and oppose pretty much anything either one of them tried to do.

But the Democrats want to be loved by everybody and think being reasonable will make people like them when they’re actually in an Animal House Food Fight and speaking of Animal House and the dangers of trying to be reasonable during a riot, here’s how that worked out for Democrat Kevin Bacon:

It appears the Democrats don’t want to offend anybody anywhere at anytime (no matter how richly they deserve it) and when I think of Democrats trying to reach a decision I always imagine the committee meeting scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

If you’re deathly afraid of offending anybody and everybody then Kamala Harris can’t say she’d do anything different than Joe Biden even though a lot of people were unhappy with Biden and you run the wildly unpopular Hillary Clinton for president because “it’s her turn” and you don’t want to seem like sexists and when that doesn’t work out, you blame the voters for being a bunch of misogynistic racists.

And many of them are, so why run candidates that you already know have to swim upstream and the answer seems to be that the Democrats would rather be politically correct than win.

The Problem with Being Above All That

A while back a golf magazine wrote a story about people who willingly play golf with Donald Trump even though he’s known to be a huge cheater and the magazine probably provided the best analysis of Trump’s mindset when they talked to a guy who played with him as a partner. Trump’s golfing partner said Trump pointed at the pair they were going to play and said something along the lines of:

“See those guys? They cheat. And guess what? We’re going to cheat, too.”

So the Democrats are competing against a guy who doesn’t mind cheating or lying, but the Democrats are still trying to observe the Marquess of Queensbury Rules and getting their asses beat as a reward and as some pitching coach whose name I’ve forgotten once said to a rookie pitcher who was getting lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve:

“Kid, if you know how to cheat, now would be a good time to start.”

In the movie The Apprentice based on Real Life or what passes for it in New York, Donald Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn (apparently Satan was unavailable) tells Donald his Three Rules of Winning:

Just in case you didn’t watch the video, here they are:

1. Attack, attack, attack.

2. Admit nothing, deny everything.

3. Claim victory, never admit defeat.

Sound familiar?

OK, so Trump attacks and says something completely and wildly untrue and instead of attacking back, Democrats act reasonable and try to explain and when you explain you sound defensive.

So fact-checking articles like “12 Misstatements Trump Made In Last Night’s Press Conference” might make you and your Liberal Pals feel better because you’re the Reasonable Ones, but then Trump responds to your fact-checking article by saying you’re probably a Gay Communist who wants to forcibly turn America’s Children into Transgender Cabaret Singers and then you try to explain why that’s not true either and while you’re writing your next fact-filled term paper, Trump’s thinking up a New Lie to tell the Mouth-Breathing Nitwits who voted for Trump because he “tells it like it is.”

When someone accuses you of something or tells a lie about you, always (and you might want to write this down — I just did) respond with an assertion, not an explanation.

And the good part is you don’t have to lie about Trump when you do it.

“Hey, Donald, you’re the fat, rich boy son of a greedy, racist, slumlord asshole and you were too self-centered and cowardly to serve in the military and have to sexually assault women because generally speaking they find you repulsive and the only women willing to hang around you for anything length of time only do it because you’re rich and you’re so insecure about that you constantly exaggerate your wealth and the same goes for your reptile-adjacent 'friends’ who will turn on you in a heartbeat when it serves their purpose and by the way, your comb-over looks like shit.”

But instead of using the same tactics Trump uses against them, the Democrats say things like “When they go low, we go high” and feel virtuous about themselves, but virtue better be its own reward because it’s not winning elections.

Bottom line: It would be nice if the Democrats quit being a bunch of pushovers trying to be nice and reasonable and get along with Trump; it would be nice to see them fight back.

And Now, An Even More Cynical and Depressing Point of View

I have heard it persuasively argued that at least some of the Democrats don’t want to fight back and Donald Trump being in power is awesome for them because it makes fundraising easier because all they have to do is say look at this horrible man and all the horrible things he’s doing, so you really need to send us a bag of unmarked $100 bills which we will then use to get reelected so we can stay in Washington, D.C. and continue our long tradition of doing jack shit.

(Unless you donate a lot of unmarked bills and then we’ll do our best to give you your money’s worth or invent entertaining excuses about why we didn’t.)

When you’re in power, the buck – at least theoretically – stops at your desk, but when your out of power you can just stand on the sidelines and criticize and have dinner at Le Diplomate while talking about how godawful Donald Trump is and then go back to your Georgetown condo and bang the office intern who has yet to figure out what a phony you are.

Geez.

I sound bitter, don’t I?

Weeellllllll…what’s going on won’t last forever, but it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better and I have a lot to be bitter about so maybe we all better get used to it. Even so, I’ll try to write something cheerier next time and today I’ll leave you with one of the few hip-hop songs I can stand to listen to for five minutes and 14 seconds without jamming No. 2 pencils in my ears:

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/