WHAT THE DEMOCRATS NEED TO DO NOW

 

It's time to start kicking some Elephant Ass....

The thing about an "existential threat" is that it is, by definition, a threat to one's own existence.    Some threats are awful, but not necessarily existential.  For instance, climate change threatens the lives of a significant percentage of life- plant and animal- on this planet.   Not all life, not even close to most of it.   But enough to make the losses catastrophic if we do nothing.    The pandemic is not an existential threat, except to the more than 800,000 Americans and millions (out of over 7 billion) on Earth who are no longer in existence.    Nor is America's pathetic health care system- which causes tens or hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths a year- an existential threat to the entire country.   But it's still a slow moving catastrophe, none the less.

However, our democracy- our republic- is under an existential threat.   Once the Republicans get a taste of blood by using their  newly created Jim Crow 2.0  tools to reverse the results of an election by controlling the vote counting- by reversing an election a Democrat has won with a false claim of fraud, then throwing out enough votes to declare their candidate the winner- then for all intents and purposes, our form of government where the people get to choose their leaders and not vice versa- is on life support.   And only going downhill.

So what do Democrats do when the very existence of our form of government is threatened, and when their continued hold on offices they won in fair elections is becoming more tenuous by the day?  Answer:   we do nothing but wring our hands and complain on tv and in print about the unfairness of it all.

But here's the thing:  we have more than enough tools in our arsenal to stop this madness and to save our country.   However, so far no one with the power to deploy them has either the intelligence or guts to use any of them.   For example:  under our Constitution, in Article I, Section 7, every bill that appropriates money for everything the federal government does must originate in the House of Representatives.     No bill=no money=no expenditure for whatever the people who support a program or expense need or want.   What if- just spitballing here- the Democrats had decided to pass a Defense Department budget that included money for paying the troops' salaries, for their housing, medical care and other benefits, and for their training- but nothing else.   Not a dime for Lockheed or Grumman or that fancy fighter or submarine or tank or any other super expensive shiny bauble that U.S. taxpayers are being annually hosed to finance.    Think for one moment how the overlords of the Republican Party, those who front the money to finance those heinous lying political ads, would react if the spigot of billions were suddenly cut off.   Cut off with a promise that it would be turned on again, but only after enough Republicans voted to change the filibuster rule to allow a vote on the two voting rights bills that the Republicans have prevented the Senate from voting on.

Or think how those Republican senators would react if the Commander in Chief, President Biden, decided to move every single soldier, sailor, and airman out of their bases in places like Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky, eliminating the hundreds of millions of dollars they inject into local economies, and relocated them into states with senators who support voting rights.   Biden wouldn't have to close a single base.   But no one could prevent him from emptying them of the free spending troops who support the economies in those states and letting them spend their money elsewhere.   

That's just  two ideas off the top of my head.   I'm not a public official or a pundit with cachet.   Just a guy who knows that if the threat truly is existential, then it might be time to actually do something about it.