2024: The Choice Between GOP Complainers and Democratic Doers
How to consider your choices for the 2024 election cycle, and some thoughts on our political system today.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, America’s political history, the progressive movement, the truth about Gina Raimondo, and much more.
The second part of my double post combo.
It is worth starting from a different end, by admitting that we effectively live in an oligarchic democracy—not the intent of the great people of our country, but certainly by the design of outside special interests and the political establishment all across Washington DC.
Let me cite another big primary race in OR-03, where the Democratic nominee, Maxine Dexter, won only after a deluge of outside dark money (with the names of many donors still unknown) was spent on her behalf attacking a Progressive Democrat on Israel-Gaza. It’s worth noting that Councilwoman Susheela Jayapal did not have a well-known position on Israel and Gaza prior to her candidacy for a congressional seat in Oregon. Nonetheless, the fear of her sister was enough for the AIPAC establishment to attack Jayapal in ways that some would consider outright personal and defamatory to the tune of millions of dollars.
This sets a bad precedent of special interest dark money solely deciding election contests all across the country from top to bottom. The idea that instead of earning votes, you can buy votes. And that is what special interests across the board do to keep incumbents in line, discourage candidates willing to challenge the system, and suppress any opposition or any appearance of opposition to those dark money entities and outside special interests.
One last point. Some people have pondered whether the pro-Palestinian protests have influenced public policy. Maybe it is a question political scientists will contemplate over time. Here is the bigger question for readers here.
Is the powerful pro-Netanyahu Israel lobby dark money influencing foreign policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict? It is worth noting the trail of campaign contributions not just in congressional races, but also in donations to Biden’s presidential campaign, in what appears to be a blatant attempt to steer White House policy away from its recent criticisms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One of those major campaign power players is Gina Raimondo idol, NYC billionaire, and former Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who contributed to a little known LA-based Super PAC designed to attack Jayapal and elevate her “pro-Israel” opponent. Since Bloomberg is also the Chairman of the Defense Innovation Board which advises Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, one has to wonder whether his current 2024 campaign activities conflict with such responsibilities on behalf of the Department of Defense. This raises the stakes of whether Bloomberg violated the Hatch Act of 1939 and tried to skirt other campaign finance rules by being involved in the OR-03 primary race, among other election contests.
This is just a small example of what an oligarchic democracy looks like. It looks like the Clintons, the Bushes, the Trumps, Michael Bloomberg, and Gina Raimondo. Progressives, we have a long road ahead of us.
I should also bring attention to the Senate GOP candidate recruitment this election cycle, and the existing trend on Capitol Hill well alive today in the House of Representatives and elsewhere.
2024 is an election that will be contested on many different issues. The Economy, Inflation, Crime, Immigration, Abortion, Guns, Democracy, Education, Healthcare, Climate, Housing, Infrastructure, Transportation, Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and more. We can run the whole gamut over and over again.
These are some of many lists of issues that voters will decide on in November. And the question is who will address those issues. Obviously, the doers are going to take on the issues. The complainers will endlessly whine about it.
For instance, Republicans like to talk about the first few issues (the economy, inflation, crime, etc.) a lot. They like to talk about rising inflation since the Biden Presidency started. They like to talk about “rising crime” on Biden’s watch. They like to talk about the broken immigration system and “the open borders,” a principal talking point of Donald “Unified Reich” Trump, and Congressional Republicans. All the while, these same Republicans spew endless conspiracies about President Biden trying to assassinate his political rival, deny the results of the 2020 elections, and ready themselves to question the 2024 election results. If that were not bad enough, they then cozy up to the dictators around the world like Putin, Xi, Kim, Bolsonaro, and Orban instead of our democratic allies in the United Nations, NATO, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
Back in the 2022 midterms (seems long ago right?), Trump allies and Congressional Republicans blamed President Biden and Congressional Democrats for the supposed economic downturn that occurred under Biden’s Presidency. In response, McCarthy and Mitch McConnell had promised a new direction with a new agenda. That was where the Commitment to America platform introduced by McCarthy came from.
Obviously we know what happened with the 2022 red wave that never took off. Some questioned whether Republicans provided a suitable alternative to Democrats for the problems they would repeatedly mention. And the short answer is Republicans do not. Not at all. They do not even have a plan.
The 118th Congress has been one of the most dysfunctional in American history, going back to the likes of the Great Depression and the Civil War. Congressional Republicans across the board have failed the American people even by the low expectations they had set. GOP infighting has ensured a waste of 2 years. Little has been done on anything of real substance. Remember all the talk about gas prices? Energy prices? Food prices? Utility bills? Housing bills? Crime rates? Murder rates? Border crossings? Immigration case backlogs? Remember all the talk there by the GOP?
They failed to address any of these issues. Instead, they have pursued unpopular impeachments (like that of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas), fishing expedition investigations (such as the Hunter Biden nothingburger probe), debt hostage negotiations, and multiple government shutdown threats. That is in addition to fellow GOP colleagues almost getting into fisticuffs with each other or other people (including the national Teamsters union leader). Any meaningful legislation to tackle inflation, crime, or immigration? Nope. Unsurprisingly, Chip Roy and I both agree: Republicans do not have “one thing” that they can campaign on.
And now, Trump wants to raise tariffs (and, therefore, prices) 100% across the board, give tax breaks to the rich and large corporations, deregulate Wall Street and Corporate America, and starve social services with more budget cuts. Not only would his Project 2025 widen the wealth gap and erode the middle class as Republicans have for 40+ years, but it would take our inflation today to new, unnecessary heights.
Democrats are not perfect (especially when its Wall Street business wing led by Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton is fighting to the death to remain relevant in driving policy), but they have certainly done a lot more than Republicans have. The Build Back Better agenda and vision as a whole speaks for itself.
On inflation, there is actually a lot going on even though the White House and Congressional Democrats are quite modest in touting their accomplishments. The Federal Reserve is doing its job, after initially falling behind. The Biden Administration has put a cap on insulin costs, tapped into the Strategic Oil Reserve to lower gas prices, and worked with Ukraine to get grain and wheat crops out to port to lower the pain at the grocery stores. Supply chain bottlenecks are being worked out from the worst of times back in winter of 2021-2022, with the help of some congressional legislation in 2022. Not to mention the underappreciated, but remarkable work of Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
And more could be done if Republicans wanted to work with him instead of obstructing his agenda. For starters, by outlawing corporate price gouging that is fueling greedflation and shrinkflation, factors that are increasingly being held responsible for the stubbornly persistent inflation rates. Instead of doing the hard work, DC Republicans mock the concept, and thus the pain America’s working families are feeling. Corporate America and Wall Street should not get record profits off of the pain Americans feel in all sectors of the economy today by artificially raising prices or shrinking their products. Capitol Hill Democrats and the White House are working hard to keep checks on this kind of Gilded Age-esque runaway capitalism.
Supporting Ukraine and Taiwan in their self-defense, without bringing an American soldier into direct conflict, also helps lower costs by stabilizing agricultural, medical, and semiconductor supply chains. On top of that, President Biden has recently proposed mortgage relief credits and student debt forgiveness which has been vigorously opposed and contested in the courts by Trump’s Capitol Hill allies.
Lastly, Biden has helped advance our scientific research to combat diseases like bird flu that also impact livestock prices, and to tackle the climate crisis that paves the way for more stable, abundant, and affordable renewable energy. That is a track record. A BFD, if you will.
On crime, Republicans are missing in action. They even had a budget supported by Speaker Mike Johnson that would cut state and local police budgets. Sure know who’s “defunding the police” here. Democrats had opposed that budget. President Biden, for his part, has been one of the most supportive people for a better system of policing for both police and those they are supposed to protect. His agenda promises to invest in police departments for proper training and resources, while pushing for criminal justice reform and reversing the decades-long trend of mass incarceration by failed GOP tough-on-crime policies in the 1980s and 1990s. Can he get a Congress that actually wants to work with him though?
Finally, immigration. It is true that the Biden White House could have responded much sooner to the border situation, not that the eventual expiration of Title 42 had made that any easier. It should be noted border crossings had also increased under Trump’s presidency. More importantly, we should remember that Trump and his MAGA followers in Congress sank a bipartisan compromise struck between Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), James Lankford (R-OK), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and backed by the President. Just like you wouldn’t applaud the arsonist for putting out the fire, you shouldn’t reward legislative arsonists for worsening a problem they could have solved. That is the GOP record on immigration. Biden is doing everything he can with executive power to make things just a little bit easier, and get real immigration reform.
It all comes down to one simple fact: Republicans are complainers. Democrats are doers.