The Sarah Huckabee Sanders restaurant eviction has morphed into the typical hand-wringing from the usual suspects about how Democrats are going to blow their chances at the mid-term. Oh my! Bad manners show that Democrats are now just as rude as Republicans! Trump's base will be galvanized, GALVANIZED I TELL YOU, by this unprecedented lack of decorum verging on thuggery. Independents will NEVER be able to tell a Democrat from a Republican again and will thus vote Republican by default.
Leave aside the fact that Trump's base is already as galvanized as the nails they've been hammering into the palms of democracy, that Trump's base is already as rock solid as it is impervious to thought, and as impervious to thought as it is oblivious to the effects of its own actions. Rock solid, impervious, oblivious, and effectively racist to the core -- Trump's base will stick with him regardless of what any Democrat says or does. We can't lose their votes, they are long gone.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't give them the personal respect we owe to any human being -- the giving of which makes us truly human. It means we shouldn't cater to them politically in this case. We must beat them soundly in the next two elections and take it to the street along the way.
Republicans have run this hustle successfully since the Clinton presidency. They set out to unfairly tarnish and demean every Democratic politician of any consequence. The media let them do it, and independents and many Democrats bought into it. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and others were routinely and mercilessly slimed by the GOP -- to the point where it is common to hear liberals say -- "Oh, I hope [he/she] doesn't run for president because the Republicans will tear [him/her] apart."
We've bought into it to the point that the Affordable Care Act is known as Obamacare because Republicans used that name to slime it. We've let them call Social Security, Medicare and any other government program that doesn't send all its money directly to the very richest, "entitlements." As if Social Security recipients are running a scam on the other taxpayers.
And as soon as Democrats, or just people who are not Republican, show some signs of fighting back, we're told that fighting back is a truly bad idea, unseemly, and people just won't vote for us if we insist on being that way.
Which people? Are there independents so callous or so dense that they can't tell the difference between someone who is fighting for the rights of stolen children and someone who is stealing the children? Between someone who is trying to stop creeping fascism and someone who is trying to pave the way for it? Between someone who installs a thoroughly corrupt cabinet and someone who protests the degradation of our government by that cabinet? Between people who hope their grandchildren inherit a livable world and people who sell the future right out from under all of us?
I could go on. The point is, such independents won't vote for us anyway. Any honest, sane, intelligent person who is not blinded by race knows who Trump is, knows who Paul Ryan is, knows who Mitch McConnell is, and should know what they are doing. If they don't know that by now, there is precious little chance of persuading them. We are the majority with or without them.
We are fighting for the survival of our democracy, our country and life on the planet. It's that simple. It's not just our elected officials in Washington fighting for us anymore. The battle has come down to each one of us.
Civility is nice. Good manners are nice. But don't let your adversary tell you it's bad form to fight so hard. That line always comes right before the sucker punch.