We have a problem with accountability in our country. Those with the least power are held far too accountable for sometimes the smallest infraction, while those in power rarely face accountability. In our country black people can be potentially executed on the spot for a traffic violation (and sometimes not even that) with most often no accountability for the officer. Meanwhile, politicians can make disastrous decisions causing thousands and even millions of lives and we are still waiting for them to be held accountable. Corporations can be people when it serves their interest, but are rarely held accountable when they destroy our economy through credit swap schemes, or shred our climate for profit. Poor people often stay in jail pretrial for simple lack of money while our richest people almost never see the inside of a jail even when they commit crimes we all witnessed as they live tweet witness intimidation. Some rich people get to fill our skies with thousands of satellites because they believe it’s their right to do so. Some corporations’ whole business plan is to simply find a way to ignore laws regarding taxis (or workers’ rights, or whatever other law) and call it innovation because it’s a phone app.
And now we have a Supreme Court who a majority of justices who willfully lied to congress, one has a spouse who is involved with insurrection, and a majority who have zero consistency in their rulings all because we don’t hold them accountable. This is going to be unpopular, but it’s our fault. It’s many democratic voters’ fault we are here. Throughout my entire adult life (born 1975) I have watched as time and again as Republicans play by one set of rules and Democrats play by a set of assumptions that everyone will play nice.
We didn’t hold Bill Clinton accountable. Don’t get me wrong, the Republicans abused the special council laws and went on a fishing trip for what seemed like all of Bill Clinton’s presidency until Ken Star found the intern Bill Clinton was sexually harassing. Of course the Republicans didn’t care about that part, and for a shameful period I pretended as such as well. The Republicans only cared about perjury and a sex scandal. The perjury was enough to start an impeachment and the sex scandal was what a corporate owned media who pretends to fair to both sides wanted for their purposes. At the time I supported MoveOn.org and supported not impeaching Bill Clinton. But he should have been impeached for sexual harassment in the workplace and been appropriately held accountable. And so should all the Republicans who have done so as well.
But then on September 11th, 2001 four planes went down and accelerated our slide towards authoritarianism. Democrats were cowed into going along with horrendous legislation essentially authorizing permanent war and ceding the right to declare war to the President. It was soon after we finished invading our first country that President Bush decided to follow the Neocon wet dreams of attacking Iraq and fulfilling his own personal grudge. President Bush and his administration lied repeatedly to the country regarding the existence of WMD in Iraq. It was painfully obvious to me and anyone listening to the weapons inspectors who had been there that this was entirely fictional. Yet no war crime investigations were ever held (at that level). Most likely because many democrats voted for that war.
Senator Biden and Senator Clinton where amongst many Democrats who voted to launch a war because they were too afraid to be seen as against an unjust war. I never forgave either of them for that and they shouldn’t be forgiven. Oh, I actively supported and voted for both for president after they won their respective nominations because I’m not stupid. But that doesn’t make me forget they were never held accountable either.
We’ll come back to their Presidential ambitions, but first we need to talk about President Obama. I loved him while he was running. He talked like a dream Progressive candidate. Then he attempted to govern from the middle all the while pretending he didn’t notice the Republicans blocking every single agenda he had. But Mr. Obama was never a progressive, at least with regards to his voting record in the senate and what he accomplished as a President. He got a thoroughly Republican health care plan through congress and they still hated him for it. Obamacare was all the worst stuff offered by Republicans when Bill Clinton attempted to get health care passed. Obama gave Republicans everything they wanted and they hated him for it. And we gave him a second term. One that ended with a Supreme Court seat open because he didn’t fight hard enough to get it filled. I’m not sure he would have been successful forcing McConnell to hold a vote, but we’ll never know because I never saw him try hard enough.
Which brings us to Democrats nominating the politician with the most negative favorables ever to run for President. We nominated someone who had 20 years of negative campaigning against her. Other democratic women did not run in the Primary because “it was her turn” and so Democratic voters were never given a full set of choices because Clinton used her political power to preemptively shut down as many as she could ahead of time. I love Elisabeth Warren. I wish she had run in 2016 because I think she would have cleaned Clinton’s clock in a fair fight. But we’ll never know.
Which brings us to today. We are saddled with a Supreme Court who is just getting started. You think this is bad? Just wait until 2023 when Democrats have a real Senate Majority. Every single law passed, every single one, will be fast tracked to the Supreme Court where they will strike it down. Furthermore, they will use decisions to create law where none existed. And my greatest fear is that Democratic leadership will continue to let this happen instead of holding them accountable. These people lied to congress and one has a spouse who tried to overthrow the government. None of the 5 follow any sort of legal or moral principle in a consistent manner. They are never held accountable.
This isn’t going to stop until we start holding people accountable. That includes us as voters. I swear I’m going to punch in the nose the next person who suggests we go with the “electable” moderate democrat because they will magically win over non-existent swing voters while boring the socks off the rest of us.
We need fighters. We need Biden to fight. He’s shown more during his presidency than I expected of him. But he needs to show more. We need Feinstein to retire. Dear God someone please get her to retire. We need a fighter in her seat. She represents California! We should have a Sanders or a Warren in that seat. Someone willing to speak out against all that is going on and be a true leader. We need Pelosi and Shumer to step up or get out of the way. People love Pelosi and credit her with a lot. And she has done some good, but she’s also responsible for too many lackluster tepid responses to too many problems. It’s hard as a party to fight when most people expect Pelosi and Shumer to offer some inane pointless response instead of leading for true change.
And we as Democratic voters need to put people in office who will fight for us. We need to hold our politicians accountable, and that includes our own democrats. We should be as feared by moderate Democrats as the few remaining moderate Republicans are of their radicals. Not feared for the same reasons. They have gone to thuggery and demagoguery. Our politicians should fear a progressive left because we have the power to vote them out. Either get on OUR agenda or leave politics. No more being the party of Corporate lite. No more being the party of wishing things would get better while pretending we don’t know the answers.
We need to be the party of Fixing the Climate Problem!
We need to be the party of Fix Our Police!
We need to be the party of actual Justice For All!
We need to be the party of fix the Supreme Court!
We need to be the party of Accountability.