WHEN REFUSING TO HEAR ‘NO’ TURNS LETHAL
Dear Democrats: Congratulations. You had your big chance in this week’s midterm elections to blunt President Donald Trump’s demagoguery, and you didn’t totally blow it.
That’s not a small thing. Sure, you’re disappointed that you didn’t win more Senate seats or more governors’ mansions. But you won a majority of the House. You expanded representation by women and people of color. You can now take charge of House committees and their subpoena power.
I don’t know whether Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and one of Trump’s favorite punching bags in his rally speeches, can or will use the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee, for which she is next in line, to subpoena the president’s tax returns, which he refuses to release. But, ah, isn’t it pretty to think she will?
What is certain for now is the check that Democrats can provide on at least some of Trump’s wretched excesses, for which he has been enabled by his fellow partisans.
They can bring real oversight of the executive branch and clean up the carnival of corruption generated by scandalized members of the president’s Cabinet and his own family.
Trump acknowledged a reality that was obvious to anyone who was paying attention:
Even though his name wasn’t on the ballot, this election was a referendum on his presidency. He hoped his endorsements would have long coattails, which they probably did.
But, while most of his endorsed Senate candidates survived, which was expected since a number of them were in safe seats, he had conceded that the Republican House majority probably would be a goner. Turnout by Democratic voters increased by double digits in many districts compared to the midterms of 2014.
The result is a new Congress that will be younger, more female and more ethnically and racially diverse than ever.
Two Midwestern districts elected Muslim women to Congress for the first time. Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s nominee, will represent their strongly Democratic districts. Omar will also be the first Somali-American woman in Congress.
Democrats also elected the first Native American women to Congress, Sharice Davids, who unseated Kansas Republican Kevin Yoder, and Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who replaces Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who vacated the seat to run for governor.
In Texas, victories by Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia will make them the first Latinas from the Lone Star State to go to the House.
Victories like those, well within this nation’s tradition of offering opportunities for newcomers of all races and backgrounds to work hard and contribute to American prosperity, stand in stark contrast to President Trump’s repeated use of immigrants and their families as objects of fear and loathing.
We saw that in his closing arguments at rallies last weekend. A day after the Labor Department’s glowing report of 250,000 jobs added to the economy in October, Trump decided — against the pleas of House Speaker Paul Ryan, according to Politico — to continue attacking the migrant caravan of mostly Honduran refugees slowly making their way across Mexico to seek asylum status in this country.
Why? As Trump told the Montana rally on Saturday, he needed to talk about the “crisis” at the border to really fire up his base. “I can only go for four or five minutes with that (economic) stuff,” he said, “and then the crowd says, ‘We love you,’ and then they start dwindling off.”
No wonder Trump’s supporters appreciate how he “tells it like it is.” Most traditional presidents would accentuate the positive, as Ronald Reagan famously did. But to Donald Trump, no pitch is too dangerously inflammatory or divisive to use in firing up his crowd.
President Trump has been leading our diverse country down a dangerous path of division with his presidency, unfortunately enabled by his fellow congressional Republicans. In such circumstances, the opposing party, supported by the voters, has not only an opportunity but a duty to push back.