Is This the Best the Democrats Can Do?

Here you have it: The Democrats! One says he has a response but can’t say what it is or when he’ll use it, and the other one is pushing a 10-year-old Republican talking point. America has never needed an effective opposition party as badly as it needs one now; instead we have the most feckless Democratic leaders of the past 100 years.

The best thing that can be said is that Schumer and Jeffries are finally clearing the lowest of bars in their approach to Trump. For the first few months of the administration, they were guided by the belief that the iron law of political gravity would simply bring him down on its own. It had before, after all. To their minds, after being subjected to a daily barrage of crude tweets and fascism, ordinary people would finally wake up and realize that the Democrats were the only responsible, grown-up party. You know, the party that wasn’t really doing much.

To be fair to Schumer and Jeffries, this was born out of the unfortunate reality that there wasn’t much that they could do—at least in their functions as party leaders. The Democrats were out of power in the House and the Senate, and Republicans had stacked the Supreme Court despite having only won the popular vote in three presidential elections in the last 40 years. But politics can take many forms beyond legislative maneuvers and parliamentary tricks. Donald Trump’s rise is proof of this. Resistance is not solely built around investigations and legislative obstinance. One important part of politics is highlighting abuses and exploiting them. As The New Republic’s editor, Michael Tomasky, pointed out back in March, these are tasks to which Schumer and Jeffries are ill suited. And Democrats, to their regret, have not empowered those who might more deftly serve as attack dogs to take up the fight.