There needs to be a price for backstabbing

What happened was nine Democrats stabbed the rest of their party in the back, the latest instance of backstabbing that is rapiding turning into a trend, in which patriots put their hopes in the party that has told them it will fight tyranny only to cave when the going gets tough.With Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, they are John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Independent Angus King of Maine.Indeed, most of the Democrats in the United States Congress, which is to say all but 10 of them (Maine Congressman Jared Golden was the lone House Democrat), voted against the continuing resolution that will accelerate the president’s dismantling of the federal government. Some of them took enormous risk in voting against it, as New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told us. They won Trump districts. It would have been easier to go with the flow. They didn’t.Though most of the party did the right thing, those who did the wrong thing now cast a shadow on the whole of the party, not just among so-called leftists, but, as I said, among patriots who understand that the Democrats are the main vehicle for resisting totalitarian drift.So it is not enough to say, “Oh, well, at least close to all of them did the right thing,” because as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. There is no resistance if all it takes for it to crumble is nine backstabbing senators, especially when four of them come from states so blue they never have to worry about a Republican challenger.No, there must be accountability of some kind. There must be a price paid for backstabbing. There is no rule saying that Schumer must continue being the party’s leader in the Senate. Those senators who were stabbed in the back can hold a vote of no-confidence on Schumer. They can work with House Democrats to continue pressuring him. If there is no accountability, I don’t know why patriots would continue to put their faith in a party that is – there’s no other way of putting it – controlled from above by its own internal oligarchy. House Democrats are not going to forget what Schumer did. “Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Democrats have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House,” AOC said. “We had an agreed upon plan. House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it with a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.”What happens next isn’t clear, but the most immediate impact is loss of faith. Before the vote, Schumer told Chris Hayes that “we have to fight them every step of the way,” meaning Trump, Elon Musk and the Republican, to which Hayes gave a look of utter exasperation, as Schumer was saying in the same breath that he was not going to fight. After the vote, Dick Durbin took to Bluesky to say that even though he was also not going to fight, he “will continue to fight against Donald Trump’s reckless, and in many instances, illegal attempts to gut the federal government. He is testing our system of checks and balances like they haven’t been tested in my lifetime. The fight continues.” You can see for yourself what the reaction was.Last night’s vote revived lingering suspicions. The Democrats had said that Donald Trump is a menace to democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law. They told us there were moments in history in which good people had to make a stand. They continue sending fundraising emails asking for $5 so they can take the fight to the enemy. After last night’s vote, the question is: which of the Democrats meant what they said and which said those words because they sounded real nice? For anyone who pays attention to party politics, last night’s vote wasn’t an isolated incident. It does, however, have the making of a watershed moment, after which normal Democratic voters who believed that the Democrats are doing everything they can do no longer believe that.A Bluesky account by the handle Eric Blair (George Orwell) said that Schumer doesn’t “realize when he announced he’d vote yes on the Republican CR that he has let the genie out of the lamp, and it’s not going back in. I’m seeing hundreds of engaged Democrats with the scales peeled from their eyes about Senate procedure, seeing through the Schumer Smokescreen, and they are absolutely infuriated.“This feels like a major tipping point in US politics. We will see.”NOW READ: The death of Chuck Schumer’s career — and the future of the Democratic Party

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