June 25, 2021

By Thom Hartmann

There’s an old saw that says, “You don’t negotiate with terrorists.” It’s corollary is, “And you don’t give terrorists credibility by appearing to negotiate with them or treating them as if they’re serious about reforming themselves.”

Somebody needs to tell the Democrats, and quickly.

Right now the Republican Party is pushing a few very simple and straightforward messages in advance of the 2022 midterm elections, which they hope will give them control of the House and Senate next year and set them up to take the White House in 2024.

They’re also hoping these simple, direct messages will activate enough voters at the state level that they’ll take a few more state legislatures so they can call a Constitutional Convention and rewrite the US Constitution to their liking.

The GOP’s message, which you’ll hear every night on Fox “News,” every day on rightwing radio, and straight from Republican elected officials is:

1.     Democrats are evil baby-killers and delight in killing more babies every year (and maybe even drink babies’ blood or put it in vaccines). They’re so evil in every regard that Republicans are obligated by their patriotism to block every single initiative, block their judges, and turn their presidencies into failures.

2.     Democrats want to “replace” white people, in their jobs, homes and wealth and are willing to give those white people’s jobs, homes and wealth to Black people and “illegal immigrants” via “socialism.”

3.     Democrats want white people terrorized by Black and Hispanic “criminals” and intend to bring this about by “defunding the police.”

4.     Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to suppress the vote when the Democrats, in fact, committed massive voter fraud in the 2020 election and plan to do it again. To save America, Republicans must stop them by tightening voter eligibility and removing “fraudulent“ people from the voting rolls in fraud-prone Black neighborhoods.

5.     Democrats want to turn your children into homosexuals and “drag queens” by changing laws, bathrooms, sports, and school curriculum.

6.     Democrats want to make your children hate themselves and you because you’re white and they’re doing this with “Critical Race Theory” at every level, from the military to the media to your local kindergarten.  

NONE of these things are true, but on-the-ground Republican base voters believe them all (and even more bizarre things). I know; they call into my radio/TV program every day to explain it to me and my audience.

And what is the Democrats main message going into the next two elections? 

1.     We like working with Republicans. They’re credible, trustworthy, patriotic and are our “friends.”

President Biden echoed that sentiment yesterday when he accepted a proposal for a pathetic less-than-$200 billion-a-year “infrastructure” bill from a group of 5 Republican and 5 Democratic senators, saying, “We have a deal.” Talking heads on TV breathlessly announced, “The GOP is compromising!” and began theorizing why that would happen.

Of course, 5 Republicans in the senate saying anything that contradicts Minority Leader McConnell’s commitment to give Democrats “no quarter” is absolutely meaningless; odds are 99.5% this is pure Lucy With A Football. Just wait until it turns into actual legislation and those same Republican hustlers start having “thoughtful objections.”

Just a month ago, McConnell said:  "One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration. … [A] narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate [want] to turn America into a socialist country, and that's 100 percent of my focus.”

McConnell’s message to Republican voters is that Democrats are terrorists who hate our country and want to turn us into Cuba or the Soviet Union. He, at least, has no intention of negotiating with Schumer or Biden, and he’s not shy about saying so. But he’s more than happy to let a handful of gullible Democrats do his work for him.

In fact, just hours after the GOP got their “we’re part of the infrastructure plan” publicity hit on national TV with President Biden, McConnell and Lindsay Graham announced that the “deal” is already dead.

“There's no way,” Graham said after Biden told reporters at the presser that Democrats would pass the rest of their infrastructure goal via reconciliation. “You look like a f*cking idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide mission.”

Cue the TV talking heads and national media who’ll spend the next month blaming Biden and progressives for “blowing up a bipartisan consensus.” GOP mission accomplished.

McConnell, the billionaires who fund him, and GOP leadership nationwide must be smiling ear-to-ear as they watch the same old rope-a-dope “negotiation” trick they used to drag out the Obamacare debate for over a year, jack up co-pays and premiums, and ultimately kill the public option.

McConnell’s buddy Joe Lieberman, who finally put the nail in the coffin of the public option thus ensuring Obamacare would mean billions in extra annual profits for his benefactors in the health insurance industry, is the guy who first put together the group that’s doing the “negotiating” that Biden announced yesterday.

The “deal” was negotiated by members of the so-called “Problem-Solvers Caucus,” an outgrowth of Lieberman’s “No Labels” group funded by hedge fund billionaires and other wealthy, conservative donors and corporate interests. The “Problem-Solvers” consistently work against Democratic Party priorities and public opinion, and operate with so little transparency that they don’t even list most of their members on their website.

Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan, former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells the story of how he was warmly welcomed into the group’s founding agency, No Labels, when he first went to Congress, but ejected when he asked one simple question: “Where does your funding came from?”

Their response was immediate, as Pocan writes: “We can quietly take you off our list.”

During his first few months in Congress, Pocan says of his brief association with the group, “I was duped.”

Blocked by Republicans in the senate and corrupted by “Problem Solver” sellouts to big money in their own caucus, Democrats are heading into elections that may well decide the fate and future of democracy itself in the US and around the world.

And they’re doing it with the most pathetic message imaginable, if Manchin, Sinema and other “Problem Solver” Democrats have their way:

“We’d like to get things done that more than 70%-80% of the American public (including the majority of Republicans) want, like a public option, ending student debt, taxing the rich, and raising wages through expanding unionization…but we really can’t do any of it because our Republican ‘friends’ object and we have to bow to their filibuster because ‘our friends’ are so credible, trustworthy and patriotic.”

You don’t negotiate with terrorists, and you don’t give them credibility by letting them pretend you are.

Donald Trump sucked up to the Saudis after they murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, kissed Vladimir Putin’s ass at Helsinki while trashing American intelligence agencies, and then literally hugged Kim Jong-un while Kim was threatening our country, building nuclear weapons and brutalizing his own people.

We’re still paying the price for Trump’s perpetual negotiations with terrorists, both in international credibility and the rule of law at home. Democrats shouldn’t emulate him.

Republican members of the House and Senate — over 140 of them — voted to overturn the result of the 2020 election just hours after people the FBI openly calls “terrorists” attacked our Capitol and tried to murder Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi. They even brought their own gallows, semiautomatic weapons and pipe bombs to DC.

Now, a host on one of the Republican-aligned TV networks is calling for a final “solution” to the problem of Democrats trying to guarantee the right to vote: just kill them. [see below]

Republicans have embraced a terrorist movement that is trying to destroy the American government and our way of life. It’s that simple. And a small group of “Problem Solver” Democrats are giving them honor and credibility as they do it.

I get it that Democrats are going out of their way to “prove” to the American people that Republicans won’t negotiate in good faith. But this is worse than a repeat of how that same strategy played out in 2010 with Obamacare.

All five of the Republicans who met with Biden yesterday openly supported Trump’s terrorists by voting against a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th. These are the Democrats’ “partners”?

If Democrats are serious about winning in 2022 they’ll do what McConnell did just a few years ago when he controlled the Senate.

McConnell wanted to get radical, rightwing Supreme Court judges on the bench for lifetime appointments, so he simply had all his Republicans vote to alter the filibuster so Kavanaugh couldn’t be filibustered. Then he ignored Democrats and went about installing Beer-Bong-Brett on the Court for life. After that, he cancelled the “summer recess” and spent those months cramming rightwing judges into lower court positions for life as well.

Democrats, if they played like Republicans, would have stopped negotiating with these Republican terrorist-lovers months ago. They would have ended the filibuster and passed the entire slate of legislation on which they ran.

But they’re hindered in this by a few “problem solving” members in the Senate…and by Biden and Schumer’s unwillingness to strongarm those Democrats the way LBJ did back in the 1960s to get the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid passed (among other things) over violent objections within his own caucus.

There are things the so-called “Problem Solver” senators both want and fear losing even more than the support of the No Labels billionaires, from committee assignments to leadership positions to earmarks helping their states. Like LBJ did regularly, Schumer and Biden do have the power to use those carrots and sticks. If only they will.

The stakes today are higher than any time since 1861, when our democracy was last assaulted by oligarchs and racists trying to overthrow this country.

If Democrats can’t demonstrate to voters they can take names, kick ass, kill the filibuster like McConnell did for Kavanaugh and get things done, the resulting voter apathy will kill Democratic turnout like in 2016 and the GOP will sweep the 2022 election. And that could mean the end of democracy in our republic for at least a generation and perhaps forever.

Biden, Schumer and the so-called “Problem Solvers” in the Democratic caucus need to wake the hell up.  When you negotiate with terrorists and thus enhance their credibility, you will lose every time.

The website of origin for this commentary is HartmannReport.Com.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution.

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