The canonization of Ashli Babbitt is going full bore now. Even Sears and KMart were carrying tee shirts for a short time, describing her as an “American Patriot” until a clamor on social media made the two retail giants reconsider their decision and pull the product. The shirts were part of a trend not only towards normalizing the riot but elevating it, by making her a martyr of the culture war.
Right after January 6, Trump’s approval ratings plummeted. Even Republicans were appalled by the carnage. Then various traitorous representatives and senators, plus right-wing media, got busy with the false flag lies, that the insurrection was harmless/an antifa false flag/the FBI did it and that finally has led to the present day stance that many GOPers are taking, that the insurrection was in fact a good thing, a patriotic thing, because Joe Biden is in the White House illegitimately, according to the Big Lie.
A recent poll shows that 74% of Republicans believe the Big Lie to be true and so Trump is set up to campaign on the Big Lie and other grievances, because that’s all he knows how to do is spew falsehoods and capitalize on anger. However, if handled properly, this could be a boon for the Democratic party. The Week:
Donald Trump has returned to political campaigning, and it’s already clear what he is going to obsess over for the next year and a half until the 2022 midterms: the January 6 putsch. In a recent speech, he demanded to know “who shot Ashley Babbitt?” (the QAnon believer who was shot that day while trying to attack members of Congress) and asked “How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6?”
This is a golden political opportunity for Democrats, if they aren’t too cowardly to take it. Trump’s putsch apologia is extremely unpopular, but Republicans have already given themselves no choice but to go along with it.
There are basically two kinds of Republican politician: delusional Trumpist true-believers, and amoral cynics who will say or do anything to get power. The financial executive and conservative author J.D. Vance, who is trying to get elected to one of Ohio’s Senate seats, is in the latter category. Because Trump commands such loyalty among the Republican base, when Vance’s 2016 tweets criticizing Trump for being morally abhorrent resurfaced, Vance had to grovel at Trump’s feet for days. Otherwise, he’ll never get power, you see: Trump is “the leader of this movement,” he told Time, “and if I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to just suck it up and support him.”
That is Trump’s stance and that is going to be the stance that the rest of his Republican flock takes as well. The dog is now wagging the tail and Trump is getting his talking points from the extremists in his party, rather than vice versa, him giving the talking points to them.
However, the problem that Trump’s going to find is that the corrupt GOP elected officials and the hardcore base do not reflect the rest of the country. If the Big Lie is Trump’s hill to die on, and it looks like it is, that will be just fine. Let him sell the insurrection as a fine and noble thing.
But that is not going to be a popular stance outside the hardcore Republican base. The putsch remains deeply alarming to most other Americans. And as for Babbitt, video evidence shows she was trying to break through an improvised barricade to get to the Speaker’s Lobby where members of Congress were being evacuated from the mob. The Capitol Police officer in question had his gun clearly visible and multiple warnings were heard. It was only when she tried to climb over the barrier that the officer shot her, and only her. As Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said afterwards, the officer “didn’t have a choice … The mob was going to come through the door, there was a lot of members and staff that were in danger at the time.” If the officer had not shot Babbitt, there’s a strong possibility multiple members of Congress would have been hurt or killed.
Still, it remains to be seen whether Democrats can muster the confidence and energy to start a pitched political battle over such an inflammatory issue. Their typical instinct has been to ignore Trump’s antics and focus on kitchen table issues like health care that are important of course but leave his violent extremism uncontested. It would be political malpractice to not point out when one’s opponents have wedded themselves to a deranged maniac who tried to overthrow the government and is clearly planning to do it again.
We have to fight fire with fire and the 2022 midterms are going to prove that beyond any doubt. Silence is considered acceptance. That’s how Trump got as far as he did. During the 2016 campaign he spoke one outrage after another and most of the time the Democrats did not directly address him because they didn’t want to dignify his idiocy with a response. The lack of push back backfired, it played out as acceptance, as a tacit admission that what Trump said was right.
We can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. If in fact he runs in 2024, and all indications at this moment point strongly in that direction, and if his signature issue is the Big Lie and “patriots’ taking America back a la 1776, then that’s the issue he needs to be beaten into the ground on.
This is a gift, if it’s accepted. Talking points need to be cultivated, citing facts which prove the Big Lie is just that, and those need to be put into campaign ads. For every lie he spews, the Democrats need to have an “oh, yeah?” factual response and hammer his Big Lie propaganda into retreat with facts and truth. This is the turning point. If Trump manages to sell the Big Lie to enough people, democracy is toast.
The most important two paragraphs I’ve read in a very long time,
‘We have to fight fire with fire and the 2022 midterms are going to prove that beyond any doubt. Silence is considered acceptance. That’s how Trump got as far as he did. During the 2016 campaign he spoke one outrage after another and most of the time the Democrats did not directly address him because they didn’t want to dignify his idiocy with a response. The lack of push back backfired, it played out as acceptance, as a tacit admission that what Trump said was right.
We can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. If in fact he runs in 2024, and all indications at this moment point strongly in that direction, and if his signature issue is the Big Lie and “patriots’ taking America back a la 1776, then that’s the issue he needs to be beaten into the ground on.’
I find myself taking issue with your comment we can’t make the same mistake twice. My problem is that after the disaster of the 2000 election and what it led to we had a real shot at making Bush 43 a one term President and maybe mitigating some of the damage. With Kerry, we had someone with both the political chops but also an actual record of military service and heroism that should have negated Bush and the GOP’s jingoism. Then the Swift Boat thing came out. Kerry played old school and pretty much took the stance that he wouldn’t dignify that bullshit smear by responding. Too many on our side went along, which is particularly appalling given Bush’s own draft dodger status. People forget (if they ever knew) that Yale graduate Kerry could easily have avoided military service entirely. He not only joined the Navy BUT also did a tour off the coast of Vietnam on a destroyer. He had “punched his ticket” as the saying goes, having served on a combat ship in an actual war zone (not a great threat but those MIGS were up there) and could have finished out his time and moved on with his career which included political ambitions. Instead her volunteered to go back for another tour, with the BROWN WATER NAVY. Those small patrol boats that went up and down the rivers through territory where the enemy might open fire from either side of the river. Or both. As we know, Kerry earned a Silver Star and the same Lt. George Elliot at the beginning of the Swift Boat as claiming Kerry lied about his actions on the river that day was one of the people who, in the aftermath of that engagement wrote an endorsement of his getting that Star. And he even hit the campaign trail with Kerry’s Swift Boat crew in Kerry’s last campaign for Senate before his Presidential run! It took a fucking fake news show, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to show the footage of Elliot on the stage at Boston Harbor praising Kerry’s heroism! As far as I know not a single real news outlet ever aired that footage. Maybe they were ashamed they hadn’t found it themselves. Or maybe they were still as cowed by the neocons as they were from the cheerleading that got us into that war. But in the heat of a Presidential campaign our side, from the candidate on down refused to fight back and hard. Kerry of course wasn’t the only Democrat the GOP painted with the “supports terrorists” brush. Hell, former Senator and Gov. Bob Kerry didn’t even run in 2000 because Karl Rove threw a shot across his bow basically saying he (Bob Kerry) would wind up being smeared as a war criminal over one disgruntled guy’s complaints about being disciplined for misconduct on a mission would be amplified. Think about what they did to Max Cleland, someone I had the honor of meeting twice and even sitting with during one of the 2004 debates during a viewing party in Martinsburg, WV.
So we had a history of not fighting back, much less doing so fiercely long before 2016. What happened in 2016 was strike two.
Now? I agree completely our side, from top to bottom needs to wade into the bar fight and punch, kick and gouge just like in real life (yes, I’ve been caught up in a few in my younger years) because three strikes and you’re out. And as we can see a “doctored” pitch is already well on its way to the plate.
What we SHOULD do is be the batter looking for a fight, who accidently on purpose lets himself gets hit by the pitch and instead of heading to first base instead charges the mound and stomps the pitcher into the fucking ground!
With Jaime Harrison in charge of the DNC? I’m not even slightly worried about any of the above. The dregs of the GQP continue to make themselves obnoxious, McConnell’s brains are visibly rotting in his head, Lincoln Project remains outside the Republican fold due to the current power struggle and Trump is too focused on revenge to distract from his upcoming indictments. All that’s needed in the face of that? The same basic political competence Biden showed in his campaign. We’ll have that for 2022.
Excellent article Ursula, and right on point!
If Kmart/Sears are carrying these shirts I wouldn’t worry about it as there are not many of them still open/operating. I was shocked to read ANY were still open as I thought they were out of business.