Post-Election and Post-Caving Thoughts

Democrats Continue to Shoot Themselves in the Foot

I’m writing from Japan where we’re visiting for a couple of weeks. The first week has been a challenge acclimating to the 15 hour time difference from Chicago and life on the other side of the International Date Line (IDL) where back home is yesterday and crowds of Westerners walk around here like Day of the Dead skeletons. For the first few days here I felt like Bill Murray battling jet lag in the film Lost in Translation.

A few impressions to share. Japan is a country of rule followers, something unheard of in America. Cultural norms have been in place for hundreds of years and still enforced by societal disapprobation with consequences. Bowing is a sign of respect and as ubiquitous here as a bowl of green tea. The Japanese are polite and nice to the point of almost being treacly. Modern rules include not talking on your cell phone on the train systems, subways lines, restaurants and other public places. Car horns are silent and running red lights doesn’t exist. Nary a crushed cigarette butt, stuck piece of gum or piece of trash anywhere. Dogs pee and poop on well placed paper towels. You can eat off of the streets. In many places where you are required to remove your street shoes, mostly where tatami mats are the floor coverings, Japanese bathrooms provide sandals to wear while doing your business and public urinals have signage instructing men on how to pee in the urinal and not on the ground. Waiting your turn in lines is a given. There’s no jostling or elbowing including on busy subways.

It has been a wonderful experience and disorienting at the same time compared to the social prerogative in America of, I can do whatever I want and too damn bad for how it may affect anyone else. Kris Kristofferson’s lyric famously sung by Janis Joplin, “Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” is not a triumphal anthem to be followed, but is a warning of unbridled freedom’s selfish consequences as when Bobby McGee’s left his lover with “Nothin, and that’s all that Bobby left me.” Japanese freedoms on the other hand are constrained by rules that honor the other and not just the self. And the trains run on time.

Which once again brings to me Donald Trump the biggest narcissist¹ the world has ever seen, at least in my time, and who lives by the pathology in extremis of “me, myself and I.” His “governing” philosophy, to the extent he has one, is not giving a flying flag for anyone or anything else. He loves only his reflection in a pool of water.² Some have analyzed Trump as a solipsist, less a mental condition than a philosophical idea that only one’s mind and reality is certain to exist.³ In other words, for Trump true facts exist only in his mind. Although for a real solipsist the external world is unknowable, yet Trump declares with certainty facts as false that are not in his mind. Again, like autocracy, dictatorship or fascism, who cares what his exact mental state is at this crisis point. I’m okay with batshit crazy (BSC).

Trump’s personality disorder was on full display this past week from his multiple cruelties in handling the shutdown to his response to the election ass kicking he received last Tuesday. A saner person would have a Plan B or C and an exit strategy that saves some face. However, in order to support his delusions of grandeur while punishing everyone in his path, including his known supporters, Trump is in denial for accepting any blame for the shutdown while hosting a Gatsbyesque affair at Mar-a-Lago while millions are starving in America and will continue to do so as long as he refuses to pay SNAP benefits. As for the election results, Trump gave us this chestnut from Truth Social and weirdly speaking in the third person: “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.” He also declared the passage of Prop 50 in California was a “fraud” and “criminal.” Talk about delusional, his GOP enablers in Congress, particularly Mike Johnson, are along for the ride to whatever electoral Hell Trump will take them to. But cracks in the wall are beginning to show.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is now a regular critic of the GOP leadership and especially Mike Johnson, while Rand Paul in the Senate has distanced himself somewhat from Crazyland. It’s unclear whether Greene has had a life changing epiphany (not likely), or reads the tea leaves as portending rough seas ahead for MAGA, Trump and the GOP. If it’s the later, she may be positioning herself as a GOP alternative, still fundamentally awful but not a political kamikaze.⁴

As I write this, seven Democratic Senators⁵ and one Independent have cut a shit deal with GOP Senators to reopen the government. The deal according to early reports would not include an extension of ACA subsidies which was the hill both sides appeared willing to die on. Notwithstanding recent polling blaming Republicans for the shutdown, and the election results last week that made not increasing health care premiums a top line issue, these eight Collaborators received nothing in return for their Senate votes except a pinky swear promise to bring up the idea of extending subsidies in January after millions of Americans will have already been forced to make a health care choice in the current open enrollment period. The Senate deal to reopen the government without extending ACA subsidies still has to be voted on by the House where the Democrats do not have enough votes there to crash the deal. Or do they?

Back to Greene. She has made reducing health care premiums and the impact rising costs will have on middle class families an attack point against GOP leaders for not coming up with a GOP plan. It would not be out of the realm of possibilities for Greene and a few other GOP House members to tube the Senate deal and insist on something more palatable than just letting the subsidies expire. This could end Mike Johnson’s lap dog speakership, which of course Trump would do nothing to save if he can take credit for a better deal.

If Greene can hold up the Senate deal it might be a good thing depending on her ask. But it is not a sustainable strategy for regaining power if even only a few Democrats have no balls and Schumer as leader can’t keep his caucus in line. His leadership is likely to end, as well. So, what are the rest of us to do and think in light of the election results last week as Democrats try to keep up pressure and coalesce around a winning strategy in 2026 and 2028.

There will certainly be calls to primary the Collaborators, but except for Durbin and Shaheen the other five and King are not up until 2028 and 2030 which make their actions even more reprehensible. Limited in-fighting is tolerable, but Democrats need to present a more-or-less unified message given the reprieve they received last week, and a message that can be parroted alike by moderates, left-center liberals and wanna-be Mondamis. Democrats can be a big tent and still find a coherent message that can be tailored to their individual circumstances.

Look to our Governors for leadership on fights over redistricting and against the Proud Boys in ICE. Moderate Governors-elect Spanberger and Sherill won by attacking Trump and talking about affordability. Progressives can make the same arguments and stop fighting over woke issues that most voters don’t care about one way or another. Sounds improbable after waving the white flag today and just after voters seemed to give Democrats another chance. But a year is a long time in politics and Trump isn’t going to win the Nobel peace prize any time soon while waging war in America. So while the Collaborators and Democratic leadership did more damage to their brand and to Americans’s trust that they are a party worth trusting, Trump will continue to give them no alternative. We can start by cleaning house and demanding that Schumer is no longer minority leader next Congress in January and instead replaced by someone like Chris Murphy or Amy Klobachar. In the end, we must continue to protest, resist and fight. After all, sitting out the election or casting a protest vote is in large part what got us Trump 2.0.

1. Officially described as a mental condition by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM V), symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) include a person who: has a grandiose sense of self-importance, lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur, needs constant praise and admiration, sense of entitlement, exploits others without guilt or shame, and frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/narcissistic-personality-disorder-symptoms-diagnosis-and-treatments. Trump is a textbook case.

2. Unlike Narcissus of ancient Greek mythology who shunned beautiful women while loving only his image, Trump has sought and pursued many women, often them by grabbing them by the P-word, which together with his other classic NPD behaviors are to counter his low self-esteem and rejection likely by his father Fred.

3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/08/donald-trump-media-coverage.

4. Sorry for all the Japanese metaphors.

5. The Collaborators include seven Democrats; John Fetterman, Tim Kaine, Jeanne Shaheen, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jackie Rosen, and Angus King, an Independent.