Ashes to Ashes
Elissa Slotkin’s Reagan-praising rebuttal to Trump suggests the Democratic Party establishment may be going the way of dust.
Because I do not hope to turn again. Because I do not hope. Because I do not hope to turn. So begins T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday. A meditation on faith in the cold, disenchanted world of modernity, Eliot’s Ash Wednesday takes its title from the day when Christians ponder their own mortality, marking the first day of the season of Lent, a time of reflection on the suffering of Christ leading up to the agony of the cross on Good Friday.
For members of the Democratic Party, the past month and a half has felt like the political equivalent of an early entry into the Lenten journey through darkness. From billionaires smirking front and center at Trump’s inauguration to the richest man on earth and his cronies hacking into government computer systems and freezing Congressionally approved payments to talk of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme to fears of Medicaid cuts and suppression of free speech on campuses, the first six weeks of Trump’s second administration have been nothing short of a waking dystopian nightmare. In his address to Congress last night, Donald Trump did not back down or sugar coat his drive to radically reshape our country in the image of oligarchy. Vindictive, manipulative, meandering, self-congratulatory, divisive, and filled with too many lies for a fact checker to keep up with, the hour and forty minute speech was vintage Trump. “We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in 4 years, 8 years,” Trump declared. For better or for worse, this may have been the most truthful statement Trump uttered the whole night, provided we can interpret the word “accomplish” broadly enough to include acts that substitute rule of law and democracy for a plutocratic autocracy. Still, the mounting public outcry over Trump and Elon Musk’s naked grasp for power on behalf of the ultra-rich has provided some glimmer of hope that Democrats would finally realize that they are in a kill or be killed struggle with the Billionaire Class. There was a fleeting hope that Democrats would turn again toward a robust left populist message that would call Trump’s second term what it is: the looting and pillaging by an emboldened Billionaire Class to vandalize the administrative state and sell its pieces to the highest bidder. Those hopes would be dashed when the Democrats sent Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin to the microphone to deliver her rebuttal to Trump’s speech.
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. All political parties, just like the human beings who comprise them, will one day return to the dust from which they were formed. Elissa Slotkin's speech last night demonstrates the Democratic Party’s startling state of decay at this pivotal moment. To Slotkin’s credit, her speech started on a relatively strong note, calling out the dangers of Elon Musk’s cyber meddling in government finances and the disproportionate benefits Trump’s tax plan would have for billionaires compared to the average American. But what could have been an unrestrained barrage on the scam and grift at the heart of all Trump’s policies would soon dissolve into tacit agreement with Trump’s searing indictments of the state of the Union he inherited from Joe Biden.
Like Tim Walz’s overly gracious debate performance against J.D. Vance and Kamala Harris’s whistle stop tours with Liz Cheney, Slotkin’s speech fell into the same centrist trap of agreeing fundamentally with Trump’s priorities but disagreeing with the tactics he uses to achieve them. “America wants change,” Slotkin admitted, “But there is a responsible way to make change, and a reckless way.” Reducing border crossings, reversing inflation, projecting American influence across the globe, cutting government waste are all pressing priorities, Slotkin affirmed. In doing so, she lent undue credence to Trump’s sharpest criticisms of the Biden administration. The takeaway was that Trump was too aggressive and too reckless in attacking the problems Biden could not solve. Slotkin unwittingly affirmed Trump’s most enduring appeal to independent voters: that he is a disruptive change maker who will not be hindered by the inertia of bureaucracy or the etiquette of career politicians when pushing his agenda forward. Slotkin and the establishment Democratic Party who put her up to the rebuttal speech, are still clueless that Americans have more of an appetite for reckless change than uninspired incrementalism when tackling the problems our country is facing. While the domestic policy sections of Slotkin’s speech felt like an admission of Democratic shortcomings during their last four years in power, it would be her comments on foreign policy that would reveal that the Democrats are wandering in an ideological wasteland more desolate than anything conjured up in the imagination of T.S. Eliot.
“As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s,” Slotkin declared, an obvious dig at Trump’s fawning admiration for Vladimir Putin compared to Ronald Reagan’s hyperbolic Russophobia. Even if it was only in comparison with the scourge that is Trump, glowing praise for Ronald Reagan marks a new low water mark for the Democratic Party. No single figure in American history did more to pave the way for the rise of Donald Trump than Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s signing of the Roth-Kemp tax cuts initiated the most radical upward redistribution of wealth in our country’s history, leading to the euthanasia of the American Middle Class and the rise of the mega-billionaires who are now busy dismantling our government. Reagan’s reckless tax cuts created the deficits now threatening the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Reagan’s constant fear-mongering about government being “the problem” has provided the ideological cover for Elon Musk and DOGE to tear the administrative state to bits. Reagan started the Trumpian practice of placing saboteurs and grifters like Anne Gorsuch in charge of federal agencies like the EPA to cripple them from the inside. Reagan flooded Central America with guns, illegally backing criminal death squads like the Nicaraguan Contras, actively fomenting the violence and chaos south of our border, fueling the migrant crisis that Trump never fails to exploit to his own benefit. Trump’s America is Reagan’s America in full flower. A Democratic Party that must praise Ronald Reagan in a hapless attempt to undermine Donald Trump is a Democratic Party completely devoid of principles and vision. By praising Ronald Reagan, Slotkin and the Democrats reveal the painful truth that Trump is not only the leader of the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party, forcing them to bend and twist in the ideological wind so pliantly that they would honor a president whose deception and destruction made the deception and destruction of Donald Trump possible in the first place.
“Don’t for one moment fool yourself that democracy isn’t precious and worth saving. But how do we actually do that?” Slotkin asked as her speech drew to a close. I felt the Reagan-induced nausea fade as I hoped that Slotkin might hint at policies that could thwart the billionaire menace threatening our country. A Constitutional Amendment to reverse Citizens United and enact a wealth tax that limits billionaire influence over elections? A commitment to Medicare For All being the new norm for Democratic health policy, as was hinted by Tim Walz this week? A Universal Job Guarantee to blunt the impact of mass government layoffs and white collar downsizing from Artificial Intelligence? Nope. Nothing was offered by the Democratic Party as a policy platform to inspire resistance in the struggle ahead. Instead Slotkin gave us the citizens instructions for protecting democracy, telling us to stay tuned in, hold elected officials accountable, and organize. Laying the burden of stopping Trump on the citizens, Slotkin at least did us the service of reaffirming that we cannot expect the Democratic Party establishment to save the citizens from Donald Trump. It is up to us, the citizens, to save ourselves.
Because I cannot hope to turn again. Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something. Upon which to rejoice. On this Ash Wednesday we cannot passively hope that the establishment Democratic Party will turn again toward policies that protect us from the ascendent oligarchy. As T.S. Eliot reminds us though, even when we can’t hope to turn again we can still rejoice, and it is up to us to construct something that provides a platform for this rejoicing. Trump, like Reagan before him, will one day return dust and face whatever fate awaits him on the other side of this earthly veil. We must rejoice at the chance to construct something that endures longer than the misdeeds of mortal men, even the most powerful. On this day when our fleeting mortality is in focus, let us act boldly and heed Elissa Slotkin’s advice to tune in, organize and hold our Democratic elected officials responsible for creating a party platform that promises to do more for the American people than merely mitigate the damage inflicted by Donald Trump.