After years of serving as enablers for a faltering President Joe Biden, Democrats in Congress must finally break away from his leadership — for the sake of their party and the survival of democracy in this country.
Donald Trump, the man whom Gen. Mark Milley called “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country,” does not deserve to have the blue carpet rolled out for him at the White House. Yet such hospitality was key to Biden’s message in his Rose Garden speech on Thursday.
It’s one thing to pledge to “ensure a peaceful and orderly transition,” as Biden did. It’s quite another to proceed as though this is a normal transition and a normal incoming president.
Instead of rising to the historical moment with clarity about the grave and imminent challenges ahead, Biden opted for ominous silence about the clear and present danger to the republic that America will face beginning Jan. 20, 2025.
To the tens of millions of Americans who are deeply alarmed about the future of this country under a second Trump administration, Biden offered only some of his usual aphorisms, along with vague pep-talk phrases like “setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.”
When Biden assured the nation that “we’re going to be okay,” the statement failed to live up to his responsibilities as someone who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
That Constitution is now under dire threat. But you wouldn’t know it from what Biden had to say. Instead, what screamed out were his silences, as though the well-founded and widespread worries about Trump’s fascistic qualities are no longer of great moment.
In effect, Biden began to blaze a post-election trail of conciliation toward the extremist politics of the present-day Republican Party. If congressional Democrats follow along that path, they will compound their grievous error of serving as yes-men and yes-women for Biden’s insistence on running for reelection, until his disastrous debate performance.
A huge looming question now is whether Democrats in office will fold up their tents and retreat — or fight back against the MAGA forces that are on the march.
It’s long past time for Democrats on Capitol Hill to stop playing follow-the-leader and start providing actual leadership worthy of their constituents. For one thing, members of Congress should refuse to echo Biden’s post-election rhetoric and instead speak plainly and forcefully about the rough road ahead to protect civil liberties and the rule of law.
In particular, Democrats in the Senate should make full use of the two months ahead. Those who can wield committee gavels before the changeover should hold high-profile hearings to spotlight vital facts about the Trump record, MAGA threats to democracy and the enormous dangers that the Project 2025 agenda poses.
Looking ahead to next year, Democrats should jettison the standard rhetoric about reaching across the aisle. Voters who elected Democrats will not take kindly to odors of capitulation to the GOP. And in 2026, those who behave as quislings will risk vigorous primary challenges.
In a word, what the Democratic base has been yearning for — leadership — needs to emerge from the party’s lawmakers who have been tragically willing to go along with the catastrophic political edicts from the Biden White House and the Democratic National Committee. What’s past is prologue, but retrospective understanding could help light a fire under elected Democrats who wasted years publicly supporting the idea of Biden running for reelection while privately bemoaning it.
Biden has squandered the immediate post-election period by setting a bad example for Democrats. It’s a pattern that has been integral to the chain of events that led to the very long delay in his departure from the 2024 race and a badly truncated campaign by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The futures of the Democratic Party and the nation as a constitutional republic are inextricably intertwined. To be sure, that’s not because of any great virtue to be found within the Democratic Party. The reality is that in the two-party system, the Democrats are the only bulwark against the runaway power of the MAGA Republican Party — and the transformative agenda so clearly and ominously mapped out by Project 2025.
Right now, huge numbers of Americans are holding their breath, with great trepidation, to see if “the system” can withstand the massive stress test ahead. The Democratic Party has failed to avert this existential crisis for our nation as the vaunted land of the free. To avert irreversible catastrophe, the historic burden now falls on Democrats in elected positions to step up to their responsibilities at last.
Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His book “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine” was published in 2023.
