I had other things I wanted to write about today, but Venezuela is the only thing to talk about. Trump’s distractions work because he doesn’t just say “look over there” - he does something genuinely terrible that means we have to look.
I don’t like repeating what others have been saying; on a day like this, there are thousands of posts repeating the same thoughts. So let’s clear out a few things that are true and that I’m hearing from a lot of places:
Trump’s actions in Venezuela were immoral, unconstitutional, and stupid. Plunging a nation into chaos under false pretenses is bad. Attacking a foreign nation without Congress’s approval is bad. Destabilizing a region and (further) destroying our credibility on the global stage is bad. This was a very dark day in American history.
The administration had motivations that have nothing to do with drugs or democracy. Not a hot take - Trump said so in his press conference this morning expressly. He specifically talked about oil and about the desire to exert dominance in the western hemisphere, both of which are consistent with what he’s said in the past. The W. Bush administration took great pains to deflect the charge that they were in Iraq for oil, but Trump doesn’t have to bother with that.
This was intended as a distraction. Of course it was—from the Epstein files, from a weak economy, etc. But we need a different word than “distraction.” Distraction suggests that we typically are in control of our attention and the President sometimes tries to point it somewhere else. This administration is always tying to manipulate our attention; the remarkable scenario is not when they manage to control the nation’s attention, but when they fail to. What’s the word for incessant, unavoidable distraction? It may be that we’re smart enough to recognize their manipulation, but like I said above, that doesn’t mean we can look away—the scale of this violation compels us.
So here are a few things I’d like to add:
We still don’t get the way Trump has consolidated power.
I’m seeing a version of “Why doesn’t Congress do something?” all over the place. To pick one (only because Reich is prominent online—there are lots like this):
Constitutionally, yes, Congress can do something. But here are two things we’ve learned:
First, Republicans in Congress are not going to do something. This is not the Trump first-term Republican GOP still getting used to his takeover of the party. Since then, natural selection has swept through and any Republican opposed to Trump has either bent the knee or left the field. This is a party tailored for acquiescence. The corollary of the first-term refrain “Is this the day he started acting presidential?” is the second-term fantasy “Is this the day the GOP does its national duty?” They weren’t shaken out of it when troops and masked agents were deployed in American cities, or when an agency that provides life-saving nutrition and medicine to millions around the world was axed, or when critical cancer research was canceled on a whim. This is not going to do it.
Second, the Constitution gives Congress almost no ability to enforce its actions—for that, we rely on the good faith of the president. Play this demand for action forward. What are they going to do? Hold hearings? If the administration shows up, it’ll be to attack Democratic lawmakers in order to create viral video. Pass laws constraining the President? For that to work, it would have to pass Republican majorities in both chambers, get signed by the very President who’s going to be constrained, and then get upheld by a Supreme Court intent on eliminating checks on the presidency. So what are we talking about?
It boils down to the dissonance between these statements:
Statement 1: Trump is an autocrat who governs without consulting Congress and against their wishes
Statement 2: Congress has the power to stop him
If Congress really “has the power to stop all of this“ then he’s not an autocrat. So which is it? (It’s statement 1.)
We are still fooled by political performance
The calls for impeachment are all over Democratic channels today, including from my opponents in the race. The refrain is “Impeach. Convict. Remove.”
I could not agree more that what was done last night was impeachable. But to the points above, I think it’s unlikely we get an impeachment and essentially impossible that we get a conviction. If that’s right, failed articles of impeachment or acquittal will hand Trump a major political victory—he beat his far-left persecutors a third time!—and amount to post hoc ratification of his actions by Congress. Maybe I’m wrong, but after two failed impeachments, the burden of proof is on the ones calling for it that it’s going to turn out differently.
I understand the appeal. It’s something we can do. It’s an action we can rally for. It gives us agency. But we can’t afford to be anything but strategic now. We’ve got less than a year until the midterms and under three years until the presidential election to go from a party that’s underwater in public perception (the President’s job approval is at 43.4 and Democratic Party favorability is 32.5) to one that can win big. A dead-end impeachment would be a performative waste of precious time.
We don’t understand the full cost of what’s been done
As bad as we know this was, we’re still not talking about the full cost. We talk about this as a violation of law and norms, and it is, but we should measure what’s been done not against the pre-Trump status quo but against what’s needed in this century. I don’t want the United States to ever instigate armed conflicts, but it should be obvious that there are more coming in this century and that we will need to be ready. The most obvious source will be the rise of autocratic powers that are consolidating strength, collaborating, and extending their influence. Ukraine is only the first test, and we’re walking away from it at the same time that we’re diving back into idiotic, unsanctioned regime change. The world will need an America in this century that has a strong, modern military, one that isn’t wasted on pointless conflicts, and that has the trust and goodwill of allies. Even before Trump, we had work to do to get there. Anything we want to accomplish, including every progressive goal, depends on a safe and prosperous world. This wasn’t just a violation of norms, but an enormous step in the wrong direction that we can’t afford.
Why do Democrats keep wishing for near-term fixes? Why do we believe that all that’s missing is “fight?” Why are we seduced by performative politics? My guess is that it’s motivated reasoning: it’s easier to believe that our representatives could stop this if they would just “grow a spine” than it is to come to grips with what autocracy really is and what it’s going to take to get out. For all the months of this campaign, I’ve felt like someone shouting into the void: the abuses don’t stop until we take back the White House, and that means building a party that can win decisively.
Last night, I saw a violent, greedy administration that’s tragically unfit for office. Today, I saw a fumbling opposition party still incapable of removing them.