Dear Candidate,
I won’t be donating today, but I want you to understand why. If you are serious about representing the American people, please read this.
I donate regularly to a variety of causes, including political campaigns. I tend to vote for Democrats or Independents. But today, I cannot in good conscience offer money to anyone in a party that hasn’t figured out a way to get Congress working again.
Democrats had a chance yesterday. Before Tom Emmer was announced as a nominee for Speaker of the House, Dems should have met and agreed on a handful of moderate Republicans they could live with and should have been ready to make a deal to vote for any moderate Republican with the following qualifications:
not part of the insurrection
not in Trump’s back pocket
voted to certify Biden as the winner of the 2020 election
has a working knowledge of our Constitution
isn’t a criminal or someone indicted for a crime
knows how Congress is supposed to work.
Democrats would have had to keep their plan a secret to avoid getting sabotaged before the vote — telling the fewest Republicans possible and asking them to say nothing until the vote was over — but if they had kept it quiet and nobody told Trump or his lackeys a deal had been made, it might have worked.
If Jeffries had talked with Emmer the moment he was first announced, then reached out individually to every moderate Republican in the House to offer them an opportunity to secure their place in history as one of a handful of brave people who saved our democracy — not as a deal to be further bargained with — but as a single, simple solution to the problem of this dysfunctional Congress — I think it could have worked.
If Emmer knew he could get not only the Republican votes he needed but the votes of 210 Democrats and their future support for moderate legislation, he would not have had any reason to drop out of the running.
Once installed, he could have called a vote to remove the rule allowing a single person to remove the speaker, and we could at least begin to start the process of governing again.
Yes, the MAGA diehards like Gaetz would throw a fit, but they would no longer have the power to sabotage the government. This is how it is supposed to work. Crazies can talk crazy all they want — it’s their right. But they don’t have the right to destroy democracy.
The sane majority of Congress should not allow the insane minority to control the House. And since the Republicans have the majority in the House, the only way for sane people to become the ruling majority is for some Republicans and Democrats to work together. That is a fact that cannot be changed. So, when attempting to solve this problem, it must be addressed, not ignored.
Matt Gaetz and any other member who dares to say Republicans must not work with Democrats is telling them they must not work, period. It is a fundamental necessity for the two parties to work together. That’s the whole fucking point of our democracy. Gaetz should have been thrown out of Congress for that statement, or at the very least, it should have created an uproar, generating media attention and possible censure. Instead, we all laugh, sigh, or get angry and say, “See how ridiculous they are?”
But who is going to fix it?
I realize Emmer’s nomination only gave Dems three hours to reach him and make this offer. But they should have had a plan in place for this exact scenario and moved on that plan the moment a non-Trump, non-crazy, non-insurrectionist was nominated. They blew it.
Even if it didn’t work, even if every single Republican who agreed to vote for Emmer in secret changed their mind and voted against him after Trump made his despicable announcement dissing Emmer — Democrats would have shown the American people their willingness and their ability to compromise, work across the aisle, and lead.
Democrats could have made this a golden opportunity to showcase the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But they didn’t.
As it stands, Dems are acting like they have no responsibility for this mess. They continue to insist Republicans do the responsible thing, but that can never happen unless they let go of their albatross, Donald J. Trump. As long as he’s their leader, they are incentivized to do nothing but create chaos and destruction.
The only ones who can make anything happen now are Democrats. And instead of strategizing to help the American people, they are pointing fingers and going on talk shows to make sure we all know whose fault this is.
We don’t need speeches; we need solutions. I will not be funding any more candidates, campaign rallies, or Democratic causes until they start showing me they can fix things. I am lucky. I have the resources to be generous, but I won’t throw money away.
I will not donate to your cause because money isn’t needed. What you and your party need is balls and smarts. What you need is something money can’t buy. As we used to say in the Army, “No guts, no glory.”
Today, it’s more like “No guts, no government.” Think about that, please.
Respectfully,
L. A. Fosner
P.S. Forgive the “f” word. I don’t usually use it in my writing, but it indicates the intensity of my anger, and like it or not, there are times when no other word will do.