After a 10 ½ hour job interview, courtly Southern gentleman Senator Jeff Sessions waltzed through his screening for Attorney General. Eric Lichtblau, saying that Sessions “appears headed to confirmation”, had this to say in the NYTimes:
Mr. Sessions and his allies had girded for a coordinated attack on his civil rights record, but Democrats tempered their criticism and Republicans mounted a pre-emptive defense, describing him repeatedly as a man of integrity.
On its editorial page the Times described it this way:
Jeff Sessions, the senator from Alabama who was once considered too racist to be a federal judge and is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, managed to skate through most of the first day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee with smooth talk and a conveniently faulty memory.
Meanwhile, out in the real world progressive groups such as this one called on us to call our Senators to express outrage at the prospect of an authoritarian racist from becoming Attorney General of the United States. And this disconnect was drawn in stark contrast during the hearing, again from the Times editorial:
During the hearing, Republicans were ready with lavish praise and defenses of his character against charges of racism, while Democrats rarely offered more than tepid and predictable criticisms. Meanwhile, outraged protesters repeatedly interrupted the hearing with denunciations of Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump before being dragged out by Capitol police officers.
Neither is this genteel civility on the part of the Democratic leadership at times of acute political crisis new. In 2009 after 8 years of willful disregard for the law by the outgoing Bush administration, President Obama rejected calls to investigate, let alone prosecute, members of the Bush administration for violating the Geneva Convention while operating clandestine bases overseas for the express purpose of torturing people. Some of these people were innocent (one Canadian was whisked away for months and tortured only to find that he was not the man they were seeking). Some died in captivity. His rationale? He wanted to “look forward, not backwards”. He similarly refused to prosecute any of the corrupt bankers who caused the collapse of the world economy, allowing Jamie Diamond to boast that he was “doing God’s work”. And illegal warrantless wiretapping by Bush? Looking forward not backward.
Now after Republicans waged an eight year slash-and-burn program of trying to crash the federal government, blindly opposing every initiative put forward by Obama, refusing to seat any Democratic nominees to the courts and suppressing voters across the country, where are the Democrats? They have done nothing to slow the work of the Senate to a crawl by denying unanimous consent. They just let a racist who refused to say he wouldn’t go after reporters, a man dubbed “The Grim Reaper of Alabama” for his brutal pursuit of the death penalty in tainted cases and against the mentally retarded, slide through his hearing; and they picked right wing hack Ron Fournier to moderate a DNC chair debate, of all things.
If you feel a deep sense of frustration, as if there are two realities in the Democratic Party, one at the ground level and another among the leadership, then maybe that is because there is. Is it a sense of “the weight of power on the shoulders of the leadership”? Or is it the restraint imposed by promises made to wealthy donors? Or simply disinterest and contentment bred by a long successful career — living in a bubble of opulence free from fear, of surviving day by day? I know this, it is not by virtue of a keen sense of leadership during a time of crisis when democracy itself is at stake.
Next up? Rex Tillerson, compromised tool of Exxon and Putin — be sure to call your Senator.