Tuesday night, just before President Donald Trump gave his first congressional speech of his second term, Representative Lateefah Simon (D-CA) gave a “prebuttal” statement. With this highly visible moment, Simon took on the president whose agenda is so different from hers. It was likely a speech that thrilled the progressive left and even a fair amount of the party centrists.
It was showmanship, of course. No one really cares about official rebuttals from the opposition party, unless the person has an awkward moment drinking water. As Bulwark reporter Lauren Egan noted about rebuttal speakers, “The goal is to just not end up on SNL this weekend. . . . “
Simon likely cleared that bar, but mostly because no one cares. Though Simon is an elected member of the Democratic Party, she gave her speech on behalf of the Working Families Party, a 27-year-old left-wing grouping. Why didn’t she give the official Democratic Party response after Trump’s speech? Because that was delivered by Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for anyone who stayed glued to the screen for that long.
The progressive left loved Simon’s speech, which made a big deal of her background and history. The Nation’s Joan Walsh heaped praise on Simon, at one point snarking, “I’m sorry some on the left don’t like what they call ‘identity politics.’” Despite the fact that it serves to deepen divisions and stereotypes, identity politics is also disliked by many centrists because it loses elections.
But a couple hours before her speech, Simon talked with Politico and took aim . . . at fellow Democrats. She sought to counter the moderate Democrats who are saying the party has moved too far to the left and needs to swing back toward the center, where national elections are usually won or lost. According to Politico, “Simon argued the party should instead swing left to bring around low-income voters who have been ‘betrayed’ by Trump’s proposed cuts to . . . safety-net programs.”
Simon sought to counter moderate Democrats who are saying the party needs to swing back toward the center, where national elections are usually won or lost.
Simon told Politico California Playbook, “There are folks in the Democratic Party who are saying we should not honor the beautiful fabric (of diversity) that we have fought to weave together. . . . I say, ‘Absolutely not. That is not how we win. . . . You’re abandoning the very premise of the civil rights and human rights movement of this country. I think it is reprehensible.”
Abandoning the country’s civil and human rights movements would indeed be reprehensible, but of course I have seen no Democrat suggest anything of the sort. This is gaslighting by Simon; either you accept her definitions of the problems and solutions, or you’re on the side of evil.
What centrists are saying is that the prescriptions offered up by the hard left don’t work; they’ve divided people instead of bringing them together; they are performative rather than productive; and one more thing: They poll worse than a Fyre Festival headlined by Nickelback.
In her speech, Simon gave the Working Families Party credit for raising the minimum wage and getting people sick and family leave. Now, there just aren’t enough Working Families Party members or elected officials to have done all that. You know who did? Democrats.
They’re also the ones who passed Obamacare, Social Security, and a host of other popular protections for Americans. And, with the help of the now-extinct brand of moderate Republicans, they passed landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s, a move that more or less laid the groundwork for the revanchist GOP of today.
Slotkin basically made much of that case in her official Democratic Party rebuttal. She also did a better job criticizing the president, his billionaire buddies, his extreme policies, and his economic performance, and the damage to America’s security — and she did it without taking aim at her own party. She reached out and didn’t just try to corral her own.
Donald Trump is an example of what happens when a party lets its extremists steer the ship. Gone are any attempts to see Democrats as a loyal opposition; instead, it’s a war of good versus evil of apocalyptic proportions (if only MAGA people claiming to be Christians spent more time reading the Gospels and less time fiddling with Revelations). Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza both made oodles of money publishing books attacking the center and trying to demonize centrists (anyone remember Coulter’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism?).
Simon’s speech wasn’t all bad. Much of it was quite powerful and pointed. Some of it could easily have been given by any Democrat. But in her speech, Simon says she’s “honored to serve as a fellow Working Families Democrat.” If the Democrats can’t field a candidate in Oakland who can win as a Democrat Democrat, then the party has more troubles than it thinks. Because the progressive left is an adjunct of the Democratic Party and not the core.
Thank God.
