GAETZ'S DOWNFALL IS A WIN, BUT IT'S NOT OUR WIN

Amanda Marcotte gives credit for Matt Gaetz's downfall to "the resistance."

It's a reminder that resistance is not futile.

Gaetz throwing in the towel is a necessary reminder that it can pay to fight back.

But what did we do, exactly, that led Gaetz to withdraw, according to Marcotte?

Republicans were sullenly falling into formation behind this pick, as evidenced by the suppression of the ethics report. But because ordinary people showed some spine — and some interest in consuming news about the scandal — the embarrassing details about Gaetz kept coming out.

So we "resisted" by watching and reading news about Gaetz's sex scandals?

If that were sufficient to bring down a Republican, Pete Hegseth would have withdrawn is name by now as well. Attention to scandals might also have brought down Robert Kennedy Jr., although the sexual assault allegations against him haven't received nearly enough attention. And, of course, we wouldn't be talking about any of these nominations if consuming news about sexual assault were a successful resistance tactic, because Donald Trump wouldn't have won the election.

The truth is that Gaetz is gone because Republicans opposed him.

Mr. Gaetz told people close to him that after conversations with senators and members of their staffs, he had concluded that there were at least four Republican senators in the next Congress who were implacably opposed to his nomination: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the newly elected John Curtis of Utah. With a 53-member majority, four defections would be enough to defeat the nomination.

It would be nice to think that fear of Democratic and swing voters led to this outcome, but that's unlikely. Collins is up for reelection two years from now in a blue state, but Murkowski won't need to run again until 2028. Curtis just won his seat and won't need to defend it until 2030. McConnell has stepped down as Republican leader and probably won't run in 2026, when he'll be 84, but he's in a red state where the one popular Democrat, Governor Andy Beshear, says he won't run for the Senate seat (probably because he's gearing up for a presidential run).

Yes, there was probably an element of resistance in the leaking of details about the Gaetz investigations (although the leaks could also have been the work of people who support Trump but despise Gaetz). Nevertheless, no one in the Democratic leadership stood up and openly defied Trump on this nomination. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called for the release of the Ethics Committee report on Gaetz but didn't demand it, and no Democrat leaked it. As a result, the public won't associate this win with our side. If you're a voter to whom it now appears that sexual predators are operating with impunity, you're seeing no evidence that Democrats have your back.

And we're being told that this is by design:

Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader for a few more weeks, is not known for keeping his thoughts to himself. But he has been uncharacteristically restrained about offering up his views on even the most eyebrow-raising potential Trump administration nominees emanating from Mar-a-Lago.

“We’re going to wait and see what happens in each of these instances before commenting,” Mr. Schumer told reporters this week, passing up a television camera-ready opportunity he would normally grab to slip a knife into any of the president-elect’s cabinet picks.

He is keeping quiet for a reason, and it is not because he does not have opinions on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration in the making. With some Republicans raising their own profound concerns about Mr. Trump’s ethically and legally challenged choices, such as the former Representative Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, why get in the way of their intraparty hand-wringing?

Why get in the way of Republicans' intraparty handwringing? Because there may not be any more of it. It's quite possible that every other Trump appointee will sail through, including alleged rapist Pete Hegseth, Russian agent Tulsi Gabbard, and polio vaccine opponent Robert Kennedy Jr.

What does Schumer think would be the downside of being forthright about these nominees now?

Mr. Schumer does not want Republicans to be able to paint him as the face of the opposition, a prospect that could help rally the G.O.P. around Mr. Trump’s choices.

Heaven forbid! We certainly wouldn't want the American people to think that Democrats have different opinions from Republicans!

Donald Trump barely won this election. He didn't win a majority of the popular vote. Even Peter Baker of The New York Times is reporting this. Why are Democrats still so afraid to speak up in opposition to him? After a presidential campaign whose main message often seemed to be "See, I'm a good person -- Republicans like me!," Democrats apparently want Republicans to get all the credit for sinking Trump nominees. They don't want to be seen as part of that process. And now we may have seen the last nominee to sink.