CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DON'T EVEN PLAN TO SWING AT THAT ONE PITCH, DO THEY?

Over and over again, we've heard House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries use a baseball analogy to describe the party's approach to second-term Donald Trump:

Speaking to reporters ... the Brooklynite invoked Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge to defend his strategy, arguing it is better for Democrats to pick and choose their fights and focus on a clear message.

“One of the reasons that [Judge is] a great hitter is that he does not swing at every pitch. He waits for the right one and then he swings,” he said. “We're not going to swing at every pitch. We're going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people.”

But today Bloomberg reports that Democrats seem reluctant to swing at the one pitch they seemed to be focusing on (free version of the story here):

... a March 14 US funding deadline ... would ordinarily serve as a point of political leverage for the opposition party.

But Democrats are squeamish about a disruptive government shutdown....

Democrats have, for weeks, tried to leverage talks to avert a government shutdown to tie [Elon] Musk’s hands. But while Republicans need their votes to keep the government open, Democrats’ political pragmatism weakens their hand.

“I’m not for shutting the government down,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic spending negotiator in the House.

Others in the party — even those with large numbers of federal workers in their states — expressed similar defeatist sentiments. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said he’d like the spending bill to include language to prevent large government layoffs. “Whether that is practical I don’t know,” he said.

And Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen questioned whether Trump, who has ignored Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, would even abide by any new legislative constraints to his power.

The need for a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open is the one point of leverage Democrats have because it require 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans can pass an actual budget through reconciliation, with 50 votes in the Senate. So the CR is the pitch Democrats should swing at.

But it appears that they won't even try.

Chris Van Hollen is probably right when he suggests that it doesn't matter what constraints are included in the bill, because Trump will ignore them, Republicans in Congress will shrug, and the courts will be slow to rebuff Trump, if they rebuff Trump at all. But if you think Trump will simply do what he pleases no matter what, that leaves you with two choices: You can put up a fight and look as if you're soldiers in an anti-Trump battle that millions of voters want to see fought, while offering an alternate view of how the country should be run to millions of voters in the middle, or you can meekly hide in a corner and appear to be giving assent to everything Trump is doing, while conveying the impression that you think Trump is on the right course because you won't even challenge him. Never mind the possibility that you might stop the juggernaut, or at least slow it down.

Why do Republican voters (and many non-Republican voters) like Donald Trump? They offer a two-word answer: He fights. He lost an election in 2020, he lost court battles in 2023 and 2024, but he always fought. Meanwhile, Democrats think they'll impress voters by not fighting.

The Bloomberg story gives the impression that Democrats would actually like the GOP to get everything it wants in the budget process:

North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said Trump is the most powerful president he has seen on budget matters.

“This is his second time around. He’s got the experience,” Hoeven said, pointing to Trump’s own lobbying push to get the House budget plan passed.

But it also plays into Democrats’ 2026 strategy, banking that cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and other programs would be widely unpopular with voters, giving them an opportunity to take over congressional control. One Democratic political action committee, House Majority Forward PAC, is running ads in swing districts starting Monday on cuts to Medicaid, which insures nearly one-quarter of Americans.

“Today’s ad is just the beginning, and we will make sure every American knows exactly who is responsible,” Mike Smith, the PAC’s president, said in a statement.

Do Democrats want brutal cuts to these programs? Do they want air safety weakened, post offices shuttered, disease-fighting efforts eliminated here and overseas, nuclear-safety resources eliminated? Is that the plan? And if so, doesn't that make them complicit in all the suffering Trump's people are eager to impose on us?

And are they really sure this will work when Trump nearly won the Electoral College in 2020 despite hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths?

And why do Democrats even want to win the 2026 midterms if they don't believe Trump can be constrained legislatively? Do they just want to win elections for the sake of winning them?

Meanwhile, angry anti-Trump voters are doing the job Democratic officeholders won't. Even Rupert Murdoch's New York Post acknowledges that:

A key glimmer of hope for Democrats in Congress has been some of the protests at GOP-run town hall events, mirroring similar clashes that took place before a midterm election wave, as was the case in the 2010 and 2018 election cycles.

Yes -- we fight, even if congressional Democrats don't. America sees us fighting. It's starting to make a difference. We're getting under Republicans' skin.



The change that comes from protest is usually slow and partial. But the change that comes from doing nothing is usually nonexistent. Hakeen Jeffries doesn't understand that, but ordinary angry Americans do.