SAY NOTHING, DO NOTHING: THE USUAL DEMOCRATIC STRATEGY LEADS TO THE USUAL RESULTS

I'm pleased that this will happen next month, but the story makes me angry:

A rebel Republican congressman has invited multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein to a press conference at the U.S. Capitol as part of a bipartisan push to force the release of legal files linked to the late pedophile.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a thorn in Donald Trump’s side for his frequent objections to the president’s spending bills and foreign policies, said that he and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna will be co-hosting the Sept. 3 conference.

The event will feature survivors of abuse by Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, several of whom “will be speaking out for the first time,” according to the two lawmakers.

Should we hear from Epstein's victims? Yes, absolutely -- but why isn't a Democrat leading to charge to make this happen? Why haven't Democrats spent the entire month of August appearing with these women and promoting their stories? This was an opportunity to put Republicans on the defensive, but Democrats are letting a gadfly Republican be the hero, the same way they encouraged Liz Cheney to be the hero of the January 6 investigation. It's as if they never want to be seen as the party on the correct side of issues. It's as if they don't want to challenge the GOP as a whole on anything, ever.

Democrats are doing what they always do: they're assuming that voters already know everything they need to know about this issue, so there's no need to continue talking about it. But that means the story has dropped from the headlines. You might not like what CNN's Harry Enten says here, but he's essentially correct:

“I would say that this is, from at least a political point of view, quickly turning into a dud of a story,” Enten said on CNN News Central....

“Take a look here. Google searches for Epstein down 89 percent versus just three weeks ago. Falling through the floor,” an animated Ented exclaimed. “It is no longer the top term searched alongside Donald Trump‘s name – that‘s been trading off between tariffs and Vladimir Putin, with obviously the meeting coming up later this week.”

He added: “But at this particular point, the American people‘s interest in this story – it‘s quickly becoming something of a nothingburger!”

... “Trump‘s approval rating in July of 2025, it was 45 percent. It‘s still well within that margin of error here at 44 percent,” Enten stated, referencing his own aggregate of pollsters.

If you ignore the grotesque amorality of it all, it appears that Republicans played a bad hand very well. Shutting down the House of Representatives to avoid dealing with the Epstein case was an effective move. And clearly the Trump Justice Department is colluding with Ghislaine Maxwell to ensure that she does no harm to President Trump.

(And speaking of Maxwell, do you think 100% of the American public knows the extent of her participation in Epstein's crimes? Or is this another set of facts the Democratic Party assumes that voters know, meaning there was no point in reminding voters of her depravity when she was moved to a minimum-security prison and granted work release?)

I know what most Democratic officeholders and party strategists are thinking: voters care about the economy and nothing but the economy. Every other issue is a "shiny object," a distraction from what's really important.

But Republicans are destroying this country, and Democrats should make noise every time the GOP stakes out a position that's massively unpopular.

Here's another example: the secretary of defense apparently isn't sure that women's suffrage is a good idea:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth raised an alarming question last Thursday when he reposted a seven-minute CNN segment on X.

The video he reposted was about the influential pastor Doug Wilson, a leading theologian of the Christian nationalist right. In the clip, a female CNN reporter, Pamela Brown, followed Wilson around his base in Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson explained his particular biblical views on gender. In his vision of an ideal Christian society, Brown noted, women wouldn’t be able to vote.

... A fellow pastor at Wilson’s church argued that ideally, people should vote as households, with men casting the vote, “having discussed it with [the] household.” When Brown mentioned that some Christian nationalists wanted to repeal the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, another pastor at the church said, without any pause, that he would support that move.

In his repost of the video, Hegseth left a rather cryptic comment: “All of Christ for All of Life.”

The reporter I'm quoting, Slate's Molly Olmstead, got in touch with Hegseth's office to clarify his position of whether women should be allowed to vote.

We asked directly, and in the final line of a very brief email: “Does Secretary Hegseth believe women should have the right to vote?”

This was the department’s response, in full, sent four and a half hours later:

Hello. Thanks for your note. Here is our statement: “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.” —Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell

That's not a yes.

"Woimen shouldn't vote" is an increasingly mainstream idea in the Republican Party, undoubtedly because women are less likely to vote Republican than men are.

Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon says America is under the "curse of feminism" and God will not bless the nation until women are forced out of all positions of leadership: "No more women in Congress. No more female state reps. No more women in any function of societal leadership."

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— Right Wing Watch (@rightwingwatch.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 1:53 PM

Why aren't Democrats talking about this? Why aren't they asking whether the Republican Party is fully committed to the Nineteenth Amendment, and to women's participation in politics?

In my city, the Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has some proposals that make moderates a bit uncomfortable. Mainstream Democrats worry that every position Mamdani holds will be hung around the neck of every Democrat in America. Yet no one expects Hegseth's flirtation with the idea of repealing the Nineteenth Amendment to be hung around the neck of every Republican in America. Why not? Why couldn't that happen?

Mainstream Democrats are afraid to attack the Republican Party as a party. They think they'll alienate Republican voters who might consider voting Democratic in future elections. Meanwhile, Republicans attack the Democratic Party -- or, as they usually say, "the Democrat Party" -- every single day, and somehow they manage to flip persuadable Democratic voters.

Activist Democrats -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxwell Frost, and so on -- are more forthright about messaging, but they tend to focus on issues. Their messages are about inequality, guns, climate, the carceral state, and so on. They don't say that the Republican Party is bad and the Democratic Party is better, presumably because they're not fully convinced that the Democratic Party is significantly better. This and the relative silence of the moderates means that no one sticks up for the Democratic Party and no one flatly says that Republicans are bad. No wonder the Democratic Party's poll numbers are so much worse than the GOP's.

I know what some of you are thinking, but this post isn't an embodiment of Murc's Law. I don't believe that only Democrats have agency in American politics. I don't believe that Democrats are the reason Republicans are bad.

Both parties have agency -- but Republicans use the power they have, and Democrats don't. Republicans pursue as many goals as they possibly can when they have power, and they flood the zone with messaging to defend the evil things they're doing. Right now, they're all over the media, telling lie after lie after lie after lie after lie in defense of Trump's claim that Washington and other American cities are crime-ridden hellholes that need to be subdued by military force. Republicans always act when they have power, and they always make noise, whether they're in power or out. They shape narratives. Democrats don't. Both parties have agency, but only one party acts as if it does.