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In a recent televised interview, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) warned that her party needs to stand for something beyond reflexive opposition to President Donald Trump.
“It’s not enough for us to be anti-President Trump,” she told CNN. “People want to know what we’re for.”
She’s right, of course, though it must be noted that she offered this observation in the context of praising New York City’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. If that’s what they are for, they might want to stick to blind opposition. But is her party even spiritually capable of mounting sensible and measured opposition, as opposed to the knee-jerk “resistance” that has characterized much of the Left’s approach to Trump? It seems not.
Following the dramatic and impressive U.S. military operation that brought indicted drug trafficker and former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro into American custody over the weekend, many Democrats did what they are conditioned to do: attack and froth. It was Trump who gave the order, after all, so negativity is the default setting. Various members of the “Blue Brigade” attacked the mission, labeling it some combination of “illegal,” abusive, or a distraction from matters of national importance.
The Democratic National Committee — the embodiment of the party itself — ripped the successful mission in a fundraising email sent hours after the raid, saying it represented “another unconstitutional war from Trump,” blasting “Republican cowards” for supporting it, and adding the tagline, “Trump promised peace, but has delivered chaos.”
Let’s set aside the question of whether an indicted authoritarian thug facing an unceremonious Delta Force wake-up and being forcibly expatriated in a surgical operation that featured zero American casualties constitutes either a “war” or “chaos.” Let’s also ignore the political choice to raise money in this manner. It seems odd that a rational political party would react in such a way, given the fact that said party’s most recent presidential administration offered a $25 million reward for information leading to the capture and arrest of Maduro. At the time, the New York Times reported the development under the headline “Biden Raises Bounty for Nicolas Maduro to $25 Million.” What does it think bounties are?
Nevertheless, the vice president from that very same administration criticized “Team Trump” for executing the action they demanded and incentivized through official policy. Because Trump ordered it, Kamala Harris assailed the development as “unlawful and unwise.” She said this notwithstanding her assessment that “Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator.” She and others served up wheelbarrows of harsh rhetoric, and a promised pot of gold for someone else, but refused to actually do anything — then got angry when Trump did. There are words to describe this partisan fecklessness, but “leadership” is not among them. That word certainly doesn’t apply to the Democrats’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who pilloried Trump in 2020 because he had not yet “brought an end to the Maduro regime.” Now that Trump has ended Maduro’s reign, Schumer calls that move “reckless” and “a violation of the law.”
Craven Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) once opined that “the best thing that ever happened to Nicolas Maduro was Donald Trump,” whom Murphy insisted “strengthen[ed] Maduro’s grip on power and frittering away any chance at a democratic transition.” In a separate social media post, Murphy insisted that Trump “made the realist case for intervention in Venezuela,” noting that “getting rid of Maduro is good for the United States.”
One might understandably assume that Murphy would therefore be elated by last week’s intervention, which achieved something he said was an unalloyed good for the national interest. One would be wrong. The senator rushed to the internet and the television cameras to denounce Trump’s corrupt action, which he now claims “has nothing to do with American security” because “Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.” Similarly, Pete Buttigieg, a former small city mayor and thirsty presidential aspirant, once advertised his solidarity, crowing that he “stand[s] behind … the Venezuelan people as they strive to reclaim their democracy and defend their rights.” With throngs of those Venezuelans wildly celebrating Maduro’s arrest, because they finally see a realistic chance to realize the words Buttigieg posted in 2020, Buttigieg has condemned Trump’s decision. Of course.
Even many of the Democrats’ self-appointed “serious” set are once again exposing themselves as fundamentally unserious partisan hacks. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), also rumored to harbor higher political ambitions, similarly raced out to scratch his base’s insatiable itch for Trump criticism. He wrote that the military raid that brought a China- and Russia-colluding, terrorist-empowering dictator to justice was an “unjustified war” that is “embarrassing” because it paints America as “the world bully.” Apparently, the thought never occurred to Gallego that perhaps election-stealing, wealth-robbing socialist autocrats who conspire with America’s enemies from within our hemisphere should, in fact, be bullied.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a military veteran who’s often touted as a national security Democrat, recently struggled to articulate a coherent argument on this front. Responding to the discrete extraction operation that bagged Maduro, Crow told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that the conflict risks becoming a “nation-building quagmire,” then, within seconds, complained that the administration didn’t leave any American military personnel on the ground to push back against hostile foreign actors that have been exploiting Venezuela for their own purposes.
Crow seemed to be against, well, anything, even when the opposition seemed contradictory. An exasperated MacCallum shot back, “Eventually, you’ve got to follow through, or your word is worth nothing. If you indict this drug kingpin leader and you never do anything about it, which is what we saw in all the prior administrations, eventually they’re laughing at you.”
The democratic policy, such as it exists, seems to involve the employment of forceful words while refusing meaningful action to disrupt an unacceptable status quo — and certainly opposing meaningful action if it’s undertaken by Trump, no matter how successful it may be.
THE MILITARY’S STAGGERING COMPETENCE UNDER TRUMP
While a handful of elected Democrats, such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), have issued more sober-minded public responses on the matter, it seems as though some of their like-minded colleagues don’t have the cojones to say so publicly. Axios reported that some of these Democrats are ‘fuming’ that the opposition to the flawless raid “looks weak,” urging applause instead.
Speaking of weakness, they whispered these sentiments anonymously to reporters. One must not puncture the “Resistance Base’s” bubble, after all, and certainly not on the record. I’ll leave you with how the Trump Department of Homeland Security’s social media account reacted to Democrats’ faux anger in a deservedly scornful post: “Oh so NOW Democrats are opposed to a Venezuelan criminal entering our country,” an obvious reference to their disastrous border and immigration policies. It’s a pretty clean hit, too, especially considering how many Democrats seem to oppose virtually all Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and deportations. One of Trump’s greatest political assets is his incoherent and clownish opposition.
