Another problem with the Democrats


Adam Schiff is generally a good guy on the issues, but like many Democratic leaders, he’s wearing rose colored glasses and has a weird view of the past.

Reagan was an unholy nightmare. Trump may be worse, but please don’t paper over the crimes of Reagan: the death of so many people afflicted with HIV, Iran-contra, the enabling of right-wing media, training the electorate to accept brain dead idiocy in the president. The roots of our current problems were planted in the 1980s by the Republican apparatus, and we should not be treating Reagan as a paragon.

Would we be better off with Ronald Reagan in the presidency? I don’t think so.

Comments

  1. chrislawson says

    I’m not sure the point is lionising Reagan so much as pointing out to those who do lionise him that their values are not in alignment. I doubt it will work, though, as contemporary conservatives have raised the art of cognitive dissonance to previously unimagined levels.

  2. hillaryrettig1 says

    #1 we know what his intent was, it’s just a stupid tactic. The Dems ability to call out evil, at the time or in hindsight, IS a big part of the problem.

    Remember Hillary Clinton, during her campaign, eulogizing Nancy Reagan as a hero for AIDS, when she and her vile husband were the exact opposite? Remember when she called Henry Kissinger her “mentor.”

    Corrupt AND stupid.

  3. hillaryrettig1 says

    Also, I think establishment Dems just don’t mind Republicanism as much. They’re eating out of the same trough as the GOP, after all. Schiff, Pelosi, Biden, Obama, Clinton have all spoken admiringly of Reagan and his evil ilk.

    I’m embarrassed that I took this long to figure it out, and for my 40 years of Democratic votes. I’m going 3d party (DSA or Green) from now on. I urge everyone to do the same (and get active), and for all the inevitable pearl-clutchers, those 40 years of votes (and tons of canvassing and volunteer work) did NOTHING to stop fascism, either nationally or locally.

    Just for kicks and grins, I checked out the makeup in Congress in 1975. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/94th_United_States_Congress

    It was past the Civil Rights Act, so the south had already “seceded” from the Democratic Party. We had 56 Dem Senators, vs. 40 GOP! (plus 2 indies, one of which went to each party.) Can you imagine?!

    We had 232 Democratic Reps vs. 174 Rethuglicans. A nearly 60 seat lead! Seems incredible!

    The Democrats gave that all away when they decided to triangulate and chase GOP donors. (Not coincidentally, vastly enriching the leadership in the process.) These days there are tons of seats the DNC doesn’t even run candidates for, and every Dem event (local and state) I’ve attended has been an antidemocratic mess. In the early 00s, Howard Dean tried to get the party to at least field candidates in every district and was hounded out. This year, David Hogg was hounded out by trying to run some younger, more vital candidates in district with corrupt, senescent candidates. In my view, the Democrats are beyond hope.

  4. raven says

    Adam Schiff is one of the better Democrats.
    This is easy to see.
    Donald Trump hates him above almost everyone else.

    Trump threatens Obama, Schiff, other Democrats and former officials with arrest and imprisonment
    BY Joseph Konig Washington, D.C. PUBLISHED 4:46 PM ET Jul. 21, 2025

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump over the weekend called for the arrest and prosecution of his political enemies, including former President Barack Obama, California Sen. Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey and other former senior Obama administration and U.S. intelligence officials.

    Trump urges imprisonment of a Democratic senator
    Separately on Sunday, Trump made two posts focused on Schiff, the California Democrat and frequent target of the president’s ire, reupping his claims that Schiff “falsified” loan documents and committed mortgage fraud.

    He posted a copy of a 2011 document made public by Fox News that Schiff and his wife signed indicating their Maryland home was their primary residence as he also owned a home in California, claiming this was evidence Schiff was defrauding his mortgage lender, was “a THIEF,” and “should be prosecuted, just like they tried to prosecute me.”

    If you want to criticize the Democrats fine.
    A lot of them such as NY Senator Chuck Schumer are old, asleep at the wheel, and disconnected from the obvious crisis our democracy is in right now.

    Adam Schiff is no Chuck Schumer.
    He is a lot braver, a lot brighter, and taking a huge risk right now.
    He has been and is investigating the clown prince known as president Trump and is being threatened by him with arrest and prison.

    This is the type of act that happens in dictatorships and something routine in the old USSR and the new Russia.

  5. raven says

    I had to look it up to see exactly why Trump hates Schiff.
    This era is so chaotic and Trump hates everyone so it is hard to keep track of atrocities.

    MSNBC

    Trump escalates attacks on Adam Schiff, accuses Democratic senator of criminal fraud
    The authoritarian vision is unsubtle: Trump hates Schiff, so the Democrat has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.

    July 16, 2025, 6:42 AM PDT
    By Steve Benen

    When then-Rep. Adam Schiff helped lead the first impeachment effort against Donald Trump, the president clearly saw the California Democrat as a threat and made every effort to smear and discredit him. When Schiff helped lead the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee, Trump’s condemnations of the lawmaker became even more hysterical.

    Trump would hate Adam Schiff anyway, no matter what he has done.
    He would hate me in the unlikely event he had the slightest idea who I was. No big deal. He would hate you (plural) if you are reading Freethoughtblogs.

    Adam Schiff at least earned the president’s hatred by doing something positive.
    .1. He was one of the leaders of the first House impeachment of Trump.
    .2. He was part of the House investigation of the January 6 insurrection attempt.

    This is a lot more than most people, much less elected officials have done to oppose the ongoing destruction of our democracy.

    The arrest threats he is getting from the Federal government are real.
    At least five elected officials have already been arrested,
    For example, “LaMonica McIver (Representative from New Jersey):
    .
    Indicted on federal charges related to an incident at a New Jersey immigration center, accused of impeding federal officers. “

  6. John Watts says

    We also shouldn’t forget that Reagan essentially called the government the enemy. He used the phrase “government is the problem,” but Republicans knew what he was really saying. This anti-government toxin infected the right-wingers to the point where they became MAGA. Now, we see the poison fruit of Reagan’s seed. Nixon, Reagan, Trump — a straight line of incompetence and failure marking America’s decline.

  7. Artor says

    Reagan first, and then Dubya normalized the idea of having drooling morons as President. Without the damage they had done to American civil society, Trump would never have had a chance at winning an election. This whole smash-everything tactic Trump is doing is the fulfillment of Reagan’s goal of a government small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.

  8. says

    I’m afraid PZ neglected the very worst thing that Reagan brought to the White House… and the Old and New Executive Office Buildings, not to mention across DC: In determining executive appointments (and senior not-quite-visible promotions and appointments), Reagan normalized “personal loyalty >>> expertise” as not just an occasional blip but a fundamental principle. That’s far more extreme than “I’m going to favor/only consider people from my own party,” which has been a problem since 1789, and still allowed Nelson Rockefeller (and even Gerald Ford!) substantial roles.†

    When even Nixon’s appointment process/preferences were less loyalty-bound, you have to suspect something was more than a bit off.

    † That’s not a defense of either man’s policy preferences or even personal pecadillos. They’re just not in the same league as Ed Meese, John Block, Richard Schweiker, James Watt, Elizabeth Dole, Clayton Yeutter… the list goes on, and note that I’m carefully omitting one particular department as an exemplar even though it was.

  9. freeline says

    The problem is not Republicans. The problem is we live in a country that elects Republicans. One of the hard lessons of the 2024 election is that there really are millions of people who were willing to put Trump back in the White House. He didn’t get there by military coup; he got there because a majority of the people who voted, voted for him. Those really are our neighbors, our friends, and our relatives.

    Unless and until that changes, that’s the governance we’re going to have, and I don’t see it changing absent some cataclysmic event.

    By the way, last Saturday I did something I have not done in 20 years: Mow my own lawn. The lawn service I’ve been using for the past twenty years is now out of business because ICE arrested all of his workers and he can’t find replacements. We’ve never talked politics but my strong suspicion is that he voted for Trump. The leopards are having a feast.

  10. beholder says

    @4 hillaryrettig1

    I’m embarrassed that I took this long to figure it out, and for my 40 years of Democratic votes. I’m going 3d party (DSA or Green) from now on.

    Glad to hear it! We need the numbers to stand up to the party duopoly.

    Do your research on the DSA, though. They pretend to hold themselves at arm’s length from the Democratic Party but they are not a separate organization.

    I urge everyone to do the same (and get active), and for all the inevitable pearl-clutchers, those 40 years of votes (and tons of canvassing and volunteer work) did NOTHING to stop fascism, either nationally or locally.

    Ain’t that the truth? It won’t stop the unthinking hyperpartisan corner of the internet from yelling at you about not kissing the feet of the party, though. Get ready for years of that, nonstop.

  11. chesapeake says

    A very good book about 80s is “Sleepwalking through History” by Haynes Johnson, a book about the 80s in the US. It was the American Public that was sleepwalking while Reagan did what he did. I don’t think he was a moron though he was more and more impaired by dementia toward the end of his administration. He was clearly intelligent but often ignorant about so many things. And really should have been impeached over Iran- Contra, but the American public found him too sympathetic.

  12. Elladan says

    @12 beholder

    The DSA is (one of? the only?) center-left wing of the Democratic Party. I’m not sure why that’s bad, though? I mean, it’s not like third parties can actually be elected without elections reform of the sort that would require a major constitutional amendment. The DSA’s goal is basically to build up civil society and put in decent candidates through primaries.

    Because of they can never win, the actual third parties are protest vote listings, not part of government like in other countries. Voting for them is just abstaining with a name attached.

  13. beholder says

    @14 Elladan

    The DSA’s goal is to establish the left edge of the Overton Window in polite territory (read: collude with other Democrats in dragging the window righward), and to channel all the discontent with what the U.S. government is doing into the machinery of the Democratic Party, where any upstart leftist movements are reliably demobilized, defused, and dismembered.

    They know what they’re doing. That’s their job. Don’t fall for it.

  14. F.O. says

    Your problems started when you built a nation based on slavery and genocide on stolen land.

  15. beholder says

    @6 raven

    Adam Schiff is one of the better Democrats.

    Hard disagree. Adam Schiff is one of the worst Democrats in Congress, and the party sets a high bar for that. California should be ashamed that they ever elected such a warmongering, genocidal neocon as a representative. Adam Schiff wants to light the match that kills us all, and he feels no shame about making that eventuality more likely while handsomely profiting from it.

  16. Pierce R. Butler says

    hillaryrettig1 @ # 4: I’m going 3d party (DSA or Green) from now on.

    Fine – if you live in a blue or red state. Even better, if your state has a competent DSA or Green party (not that I know of any such).

    But if you live in one of the swing states, and therefore have a vote that might actually make a difference, please use it for whatever candidate has the best shot at keeping the overtly Fascist party out of the seat in question. The D’s and R’s are, in fact, not the same!

  17. springa73 says

    Anyone who still thinks that Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same in Trump’s second term clearly has no contact with reality. I’d feel safer taking advice from a psychic.

  18. Kagehi says

    Yeah, commented myself in reply to this very sort of thing. Reagan’s one good thing was what he got named for, “The great communicator”. The problem is, he was communicating almost 90% stupid ideas, bad policy, and delusional principles about government. Like I put it in that one, even if you, “run government as a business”, which is just plain stupid, then their idea of what “kind” is just idiotic. Every retail company that lets customers in the door knows that it costs more, in general, nor is it plausible, short of packing things yourself, and handing it to them, outside, via a window, then requiring everyone shop naked (and, well… some people would even then find a way to steal things…), to prevent theft 100% of the time. Why does this not apply to, say, Medicare, or SNAP? So, failure #1. Next point of failure is what the kids did, when they took over, at Mammoth Lakes Ski Resort – fire/force retirement on everyone in your “repair and design” division, and sure, you no longer have people “wasting money” sitting around drinking coffee, and talking, when you don’t have some grand idea you need to design, or equipment to repair. But, what ends up being the alternative – spend 2-3 days, during which you lose, depending on the season, thousands, or millions, a day, waiting for some outside company to “find the time”, to fix something your now fired people could had done immediately, then pay them, at minimum, 2-3 times what you would have to a) keep the materials on hand to do the job, and b) actually, again, get to work on it immediately.

    And then there is the insanity with “private companies” doing things like fire fighting, for money, which, when it was common place (and its insane that it still works this way in some places in the US), you would get multiple companies showing up, all standing and watching something burn, while negotiating with the owner over which one would get paid to do it, OR they would just all get pissed at each other, and fight over who was going to do it, while the building burned. But, yeah, as the literal pro-capitalism Samuel Adams once put it, paraphrased, “Some institutions are a matter of the public good, and should function to promote that, and liberty, not profit for the few.” He would, likely, have been quite conflicted over the contradiction found in, for example, the communication industry, which refused to innovate, when run by the government, but which, as soon as it became a “business” immediately strove to provide the largest number of crappy, badly designed, barely functional, services, as possible, with a price tag on literally every single feature.

    But, this is, kind of the problem. Its why Reagan’s bullshit “resonated” with people. Its absolutely true that government run programs will often not innovate, be reluctant to try new ideas, etc. Heck, TCP/IP, which we have used forever, barely survived the ISO “government” solution that everyone, including the military, and frankly, Europe, was pushing to implement, purely due to the people involved with the ISO solution not coming up with a functional alternative fast enough. The result would have been an inflexible, complicated, mess, which would have prevented the development of half the shit on the internet today. But, it was, “Really nice and pretty, and controllable.”, on freaking paper. But, the other side of that coin is always that, once you hand it to someone trying to profit off it, you end up with a the exact opposite, something that “barely works at all”, has a few features as they can get by with providing, made at the lowest cost possible, at the highest price you are stupid enough to pay for it. And, yeah, you kind of sometimes get that with government bids, but, at least in principle, the there are clear standards for what the F is has to do, and how well, and someone is actually accountable (again, in theory, until you let corporate money into picking politicians), when it doesn’t meet that standard.

    So, you get bleeding edge, which never stops being bleeding edge, and every new “revision”, you pay more for, to fix the last failure, or something that works first time, but takes 30 years for someone to actually admit they need to upgrade it. I would kind of like to think we can find a sensible middle ground in there some place, but.. what we have gotten instead is people who hate half of everything Adams said was a public good, while absolutely loving the capitalism parts, and “we need religion!”. But, what do you expect…

  19. flange says

    #9 Artor
    “Reagan first, and then Dubya normalized the idea of having drooling morons as President.”
    I agree with this 100%. It was inconceivable to me that Americans could elect someone as stupid, ignorant, and incompetent, as G.W. Bush twice. It wasn’t a big jump to electing someone more malignant, like Trump.
    “…a government small enough to be drowned in a bathtub” is a quote by Grover Norquist, the anti-tax asshole who helped GW Bush, the Tea Party, and enabled criminals like Jack Abramoff. I’ve heard precious little about Norquist the past few years.

  20. StevoR says

    Would we be better off with Ronald Reagan in the presidency? I don’t think so.

    Compared to Trump Reagun was a socialist.

    Or at least seriously left wing inhis policies and he certainly ahs more care for others and class and human decency than Trump by megaparsecs.

    By comparison to now anyhow. The Overton window has been pushed so far since and yes, Reagun wa s aboslutely awfuland did somuch harm too – but versus the actually Fascist Trump?!

  21. StevoR says

    @17. De facto Trump voter and Trump enabling faux progressive Beholder :

    Hard disagree. Adam Schiff is one of the worst Democrats in Congress, and the party sets a high bar for that. California should be ashamed that they ever elected such a warmongering, genocidal neocon as a representative. Adam Schiff wants to light the match that kills us all, and he feels no shame about making that eventuality more likely while handsomely profiting from it.

    Still attacking the only alternative to the Trump cult and Fascists in power I see. Still attacking ONLY them I note.

    How is Jill Stein going and what use – and for who – are the Greens? We know from history and lived experience what doing what you are doing and voting as you voted leads to. It is so much vastly worse.

    Made any progress on changing the USA’s politcial system to a preferential one or done anythingtomake a third party actually viable and anything other than just a Repug aidding spoiler lately? Or ever?

    Oh and out of morbid curiousity, are there any Democratic party politicians you actually like and agree with?

    Let me guess Bernie Sanders who isn’t even really a Democrat but an independent?

  22. beholder says

    @25 StevoR

    Odd that you should mention Bernie unprompted. It sounds like there’s a lot more you want to say about him.

  23. chattycat says

    @25 StevoR
    Sorry to interrupt but I answered you in a previous thread. I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet.

  24. StevoR says

    @ ^ chattycat : No, I hadn’t seen that yet. Been pretty busy lately. Do have a link to it handy please?

    @ Trump voter (de facto) & Fascism enabler beholder : Sounds to me like you want to deflect and avoid answering the questions i asked you in #25 – which, of course, I notice you haven’t answered and am sure others will also note that too.

  25. lotharloo says

    @freeline:

    “The problem is not Republicans. The problem is we live in a country that elects Republicans.”

    That’s half of the problem. The other half of the problem is that the opposition party is utterly and absolutely incompetent. Donald Trump was the most unpopular candidate elected to the office, twice. Any half decent political party would not have lost to Trump. Hillary who was a very weak candidate run essentially unopposed and lost and then Harris did the same thing via Biden but of course the blame in that case was 100% on Biden. The funny thing is that there are still people who blame Hillary’s lost on Sanders; apparently they think even a more unopposed run would have been better.

  26. beholder says

    @28 StevoR

    Your questions are dumb. I’m not answering them.

    I wonder what brought Bernie Sanders to your mind, though. Did Bernie do 11/9? Was Bernie a Russian agent? Have the Democrats been losing this badly for this long to Donald Trump(!) because I’d rather vote for Bernie? I am morbidly curious where your Bernie monologue is headed.

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