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Monday
Like many who fear Donald Trump’s authoritarian desires, I have been appalled at how Democrats are “bending the knee” to him. I feel like I’m Mr. Pickwick from Charles Dickens’s first novel, knowing he’s innocent while his lawyer praises opposing counsel for a job well done.
Actually, it’s worse than that. While Pickwick doesn’t understand England’s adversarial system of justice, it’s a system that at least has rules. Both plaintiff and defendant have the right to counsel, and lawsuits are settled by judges and juries who see it as their responsibility to be impartial as they settle cases. They may rule incorrectly, as occurs with Pickwick, but the idea of fair play underlies the system.
In our case, by contrast, Trump has proved conclusively that he doesn’t believe in fair play. He will throw out the rules when he doesn’t win, and most of the GOP is on board with this: to be a current day member of the GOP, you must ascribe to the “big lie” that Trump won the 2020 election. Indeed, when Republicans lose, they are sometimes prepared to run the same playbook, as we are currently seeing in a North Carolina judges race.
Yet in spite of this, Democrats are blithely behaving as though the threat isn’t there. In an enlightening segment the other night, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed to a number of instances where Democrats are surrendering in advance to the incoming Trump administration. These include Joe Biden inviting Trump to the White House for a friendly fireside chat; John Fetterman praising the selection of Elise Stefanik for U.N. ambassador because of her support for Israel; Representative Ro Khanna endorsing Trump’s cost-cutting commission; and Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado supporting anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy as Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since Hayes’s article came out, we can add Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal praising Elon Musk as a free speech advocate, even after we’ve just seen Musk twist the power of Twitter (now X) to help elect Trump. And there’s also Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is doing all he can to appear conciliatory, as though democracy itself is not threatened.
Schumer could, if he so chose, announce that Democrats will vote against any of Trump’s cabinet picks who refuse to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election—which is to say, anyone who denies the legitimacy of democratic elections. Is loyalty to the Constitution too much to ask of people seeking to lead major government agencies?
Hayes notes that there’s a “similar vibe from the titans of industry,” what with both Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and the Washington Post donating a million dollars each to Trump’s inauguration. And now ABC is giving Trump $15 million to settle a frivolous defamation suit.
Pickwick is as appalled at lawyer behavior as Hayes is at Democratic buckling. In his case his landlady, misinterpreting a compliment as a marriage proposal, brings a breach of promise suit against him when he doesn’t follow through. Knowing that he never proposed, Pickwick refuses to pay damages, even after a jury finds him guilty and he is threatened with prison. He is particularly appalled at how his own lawyer sees this as business as usual.
Dodson and Fogg are opposing counsel and, while Pickwick regards them as unscrupulous, his own counsel is impressed with their tactics:
‘By Jove!’ said Perker, taking both hands out of his pockets, and striking the knuckles of his right against the palm of his left, emphatically, ‘those are the cleverest scamps I ever had anything to do with!’
When Pickwick calls them scoundrels, Perker replies, “That’s a matter of opinion, you know, and we won’t dispute about terms; because of course you can’t be expected to view these subjects with a professional eye.”
Given our current political situation, I imagine Democrat politicians saying something similar to those of us who are complaining. Rather than see Trump as an evil man, they regard him as a clever scamp who deserves grudging admiration for having come up with a successful campaign strategy. Forget about all their previous accusations that Trump has been assaulting the Constitution. Looking at the campaign “with a professional eye,” they now see him as having been more successful at the game than they were.
The admiration for Dodson and Fogg continues later in the novel. Perkins and his legal assistant Lowten admire how the landlady’s lawyers throw her into debtor’s prison for her inability to pay their legal fees. It’s a shrewd move as it’s the only way they can get any money out of Pickwick, who out of principle has chosen to go to prison rather than pay the judgment against him. And their tactic works: because he feels compassion for the woman, Pickwick coughs up the money, thereby getting both of them out of prison.
Rather than being appalled at their hardball tactics, Perker and Lowten are impressed:
‘The sharpest practitioners I ever knew, Sir,’ observed Lowten.
‘Sharp!’ echoed Perker. ‘There’s no knowing where to have them.’
‘Very true, Sir, there is not,’ replied Lowten; and then, both master and man pondered for a few seconds, with animated countenances, as if they were reflecting upon one of the most beautiful and ingenious discoveries that the intellect of man had ever made. When they had in some measure recovered from their trance of admiration, [messenger] Job Trotter discharged himself of the rest of his commission. Perker nodded his head thoughtfully, and pulled out his watch.
While Perker and Lowten are lost in admiration, however, Pickwick lets Dodson and Fogg know what he thinks of them:
“You are a couple of mean—’
‘Remember, sir, you pay dearly for this,’ said Fogg.
‘—Rascally, pettifogging robbers!’ continued Mr. Pickwick, taking not the least notice of the threats that were addressed to him.
‘Robbers!’ cried Mr. Pickwick, running to the stairhead, as the two attorneys descended.
‘Robbers!’ shouted Mr. Pickwick, breaking from Lowten and Perker, and thrusting his head out of the staircase window.
While I love Joe Biden and am grateful for all he has done for us, does he now retract his assessment that “America itself is at stake”? Will he continue to send out signals that this is a presidential transition like any other? Will these other Democrats continue to behave as though Trump isn’t prepared to dismantle the institutions of the republic itself? Chris Hayes says they will pay a price for their early surrender:
The rejection of democracy is still alive and well. Democrats bending the knee to Trump because they agree with him on Israel or cutting government spending is not going to address the problem. My strong belief is that everyone trying to will us toward normalcy by acting like everything is normal is in for a rude awakening.
Or as Pickwick puts it, “Robbers!”
