Democrats lost the Virginia gubernatorial race because the Democratic Leadership has failed to take the Republican attack on our Democracy seriously, failed to demonstrate any kind of willingness to uphold the rule of law, and failed to corral the most extreme elements of the party for the sake of building compromise and passing important legislation.

Leaders like Chuck Schumer need to give up this fantasy that the Republican Party gives two shits about Congressional norms or standards of decorum. They don’t. To quote Lincoln Project commenter Tara Setmayer, “Republicans do not give a f*ck about your feelings, they don’t give a f*ck about facts, or the truth.” Democrats have no sense of how to navigate Congress under these conditions. Proof of the fact is that for all of the back and forth over the infrastructure bill, there’s been absolutely nothing in terms of using the reconciliation bill to include legislative language that would eliminate debt ceiling votes entirely. In spite of months of warning, Democrats are already in the process of allowing themselves to be pushed up against the wall by Republicans who would love to create an economic collapse so they could blame it on Joe Biden.

Democratic voters are demoralized by the lack of action on the January 6th investigation. It doesn’t matter how much information Democrats may be gathering on what happened that day. If the American public doesn’t know about it, and the Justice Department is apparently unwilling to act on it, then it’s just a huge pile of evidence for Republicans to sweep under the rug after they win in a land-slide in 2022, an appetizer they can amuse themselves with before they start their weekly impeachments of President Biden. Democrats need to tell Merrick Garland that he needs to shit or get off the pot on the Bannon indictment. Either get action, and make a public announcement, or get the hell out of the way and let Biden appoint a ball-buster who will step in and actually uphold the rule of law, rather than waiting to get approval for everything from his buddies at the Federalist Society.

Democrats have failed to deliver on an infrastructure bill. Their lack of understanding of just how serious the Republican attack on our Democracy is has bred an environment in Congress where members seem to think they can endlessly squabble over details of student loan forgiveness and paid family leave, and insist that their endless delays, squabbling and inaction is “winning the war of ideas”. They haven’t won a fucking thing. Furthermore, the apparent lack of urgency on the part of members of Congress has nurtured a public impression of our nation’s lawmakers as a bunch of naive and spoiled brats who are whistling past the graveyard while Republicans are pushing to turn our country into a fascist hell-hole run by donors to the Council for National Policy.

We’re now sitting at one year to election day 2022, and if the Democratic Party cannot get their shit together very soon, and get action for the American people, then they are going to lose in a landslide, and they will deserve it. Democrats need to stop leaving themselves exposed to Republican fuckery, and take the initiative on issues like the debt ceiling so American voters don’t hear the same soap opera over and over again every few months. Democrats need to push Merrick Garland to start moving the Bannon indictment as quickly as possible, to provide proof that Democratic investigations will actually result in criminal charges, and not just disappear into a black hole of mealy-mouthed procedural excuses and bullshit. Finally, Democrats need to realize that our Democracy is under attack, and sitting around bickering about elements of a bill that is continuously put off is not going to win them the “war of ideas”. What it will do, is guarantee they get their asses handed to them on a platter.