Something I wrote for DK:

Let’s Be Clear: The Job of Democrats for the Next Few Years is to Save the Republic

We are in a perilous time in our country. While we have a madman in the White House, the true Constitutional Crisis is Congress. The Republican Party refuses to due the job required of it as head of the House and Senate: Be a proper check on the President. They refuse to hold him accountable. They refuse to require him to follow the law. They won’t even make him follow the minimum requirements of the office, such as not accepting gifts or payments from foreign officials. They are what’s wrong right now.

While we can’t take the presidency right now, we can regain control of Congress. With one chamber, we can start investigating him. With both, we can truly hold him accountable.

And holding him accountable must be our goal. And we must understand that not only is that our highest priority, we must also understand that, for the next couple of years at least, it will be the only significant accomplishment we will have.

The reality is this: If we gain control of both chambers, it will be with slim majorities in both. In the House, the GOP has had time to gerrymander so many districts that even our wave will switch far fewer districts our way than if there were not gerrymandering. In the Senate, the GOP has six people running for reelection, three retiring, while we have 24. So, even if we were to somehow sweep, we would end up with 58 seats. (In 2020, the GOP as 24 members running for reelection.)

What all of this means for us is that we’re not going to be able to push through many legislative goals. Hell, it’s going to be a fight just to make him follow the law because all the enforcement power, short of impeachment, is in the Executive. But, the Democrats can expose him, and their ability to investigate, plus our ability to scare those 24 Senators, can possibly turn some of the GOP against Trump, if we have control of Congress.

Now, the problem is, we have to get to that point, being in control of Congress. And this is where things are going to get really rough.

We’re Democrats. We are everywhere. There are more Democrats in small towns than there are Republicans in big cities. We truly represent the country as a whole. As a party, though, we generally aren’t one. We’re generally a loose collection of people going in the same direction. Which can be OK, 80% of the time. But it doesn’t work when the other party, the one with all of the current levers of power, is trying to destroy the country (you either let them run everything, or they’ll burn it all). For once, we have to be strongly united, against a common enemy.

And when I mean united, I mean truly leave-no-man-behind, if-you’re-not-with-us-you’re-against-us united. The Right, the Russians, and the far-far left (the part that believes the best way to save the country is to raze it) will be coming after us, and after our candidates and representatives.

We’re going to have to stand up for each other and our candidates. Imagine an accusation of assault against a candidate in October. In a tight race, if we throw up our hands, it could be win or lose. But wouldn’t October be a bit late for something like this to come out? Like it was planned? They know, from 2016, that a late term announcement can change a race. They also know we’d rather err on the side of caution. We’re going to have to stand tough, and weather issues like this.

We also need to be wary of those that want to pretend to be our friends, but actually want to divide us. We know some of them are in our party (Third Way, anyone?), but we also know of other people and parties that try to sound like they are appealing to disaffected Democrats (Jill Stein). We cannot let these people in and we cannot let them divide us. And they will try, and they will make statements that sound good, and will try to fool us. “Of course the Democrats can override a presidential veto, all they need are a few Republican votes.” “Why aren’t Democrats trying to solve real American problems?” “Shouldn’t Democrats care about all Americans?”

None of this is to imply that we stop caring about our other issues. We have to keep doing the things we do every day to help people, and we have to notify our Congresspeople when things our wrong so they can shine a light on them. But we can’t solve them with a broken system. The country won’t end in 2018, but it will be in far worse shape if we don’t take back Congress this year, and it will take longer to make things right, things like universal healthcare and education, reducing poverty, and taking care of immigrants. We have to stick together for our country.