Lose Your Goddamn Jobs
In 2010 I did something really silly — I applied for a DNC internship. I had no outstanding qualifications or accolades, but I hadn’t yet figured that out. Still, the rejection I received was very kind and pointed out several other more local ways that I could get involved, including volunteering in the main office of my local congressional campaign. I showed up at the Tom Perriello campaign office two months out from election day and threw myself into it. So when President Obama came to stump for Tom, I got to sit on stage and watch the President speak. And I was devastated when Perriello lost.
But I was also really proud. After all the nonsense about death panels and the annihilation of freedom that would come with the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 midterms were a rout. The Republican Party gained 63 seats in the House of Representatives, making it the largest changeover since 1948. Tom Perriello was just one of many Democrats who lost their seat, in large part due to their support of the ACA.
This makes it all the more galling that Senators like Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, Rob Portman and the other members of the Trumpcare Ten let things get so far with these abysmal healthcare bills by playing up their ambivalence, only to fall in line with their craven GOP colleagues at the last minute.
It would be one thing if they believed in it. There are plenty of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives who honestly believe that the problem with the Affordable Care Act is that it does too much for people, and that it isn’t the government’s responsibility to make sure that people have access to affordable, comprehensive healthcare. And those people are dead fucking wrong, but at least they are voting with their principles. But every single member of Congress who waffled on the BCRA and Graham-Cassidy and then ended up voting for it, in spite of their governors’ objections, or their constituents’ objections, or their own personal fucking objections — those people are craven cowards. We need to vote all of these assholes out of Congress, but those guys in particular really piss me off.
The prevailing wisdom of calling your members of Congress is that these people do not want to lose their jobs. They need to listen to their voters because their voters get to determine whether or not they will have a job going forward. And that’s all fine and good, most of the time. Calling your members of Congress is a great way to make sure that the issues that you care about get time and attention. And when your member of Congress is already a no on absurdly dystopian healthcare legislation, making sure that they know their jobs depend on also paying attention to criminal justice and aid for Puerto Rico is important and well worth your time.
But calling Dean Heller over and over again to tell him things that he already knows — that millions will be hurt by this legislation, that people will die because of it — and then knowing that the reason he’s actually waffling is some kind of political calculation about whether it’s this group of incessant callers or the donors demanding a yes vote are the bigger threat to his job security is another matter. Knowing that these people don’t actually care about the outcome of this legislation, and are instead caught up in some ridiculous calculation about their chances in the next election is the very worst thing about politics.
The GOP’s allegiance to Trump, their willingness to endorse people like Roy Moore (one of the craziest, most racist, most dangerous people to run for Senate in many, many years) is only further evidence of this. Rather than standing up to or moderating their rabid base and the billionaires like the Mercers and the Kochs who use outright lies and conspiracy theories to facilitate this insanity, they capitulate. They stand behind a commander in chief who rose that tidal wave to power and is now using his office to stoke white resentment and anti-Muslim vitriol while also goading other nuclear weapon wielding mad men into Twitter fights. And it’s conceivable that there are many of them who see no problem with this. But numbers and furrowed brows suggest that it can’t possibly be all of them. So do recent statements by people like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, who have decided not to seek re-election because they can’t in good conscious continue to be in the Senate while Trump is president.
But the worst, the very worst, are the people who know that what they are doing is wrong and say nothing. The members of Congress who don’t want to find themselves at the wrong end of a Koch brothers ad and so they keep their mouths shut. They vote for bills with no internal logic, for things they disagree with or for things that make no sense. They waffle when they get calls from their constituents and they end up doing the wrong thing anyway.
Not a single one of them wants to lose their job, and it drives every single thing they do. And it’s appalling.
7 years ago, a whole bunch of people lost their jobs because they were willing to stand up to their constituents, to billionaires, and to their colleagues and say that the American people deserved a better healthcare system. It was an act of bravery, the kind that helps people. And in this perilous moment, when it’s not just individual issues but the whole concept of democracy that is facing subversion and peril, it’s even more painful to note over and over again the many people we’ve elected who stand for nothing. When you have to fight your relatives at Thanksgiving or the winter holiday of your choice, you should point this out to them. They may disagree with Democrats, but at least they have principles and are willing to stand by them.
And if they are anything like Tom Perriello, they keep showing up for their state and their country over and over and over again, even after they’ve lost their jobs and a primary race.
This is what public service looks like. This is what patriotism looks like. As the Trump administration and the craven Republicans who kowtow to him undermine our belief in people and in our government, that’s what we have to remember. There are people out there who embody this. And when we’re picking the people to fill these seats, these gaping holes in honor and democracy, we have to choose people who are willing to lose their goddamn jobs.
