The Journal of Unpopular Opinions (Ch. 1)

No one in the leadership of the Democratic Party has what it takes to fight the battles the party is facing, much less win those battles. 

No one else in the Democratic Party is standing up to fight those battles.

No one in the Democratic Party will stand up to fight those battles. They're afraid of something, or of someone, or of the several someones in the part leadership. 

Face it: while Nancy Pelosi is considered by many to be a strong Speaker in terms of how she manages her caucus (although, that seems to be open to question these days), she is a horrible advocate for the Democratic Party and its priorities. 

I've shared my, shall we say, 'lack of enthusiasm' for Pelosi in the past, such as here, when she was re-elected Minority Leader in 2016. She lost 63 votes to Ohio's Rep. Tim Ryan, who expressed then the same frustrations as I have today. I suspect Ryan still has them, too.

...my level of frustration came from the idea that we're going to have, for two more years, the same conversation as we've been having since 2010 (when the Dems lost 63 seats and the House majority in the mid-term election).

And I think the level of frustration in our caucus is as great as I've ever seen it. And it's time to do something about it, not just talk about it. Because now we're not even the national party. We're a coastal party. And we've got to move forward. If we're not going to get voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, go back down south. When I first got in Congress, we had members from Tennessee. We've got to go back there and campaign and get those folks back in the fold.

Ryan also talked about how the Dems don't unify the demographics, but "talk about them and treat them as individual groups" and emphasized that they've

... got to get the message right. We've got to have the right messenger. And we've got to have someone who can not just go on MSNBC, but go on Fox and Fox Business and CNBC, and go into union halls and fish frys and churches all over the country and start a brush fire about what a new Democratic Party looks like.

Ryan is now running for the US Senate; he faces a progressive challenger in the primary. Of course, he does - because one thing Dems are good at is fighting each other.

And don't get me started on Chuck Schumer. I've long not been a fan. Here's a just one illustration of why" having the Judiciary Committee Dems pull a stupid stunt instead of voting against advancing the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett out of committee. Schumer thought that not showing up was the best way to "not lend a single ounce of legitimacy' to the process. My take? 

Rather than skipping out on the meeting, the adult thing to do would have been to show up, explain one more time for the record why it was the wrong thing for the Judiciary Committee to do, respond to whatever statements the Rs made (instead just reading their remarkably similar prepared remarks), and then voting against moving the nomination forward. 

Instead, they put pictures of people who benefited from the Affordable Care Act in their chairs, and hoped that their colleagues on the other side of the aisle would look at those, feel bad, and delay the vote.

This is the leader of the Dems in the Senate? Good grief.

The issues facing the country today - and facing the majority Democrats - have not changed over the past many years. The solutions to those problems are still out there, and they're still not being talked about in a way that will bring us to the solutions we desperately need. 

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "before we start taxing the super-rich, why don't we make sure that the tax code doesn't contain 50,000 ways to avoid paying taxes? If they don't have to pay the taxes on the books now, what good is adding more going to do?"

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "with literally hundreds of bills that may limit voting rights under consideration around the country, some already passed into law, why on earth are seven of ten articles in our voting rights bill not related to voting?"

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "Do we really want to require banks to report $600 transactions to the IRS? Is that really the best way to find tax avoidance by the wealthy?"

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "Why aren't we doing everything we possibly can to ensure that existing programs for student loan relief and repayment are accessible and working as intended, instead of pushing to eliminate all student debt?"

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "What the hell are we doing, holding up nearly $2 trillion in infrastructure spending? Why aren't we pushing the bipartisan Senate bill through, getting it signed, and putting that to good use right now?"

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "I don't care how we get it done, but we will have a plan - well before December - on the debt ceiling. Period."

Who is the Democrat who will stand up and say, "Where are the problem solvers? They don't have to be Problem Solvers, but we need to solve some problems, and fast."

I desperately want That Democrat to exist. The one who knows that getting something is better than getting nothing, the one who knows that trying to get Santa to give you everything you've ever wanted since you were three years old, all at once, is insane. I don't know if he or she even exists, but if That Democrat is out there, now is the time to stand up and be heard. Now is the time to read your caucus the riot act. Now is the time to get something done.

What they're doing now is not sustainable, and if they think the shellacking they took in 2010 was bad, wait until they see what happens next year.