I have written many a post bemoaning the inability of the Democrats to speak with one voice, something the Republicans do all the time. There’s another thing the Republicans do all the time: they insist (again with one voice) that the Democrats condemn anyone on the left who says or does anything they can successfully attack. They’re still insisting that Democrats condemn Louis Farakhan, a man of little consequence. The thing is, it works.
Over the last few days, we have seen a number of vicious attacks upon the Parkland High kids. These kids have done what no Democratic politician has been able to do: put the NRA and its enablers on the defensive. It’s only right that we should at least have their backs. The latest in an already long line of slanderous attacks is a faked image of Emma Gonzalez tearing up the constitution. Even elected Republican politicians are getting into the act; the loathsome Steve King issued a lying and nonsensical tweetabout Gonzalez.
Now, ask yourself, what would the Republicans be doing if the situation were reversed. They would be demanding that all Democrats and Democratic affiliated organizations condemn the slanderers and liars. Shouldn’t we be doing the same. Shouldn’t prominent National Democrats be loudly demanding that the NRA and its lackeys condemn the liars spreading this filth? The country already sympathizes with these kids, and a concerted campaign of this sort could only move the country and the national conversation further in the direction we’d like to see it go. Of course the NRA will not condemn these people, it will respond with more of the same sort of bullshit (I don’t have to sanitize the phrase) that it’s been spewing for the past 55 years. But they’ve been called out on that, and they can be called out again. At least at the moment, it’s not working, and the more they’re attacked for it the more they’ll be exposed for what they are.
I don’t expect this to happen, of course. The DCCC is still out there recruiting gun nuts to run for Congress. But it would work if they did it.
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