Right after the draft of the Roe v. Wade opinion leaked, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, condemned peaceful protests near Supreme Court judges' houses as "reprehensible" and promptly voted to provide more security for Brett McBeer and company. I wasn't surprised that my senator was quicker to protect Sam Alito from candlelight vigils than he was to protect me and my family from Sam Alito. But as a novelist and a woman, I'm furious and terrified Democrats have lost the entire plot, and the American experiment is next, not least because Dems have no idea how to tell a story.
Wannabe tyrants represent only about a quarter to a third of the population, but you wouldn't know it by the behavior of the Democratic Party. Cowering, dithering Dems accept the most ludicrous Fox News framing of every issue from inflation to policing to abortion, perpetually stumped by right-wing mud-slinging. In response to rabid authoritarianism, they hem and haw, shuffle policy papers, babble about "bipartisanship" and attempt to negotiate with GOP grifters who call them pedophiles. And then these same Democrats turn around and blame a handful of progressives, when it's conservatives from both parties who block and shred every scrap of legislation that might make all our lives a little less apocalyptic. And the administration wonders why Biden's approval numbers are tanking?
