One of my favorite anecdotes from the Civil War comes from the memoir written by Colonel Horace Porter, a Medal of Honor winner and an aide to Ulysses S. Grant. Porter recalls a moment after the horrible Union defeat that was the battle of the Wilderness in which Grant's officers were talking about the magical prowess of Robert E. Lee. Grant, fed up with paeans to the enemy general, finally lets loose on his staff.

According to Porter, Grant told his aides to shut up about Robert E. Lee.

A general officer came in from his command at this juncture, and said to the general-in-chief, speaking rapidly and laboring under considerable excitement: "General Grant, this is a crisis that cannot be looked upon too seriously. I know Lee's methods well by past experience ; he will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our communications."

The general rose to his feet, took his cigar out of his mouth, turned to the officer, and replied, with a degree of animation which he seldom manifested : "Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

This, I believe, is good advice for anyone involved in any sort of competition or contest. It certainly would have been helpful to the country had the Democratic Party heeded it for much of the past 40 years. So much of Democratic strategy has been drawn up out of fear of what the magical spinning power of the conservative media apparatus might do with it that good issue positions, good candidates, and good ideas got undermined by a predictable and permanent institutional flinch.

Recently, however, it appeared that the Democrats were getting that reflex under control. But they have not eliminated it entirely. Take, for example, this Tweet from former Obama campaign chief David Axelrod, now d/b/a a CNN pundit.

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Maybe I’m missing something, but the hazard of an omnibus document demand by House judiciary versus discreet, serial ones is that, however legitimate the areas of inquiry, the wide-ranging nature of it is too easily plays into the “witch-hunt” meme. — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 4, 2019

Here's what he's missing: there are a lot of subpoenas because all the evidence indicates that there are a lot of crimes within and without this administration*. And what does it matter if it "too easily plays" into a meme. The Republicans are going to use that meme anyway. The job of the investigators is to find the truth behind however many crimes can be found, and it is the job of the Democrats to make sure the country knows as much about them as is necessary to judge the president* and his party in subsequent elections. And taking one of the bigger sticks off the table before you get a chance to swing it is no way to do that.

If you see any Democrats soft-pedaling a massive approach to the climate crisis because somebody yells "socialism!", then you're seeing the flinch again. If you see any Democrats running away from reproductive rights because of this absurd "executing babies" trope that's become so popular recently, that's the flinch, too. Its source is a desire to reach people who long have been out of reach entirely. This is also true with the case of Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota.

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The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is preparing to act on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, a measure prompted by some remarks Omar made regarding Israel that subsequently were made a meal of by opportunistic Republicans and angry and/or timid Democrats. (Her comments were inartful, truth be told. "Allegiance" is not the word to throw around idly in this context.) But the idea that, however clumsily expressed, opinions about this country's relations with a foreign country should be so beyond the prerogatives of a member of Congress that they should prompt a congressional resolution is ludicrous.

Nevertheless, one of Omar's Democratic colleagues, Juan Vargas of California, said precisely that on the electric Twitter machine.

Obviously, we are going to have to have a serious conversation about the limits of unquestioning support.



That the Republicans, the party of Steve King, would target Omar, a Somali refugee and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, was the easiest bet on the board. That this targeting would be energized in large part by pure bigotry was even more of a lock. But this resolution is pure capitulation by the Democratic majority.

We do not need another performative resolution against anti-Semitism just because somebody is raising performative hell against a freshman congresswoman. It is not going to stop the attacks on Rep. Omar. It is not going to stop the Republicans from making wild charges about any member of Congress who doesn't look like Steve King. This is tantamount to those clearly unconstitutional laws "banning" the BDS movement that are cropping up in the states, and which, being aimed at a specific and non-violent means of political protest, are so nakedly contrary to the First Amendment that their authors should be ashamed of themselves.

It's not going to be enough for Democrats to pass resolutions saying bad things are bad if they do so out of the fear that Republicans are still going to do double somersaults and land behind the Democratic lines and on both flanks. Stand by your people. Why not? Nothing else has worked.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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