Democrats Can't Read A Calendar

This Week's Capitulation Was the Culmination of Years of Inaction

The first known calendar is believed to have been devised in Scotland in 8,000 BC. Even 10,000 years later, Democratic Congressional leaders are still unable to read one. Assuming they do understand how timetables work, they lack the capacity to plan against particular days, months, and years. For legislators, this is a basic and essential skill. All of what has transpired since Donald Trump’s reelection was not just foreseeable, but marked for the world to see.

For example: If Election Day last year was Tuesday, November 5, 2024 and Inauguration Day was January 20, 2025, that left 76 days, two and a half months, for the opposition party, that is, the Democrats, to huddle, brainstorm, plan, and execute any number of tactics that could have slowed down the new administration. Joe Biden was still President of the United States during this period.

Likewise, Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer knew a short-term funding bill would be needed in March. He didn’t about it a week ahead of time, but months in advance. When the time came, as we know, he and nine of his colleagues didn’t so much as cross the aisle to stop it, let alone stand athwart history.

They saw the Big Beautiful Bill coming, too.

Now, I’m just a caveman, but even I know that the government’s fiscal year ends September 30th. It did this year, too. Some nerd staffer on the Appropriations Committee knew when SNAP benefits were going to start running out. They knew, or should have known, when ‘non-essential*’ federal employees would stop receiving paychecks.

*Author’s Note: How do we live in a world where both air traffic controllers and TSA officers are considered non-essential and therefore don’t receive paychecks, regardless of the situation? The Treasury has money in its checking account, I assume. If the efficiency and safety of air travel is so essential to America, how were they not accounted for ahead of time?

In 2021, Democrats passed emergency subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare, if you’re nasty) with the American Rescue Act. They extended them through the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. They were the ones who passed the bill that phased out the subsidies come December 31st, 2025. They’ve known this deadline was coming for three years.

And yet…

It was only after capitulating in March and watch the base rage, that Democratic leadership decided they needed to do something as the federal budget deadline approached. So they held out. For 40 days they roamed DC’s desert, scaling the walls, drinking Stoli-Dolis at The Capital Grille, and gnawing off the last of their fingernails.

They went into the shutdown without a plan and they came out with nothing to show for it. In the intervening month, rather than applying maximum pressure to red state Republicans, and ensuring that every American whose EBT card stopped working knew who was to blame. Instead, as always, they’d accounted for too little, if anything, happening, once the shutdown went into effect.

On the whole, it is better for people to eat rather than starve. It is better for Americans to have healthcare they can afford rather than resorting to rolling the dice and heading to the Emergency Room when something really bad finally happens. This is what happens when you don’t have a plan, believe in too little, if anything, and act as if you’re just happy to be there when you actually possess power.

And then, on cue, the Democratic Senators who voted to reopen the government on the promise of the least-trustworthy group of people since [insert joke] were shocked to find out that Majority Leader John Thune’s conference was going to throw in further restrictions on abortion services under the ACA. If Joseph Heller hadn’t gotten to it first, this generation of Democratic leaders would’ve defined “Catch-22.”

As the last leaves fall and the first snows threaten, Democrats are again out in the cold. Their base, and even some of their establishment allies, see them as feckless and weak. Fresh off their victories of last week, the party felt the wind at its back. Now, they feel the gales of November in their faces.

In Case You Missed It:

Check out my conversation with 404 Media’s Joseph Cox on how ICE and Homeland Security are using vendors to skirt the 4th Amendment and due process.

If you didn’t have a chance, read my recollection of working for the late Dick Cheney and the world he helped create.

In our next episode, Keyrock runs for the United States Senate. Art imitates life…

Be safe out there, everyone.