Primary (Almost) Every Democrat Who Supports Trump’s Agenda

A University of Georgia nursing student named Laken Riley was murdered last year by an undocumented immigrant, and because the Congressional Republican Party is populated by the worst humans ever created, they cynically named their broadly anti-immigrant and racist messaging bill the Laken Riley Act. And because the Congressional Democratic Party is filled with clueless gerontocrats and the most directionless, aimless folks on the planet, some joined on to a bill that would be considered too far right for George W. Bush’s White House. Forty-eight House Democrats voted to advance the bill to the Senate last week, up from thirty-seven when it last appeared in March, and now three Senate Democrats–Jon Ossoff, Gary Peters, and John Fetterman–say they plan to vote for it when it comes to the Senate floor, while new Democratic Senators Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego both voted for it in March when they were in the House.

There are plenty of real issues that need to be fixed at the deadliest land crossing in the world, and immigration has been broken since long before George W. Bush angered the GOP base by pushing for reform. This should be a priority for Congress, because the entirety of what falls under “immigration” has broad impacts and is a gigantic clusterfuck. The Dreamers that turnhoodie John Fetterman claims he will still defend in his alliance with Trump are stuck in limbo, being forced to prove themselves to the only country they have really ever known because of this mess, needing a legislative stopgap to stay here that the 14th Amendment-hating Republicans have long sought to unmoor from their lives. As odious as Bernie Sanders indulging Elon’s bad faith and racist H-1B visa fight has been, Bernie does have a point about the injustice of directly tying citizenship to a job and how it enables capitalists to further dominate society. There are a lot of good things that Democrats could do to help fix our broken immigration system.

Republican Sen. Katie Britt even said today that there will “absolutely” be amendments to the bill, as Republicans say they are willing to make concessions to the Democratic Party to get this very far right-wing dream passed through the Senate. In a normal world, there is a lot of room for Democrats who want to fight for a more humane immigration system to say they are trying to work with what they have to help people.

But the problem is that we don’t and never have lived in a normal world and it’s the same schmucks making the same promises that they won’t do what they usually do, asserting that this time they can be trusted to be alone with a group of people who have spent their entire professional lives pantsing them in public. What these Democrats who flip flopped and will flip flop on this bill are doing is asking us to trust them that their political judgement and negotiating skills are good, when all available evidence with this party is to the contrary. Right now, these Democrats (and capitalists) are acting as if Trump won a Reaganesque landslide to drag the entire country right, when everything we know so far is that Trump won basically the same proportion the eligible voting population that he did in 2020 (32 percent), while the story of this election is a total collapse in support for the Democratic Party. This bill does have some broad-based popularity, but that all collapses the moment you start telling people what it will do. All you need to do is scratch the surface of this new Trumpian politics and it becomes blatantly obvious how thin the real support for it actually is, unless you are an elected Democrat apparently.

So here’s a simple solution: left-leaning organizations and the dreaded and nebulous “groups” need to start organizing campaigns around open threats to primary any Democrat who signs on to Trump’s reactionary agenda. If the fighting Fettermans can talk the crazies out of the Infowars studios and into something resembling reality, great, let’s get some productive and humane immigration reform done. But if this is still Groundhog Day and the Democrats are helping to pass the most racist and reactionary immigration bill in a century for no politcal benefit yet again, the fighting Fettermans will all find themselves up against well-organized primary campaigns with fervent support. Two, four, six years from now–it doesn’t matter–we should never forget the Democrats who abandon us to play footsie with Trump in the coming years. One of the best ways to ensure that Democrats like that won’t exist in the future is to draw a line in the sand right now.

I qualified this declaration with (almost) because in America’s remaining 20 swing districts or so, and the handful of House Democrats who have found a way to win in Trump districts, they play by a different set of rules. Democrats will always have to sign on to some Republican policy to win power in those districts and criticizing them is a different conversation, but if the rest of the caucus safely ensconced inside their gerrymandered cocoon starts acting like their more vulnerable members, then, well, look around. This is what that cowardly capitulatory strategy leads to.

We are entering dark times, and to think that Trump’s revanchist agenda is about law and order or actually fixing the problems at the border is the height of naivete. This is the kind of stuff this bill will embolden.

The segment never identifies which federal agency this is. It’s important, primarily because they’re arresting U.S. citizens, but also, who allows their law enforcement personnel to dress like this?

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— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 13, 2025 at 11:29 AM

Any Democrat who signs on to this bill should have no future in the Democratic Party. Democrats are widely reported to be “paralyzed” right now, and this dearth of leadership from the gerontocrats with a literal death grip on power has led to everyone fending for themselves as there is no push to even be an opposition party. Potentially vulnerable Senators like Jon Ossoff will have to explain to future electorates why he opposed a bill and then later broke with most of his party to vote for it while a Republican who has always been in favor of this kind of horrifying Trojan Horse berates him for being yet another Democrat who speaks out of both sides of his mouth, then subsequently wins the vast majority of the voters Ossoff is trying to reach with this impending flip flop.

So let’s make sure that a Senator who may sign on to Trump’s agenda like Jon Fetterman never makes it to the general election, weighed down by the classic Democratic baggage which demonstrates to voters that the party believes in nothing other than twisting whichever way the wind blows. America is pissed off at the status quo and has been for a long time, and voters are clearly looking for fighters, so going forward, let’s identify every Democrat who repeats the mistakes of the past, and give them a fight.