Dear Chuck,

Dear Chuck,

Let’s recap. Back in March your base was urging you to shut down the government, but you refused because you correctly thought it was a really stupid idea. As a result, your base vilified you. In October your base again urged you to shut down the government. This time you did it. (We will skip over why you did it.) You held firm for 40 days, longer than anyone else who led a stupid shutdown, but ultimately you decided you didn’t want to be the Grinch that ruined Thanksgiving. So you gave the wink and the nod to a few of your buds to vote to reopen the government. As a result, your base has vilified you even more.

This is the most important fact in all this: your base is loud and stupid, and your sensible, moderate center is terribly intimidated by your base. Chuck, no one has your back. Your sensible Senate colleagues are not going to vote you out as Minority Leader, but they aren’t going to defend you either. They are going to quiver in the corner and hope the crocodile eats them last.

Chuck, I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this, but, whereas you view a shutdown as a short-term political ploy designed to produce leverage for the minority party in a political negotiation, your base views a shutdown as a small step towards their goal of burning it all down. To quote their hero, “The worse, the better.” You and your base aren’t simpatico, Chuck. They don’t like you and they never will.

Chuck, your 75th birthday is coming up. You should retire with dignity. There is only one good reason to run again — you want to stop AOC, and you want to stop AOC for the right reasons. A personal desire to hang on to power is not enough. You have to want to defeat AOC on the merits. You have to stand in front of your party and present a vision of a future Democratic Party that is better than one led by AOC.

That shouldn’t be that hard, Chuck. AOC’s future is socialist, economically illiterate, and antisemitic. You can articulate a future better than that, Chuck, can’t you?

The sad truth, Chuck, is I don’t think you can. I think you have lost your whole vision thing, Chuck. You are a mere collection of short-term tactics designed solely to achieve and hold power. You have lost your moral center. I know you are not antisemitic, but I don’t know that you are not a socialist.

Don’t take it personal, Chuck. I think your entire political party has lost its moral center. Do you guys really love the Declaration? Is America the last best hope for freedom, or for equity? It can’t be both, Chuck.

If you want to lead a Democrat rejection of socialism, Chuck, go for it. Let the Schumer/Cortez debates rival the Lincoln/Douglas debates in importance. But if you just want to compete with AOC over who can best trash-talk Trump, hang ‘em up, big guy. It is time to go.

G-Pub