Resistance 2: Pouty Inauguration Boogaloo?

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One of the few remarks worth quoting from Karl Marx is this observation, loosely translated: History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Marx intended that as applicable to historical figures as exemplars, specifically in the fall of France’s Second Republic and the rise of Napoleon III in an 1851 coup d’etat. 

That makes today’s Axios report on Marx’s intellectual heirs all the more hilarious. It seems that progressives want to launch Resistance 2.0 now that Donald Trump has won a decisive election, but the form of this resistance is, um … to not show up to Trump’s inauguration.

Wow! That’ll hurt his feelings, for sure. And the scale of this resistance is, well …

More than a dozen congressional Democrats plan to sit out President-elect Trump’s inauguration, and many more are anxiously grappling with whether to attend, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Not every Democrat skipping the ceremony will do so to protest Trump — but a formal boycott is materializing as a first act of resistance against the incoming president.

Ahem. There will be 215 Democrats in the next session of the House, along with 47 Democrats in the Senate caucus. Out of 262 Democrats, Axios casts the absence of “more than a dozen” — 13, actually — as the start of Le Resistance Part Deux. And that’s while admitting that the absence of some of these 13 doesn’t have anything to do with Trump in the first place. 

All thirteen of these are in the House. Only six of those are on the record in Axios’ piece, and their identities won’t surprise anyone: Bennie Thompson, Jasmine Crockett, Delia Ramirez, Steve Cohen, Veronica Escobar, and Ilhan Omar. New Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar won’t commit to going, but isn’t exactly boycotting either. Exactly zero Senate Democrats are on the record for boycotting, while 11 have committed to attending. 

Omar and others claim to feel unsafe in DC after January 6:

• Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said that as a Latina, she doesn’t “feel safe coming” with Trump’s supporters pouring in for the ceremony. “I’m not going to physically be in D.C. on that day,” she told Axios.
• Similarly, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that attending MLK Day events instead “makes sense, because why risk any chaos that might be up here?”

Double ahem. They’ve been in DC for the last four years, haven’t they? Besides, the controversies that drove the January 6 riot are no longer in play. The real question is whether the Left will replicate the riot that took place in DC eight years ago during Trump’s first inauguration, in which the Left pledged to launch their first Resistance campaign in violence and intimidation. Over 200 rioters got arrested after creating “significant damage to a number of blocks” in DC. That’s the actual precedent and threat that is present in this inauguration, and one that these weak-kneed pols refuse to acknowledge.

Still, Resistance 1.0 was a tragedy. I suspect Resistance 2: Pouty Boogaloo will be mainly a farce of the take my ball and go home variety. Axios seems very anxious to turn six House Democrats into a political movement just a few weeks after American voters explicitly and robustly rejected their arguments. Their fan-girling for resistance should still be duly noted, however.