The Capitol riot is quite possibly the biggest gift the Democrats could have wished for, ahead of Biden’s inauguration. It will be used to vilify the entirety of the Republican Party and its voters, no matter how horrified they were at the riot, no matter how overtly they disavow it, no matter how much they distance themselves from it. It will be used to repudiate every action and policy of the Trump administration, the merits notwithstanding. It will be used to keep Trump in the spotlight, no matter his ignominious departure from elected office, and no matter what he does or doesn’t do, politically, going forward.

It will be used, most of all, to accrue power on the left side of the aisle. It will provide cover for Pelosi and Schumer to put forth partisan legislation, and to sic the Twitter hordes on their Republican counterparts if they don’t play along. It will free Biden to executive-order reversals of all things Trump, again regardless of their merits, as well as giveaways to all the usual left-leaning constituencies (including, possibly, killing “right-to-work” laws in 27 states in order to buy back the unions that were starting to defect to the protectionist Right).

In private life, it will be used to “scarlet letter” anyone who has any public evidence of siding with a Trump policy, or who has an insufficiency of evidence of criticizing all things Trump. Already, we hear talk of blacklisting those who worked or interned in the Trump administration, however tangentially. We hear talk of publishers blacklisting pro-Trump or Trump-associated writers. We hear people asking whether they should leave their Trump employment history off their resumes.

Any talk of unity or unification or healing from the Left is bullshit, pure and simple. There are certainly a few who mean it, but they’re scattered droplets in a sea of vindictive rancor, drowned out by people who want payback (for stress and anger they created for themselves, of course). Very few politicians are true statesmen or aspirational leaders, and most are zero-sum partisans far more interested in power for their team than in the good of the country as a whole. The Democratic party leadership is going to spend the next couple years doing everything it can to cement its power, and secure aspects of its agenda ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections and the 2024 Presidential campaign.

For proof of this, we need look no further than the impeachment games now being played. Pelosi rushed a bill of impeachment through the House ostensibly because Trump needed to be restrained from wild actions in his last week in office, but she then decided to sit on it rather than forward it to a Senate that may very well have been ready to convict and remove. That haste was replaced by “lets give Biden 100 days to start his agenda before we distract ourselves.” Make no mistake – this is about keeping Trump’s name in the news, not about protecting the country. It’s about preventing the GOP from moving forward and reorganizing around less polarizing leaders.

And, in a way, it’s about keeping the Trump supporters on Trump’s team. If the Left (and that includes the Press) can sustain the Trump train, it may scramble the 2024 GOP primary enough, and sufficiently fracture the party along a Trump fissure, to give Harris a cake-walk into the White House.

Many who hope for a “return to normalcy” are going to be disappointed. The Biden team is far more likely to emulate Obama than any of his predecessors, in that “normalcy” will be “here’s what I’m doing, and if you go along with it I won’t call you names” partisanship. There might have been a glimmer of hope that the Democrats would see their tenuous majority (really, it could almost be no thinner than a 50+1/50 split in the Senate, and a 221/211 split in the House) as a reason to tread cautiously. The riot, however, put a hidden smile on the faces of the Terrible Tetrad that is Biden, Harris, Schumer and Pelosi, who can now shame anyone on the Right. Whether the Right (and the newly dubbed “most powerful man in the Senate,” Joe Manchin of WV) will succumb to this remains to be seen, but in any event, it’s going to be an ugly go for those not fond of big government or the progressive agenda.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

If you'd like to help keep the site ad-free, please support us on Patreon.