Democrats New 2018 Message Includes a Promise to ‘Drain the Swamp’

Well, life comes at you fast.

If you’d told me a couple of years ago that the Democrats new platform for 2018 would include a promise to “drain the swamp,” I wouldn’t have believed you.  But here we are.  They apparently — rightly — believe that Americans are sick of the corruption of the federal government.

Mike Lillis, writing for The Hill, explains:

The strategy marks an expansion of the Democrats’ midterm agenda, “A Better Deal,” which up until now has focused almost exclusively on kitchen-table economic issues in lieu of the controversies surrounding President Trump and a growing list of people in his orbit.

In extending their message to include an anti-corruption component, the Democrats are painting the Trump administration — and its Republican supporters on Capitol Hill — as an unscrupulous group that’s using power to pad its own pockets while peddling policies to the highest corporate bidder. The Democrats are promising voters they’d be an alternative: The party that would clean the place up.

“President Trump has embraced the most egregious establishment Republican norms and appointed the most conflict-of-interest-ridden Cabinet in my lifetime,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday at a press briefing on the steps of the Capitol.

“The swamp has never been more foul, or more fetid, than under this president.”

Frankly, I’m all for it.  I think it’s wonderful that the Democrats are finally choosing a theme that will resonate with everyday Americans.  I’ve written extensively about how — 15 months into the Trump presidency — the swamp is still teeming with corruption. So, in this rare instance, I have to agree with the Democrats: it doesn’t seem likely that Mr. Trump will be able to “drain the swamp,” no matter how hard he tries.  

Most politicians —  those who wear the MAGA hats and those who wear “Nevertheless, She Persisted” shirts — can’t resist the corrosive nature of power. Fortunately, the power of “we the people” is not limited to appealing to these politicians.

As I wrote in the New York Times:

Our founders anticipated the inevitable corruption of our political class and gave us a tool in Article V of the Constitution to fight back. It’s not enough to threaten to withhold our vote in the polling booth and hope — in spite of the evidence — that the next politicians will somehow be better. They won’t. Article V gives states the ability to propose amendments that might, for example, rein in an out-of-control, undisciplined government.

Let our continuing disappointment about multiple presidential administrations be a wake-up call: We can take away the power of Washington once and for all and return it to the American people.

Hat Tip: The Hill

Image Credit: By Linda MacPhee-Cobb (alligator in swamp) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons