Counsels of the sages by @BloggersRUs

Counsels of the sages

by Tom Sullivan

Moses, Confucius, and Solon on the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. prides itself on nearly a quarter millennium of peaceful transfers of power — minus that post-transfer dustup between 1861 and 1865. What's messier is the transfer of power between generations. That's happening now amidst every other dizzying mess going on.

At Washington Monthly, David Atkins ponders the clash between the new kids on the House block and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The dispute was over passage of a $4.6 billion bipartisan appropriation to increase funding for the acting president's border enforcement. House progressives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wanted to add language added to ensure humanitarian safeguards for children in custody. Pelosi aligned with Democratic moderates to pass the Senate-passed bill unamended without their votes so the legislation could pass by the July Fourth recess.

Pelosi dismissed the opposition of "the Squad": AOC, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Michigan's Rashida Tlaib.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

AOC responded, "That public 'whatever' is called public sentiment," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country."

That public “whatever” is called public sentiment.

And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country. https://t.co/u6JtgwwRsk
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 7, 2019

Atkins acknowledges Pelosi's political acumen but questions her dismissal of her reinforcements:

The young freshmen in Congress including Katie Porter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Hill, Rashida Tlaib and Pramila Jayapal are providing more energy and excitement than the party has seen since Barack Obama ran for president. From the Green New Deal to the concentration camps on the border, they are doing more to push the Overton Window to the left and hold the conservative movement accountable for its moral debasement than anyone has in years.

Whether it was strategically advantageous for House Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on the funding for asylum seekers or not–and it’s hard to make the case that islt [sic] was–it was certainly morally outrageous. Some part of the caucus needed to give voice to that outrage.

As for impeachment, tactically wise or not, Atkins argues, voters need to see Democrats have spine enough "to demonstrate that Trump-level crimes will carry the highest possible accountability," at least in the House where Democrats hold a majority. Somebody needs to push for it even if the leadership won't.

E.J. Dionne, no wild-eyed radical, laments that we have entered "an Age of Impunity" with global consequences for the helpless. And the U.S. through its actions and its inaction is leading the way. What the new kids on the block question is whether their elders have forgotten how to lead or that sometimes "what’s important isn’t just winning but fighting."

We may be seeing the stirrings of a changing of the guard among Democrats inside the Beltway. I described that changing on a local level in posts here and here. "Those progressives" were dismissed as unruly upstarts who would ruin everything ... until they won every race in the county in 2008. There are things for the Squad to learn, naturally. One doesn't invite a first-year medical student to perform your surgery because you are attracted by their verve.

Still, the generation in power (in many cases) holds on too long and dismisses upstarts as too green. It's not the hippies' turn. Sit there and watch how it's done. County committees around these parts lament the lack of younger leaders among their ranks yet provide them no path to leadership. Those who earn it take it.

What these fraught times are testing is whether sage experience that proved reliable in the past still applies in the Age of Impunity, or whether the counsels of the sages contributed to it.