Refusing to attend the speech would be the first indication that Democrats are not just playing politics—and playing them badly—but resisting.
Donald Trump applauds while delivering a State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol in 2018.
(Win McNamee / Pool via Bloomberg)
This Tuesday evening, Donald Trump will deliver an address to a joint session of Congress—this year’s version of the State of the Union. The Democrats should not attend; they should boycott it.
Ever since Trump returned to power, Democrats have talked about Trump (and the real president, Elon Musk) in the most aggressive terms: They’ve called him a liar, a fascist, and a direct threat to democracy; they’ve alleged that he’s an authoritarian dictator who has come to break the government in service of white-supremacist ideations. But they’ve acted like he’s a normal president, according him all the respect, privilege, and deference shown the other 45 men who’ve held his office. Now, they’re about to stand when he comes to address them at the Capitol—the same Capitol his goons stormed four years ago—and clap like trained seals when he spouts authoritarian claptrap in front of an American flag.
The incongruity between the Democrats’ words and the Democrats’ actions only serves to highlight the Democrats’ weakness. A reasonable observer would not be able to distinguish between the Democrats’ response to Trump and their response to George W. Bush. If anything, Democrats looked less weak under Bush—even when they were busy being wholly complicit with his warmongering regime—because Bush, at least, treated them like a legitimate party. Trump ignores them, punks them, and then summons them to kiss his ring at his personal golf course in Florida—and still the Democrats take no action against him outside the normal, expected political obstruction available to a minority party with no actual governmental power.
Boycotting the State of the Union would start to change all that. First, and perhaps most important, it’s new. It’s not something that’s been done before. Not showing up to the speech is “norm breaking” at a time when things are decidedly abnormal. It would be the first visual indication that Democrats are putting their bodies where their mouths have been. The image of a naked emperor, speaking to a half-empty chamber, applauded only by his sycophants and owners, is exactly the scene the country needs to see.
The alternative visual is incredibly bad for the Democrats. If they go, Trump will look like every other president: a leader of the “whole” country. Democrats will for the most part sit on their hands and stew, but they will look small and petulant when they don’t stand and clap for the aforementioned claptrap that Trump spits at them. Trump will probably trot out some family members of someone killed by an “illegal” immigrant. Will Democrats not stand to honor a grieving mother? Trump will offer one of his ridiculous platitudes about the greatness of the American military (which he is denuding of all LGBTQ people)—will Democrats not stand to “support the troops”? Attending the speech not only gives Trump legitimacy he doesn’t deserve; it also puts Democrats in the unwinnable position of trying to pick and choose which parts of Trump’s agenda they support. It will all look like politics, instead of resistance.
Democrats should boycott, but that doesn’t mean they should all go home and have a drink while crying into their Kamala Harris body pillow. Instead, they should counter-program the entire speech on YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and any other social media platform that is serving the millions of young Americans who don’t give a damn about the State of the Union anyway (which is what I will be doing). Traditionally, the party out of power gives a “response” after the State of the Union, and those are almost always an utter disaster. It’s always Cotton Mouth Rubio grabbing a bottle of water or Katie Britt intoning like a Stepford Wife. Standing soberly behind a podium—or at your kitchen table—is bound to look ridiculous after a president gives a raucous speech to all of Congress.
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But, in a boycott scenario, Trump isn’t speaking to a full house, and Democrats aren’t showing up after the fact. Democrats should be live the whole time, ignoring the purely political speech, and highlighting the real-world impact of what Trump has already done. I want to tune into fired federal workers, especially air traffic controllers, talking about what they did to keep the country functioning. I want to listen to the Ebola-prevention people Musk fired talking about how Musk is writing us into a prequel to World War Z. My guest of honor would be Gwynne Wilcox, the National Labor Relations Board commissioner unjustly and illegally fired by Trump for the crime of being Black while protecting labor rights.
I’m not the only person thinking along these lines. I have been told that some members of the Democratic Caucus have been desperately trying to push the party to deny Trump his audience, and their efforts span from complete boycott of the State of the Union to acts of civil disobedience during the speech.
I’m not sure that civil disobedience is the right way to go, unless the Democrats are willing to go all the way and force Capitol Police to drag them out of the chamber (which, in fairness, is simply dangerous, especially given the age of some of the members of the Democratic Party). Absent arrest, the Democrats run the risk of merely braying like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert in past years. While I’m all for the Democrats’ abandoning the traditional strictures of decorum, I’m not sure that looking as trashy and boorish as those two is the right way to go. It’s better to just not show up at all than show up and act like you have no home training.
Still, it’s not enough simply not to show up. Again, Democrats who want to connect with their voters must show some form of real opposition to Trump and Musk
I can imagine that this is a difficult choice for Democrats in Congress to make. These are people who have spent their entire careers trying to get into that room, and not showing up must feel to them like an abdication of their responsibilities. But the State of the Union is not the proverbial “room where it happens.” Sitting and listening to a speech is neither activism, nor advocacy. It’s not governing. In this moment, it’s just rank complicity.
The State of the Union is always pure political theater. Before television and radio, presidents didn’t even show up at Congress to give a speech; they just submitted a letter to Congress about how things were going. The current state of the State of the Union is a showpiece for the president.
When history resurfaces the photos of Trump’s first dictatorial speech to Congress, let that record show that the room was half empty. On Tuesday, Democrats can tell our children that half of us fought this man, and the evil he represents.
Donald Trump’s cruel and chaotic second term is just getting started. In his first month back in office, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) have proven that nothing is safe from sacrifice at the altar of unchecked power and riches.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
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