I’m going to talk about Hakeem Jeffries’ recent appearance on CNN in which he made another one of his tone-deaf remarks about evil being a distraction from what’s really important to the American people. 

But before you say what I know you’re going to say, let me say he’s not hopeless yet! Leaders can change. They must be pushed. They must be made to hear the roar. Anyway, if Ken Martin can do it, so can Jeffries.

As you may know, Ken Martin is the head of the Democratic National Committee. Until recently, he was a dictionary squish. In Minnesota, a close friend of his was assassinated by a man who is clearly in thrall to Donald Trump. Yet when the opportunity came to blame him for creating the conditions for cold-blooded murder, Martin blinked. All he could do, in so many words, was ask why we all can’t get along.

But then something happened. 

Martin grew a spine!

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He was asked recently whether the Democrats should shut down the government in the next funding faceoff if Trump keeps doing crimes (my word) like using “the Justice Department to go after his enemies or if he keeps National Guard troops on the streets?” Martin said yes!

“You have a fascist in the White House,” Ken Martin said. “We cannot be the only ones playing by the rules with a hand tied behind our back. That old playbook, the norms that used to have guardrails on our democracy and protect all of us, that doesn’t exist anymore.

“We gotta throw that playbook out the window, because the Republicans have,” he said. “We cannot be the only party that’s playing by the rules anymore. That’s why I said this isn’t your grandfather’s Democratic Party, where you bring a pencil to a knife fight. We are bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. Donald Trump wants a showdown. The Republicans want a showdown. We’re gonna give it to them.”

This heel turn is new. Earlier this year, during the most recent funding showdown, Chuck Schumer said a handful of Democrats would vote with the GOP to keep the government open, even though they knew the president would prosecute a totalitarian agenda. In essence, Schumer had argued, it was better to bargain with evil than fight it.

Now Martin is saying: fight! fight! fight! And that fighting spirit is almost certainly the consequence of traveling the country and listening to Democratic voters, who are tired of the Democrats asking the Republicans for permission to get along with the Republicans.

Jeffries can do the same. But we have to push him in more ways than one. Right now, the main focus is getting him to stop using the word “distraction.” On Sunday, he again used that formulation on CNN.

“We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he is deeply unpopular,” Jeffries said. “The one big ugly bill is unpopular, ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans is unpopular, enacting tax breaks for their billionaire donors is deeply unpopular, and that’s why a lot of this is taking place.”

But I think “distraction” is only part of a larger problem. 

Though he accuses Trump of diverting our attention away from the fact that he’s cheating us, Jeffries still accepts as valid the president’s “reasons” for doing things – in this case, commandeering local law enforcement and replacing police departments with US military personnel to patrol major cities, like Washington and Chicago. 

The president’s “reasons”? Crime is so out of control that it’s tantamount to a national emergency demanding a military response. 

That’s a lie.

But instead of calling out the lie, presenting the facts, and accusing Trump of attempting a power grab, Jeffries implicitly concedes that there’s some truth to it. He probably figures that there’s no point in disproving the lie and he’ll make more hay dismissing Trump’s blatant power grab as a distraction before redirecting attention to things like healthcare that might be more convincing to voters who believe lies. 

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In other words, Hakeem Jeffries is doing what Chuck Schumer was doing, which is what all centrist Democrats do: accept as valid the premise of the lies in order to make themselves seem moderate (especially not the “radical left Democrats” that Trump would have everyone believe), and as such, portray themselves as honest brokers who care about “what’s really important to the American people.” 

But when you accept as valid the premise of the lie, you forfeit the opportunity to confront it. You might even find yourself looking weak and on the defensive, as Jeffries did. When asked if people in Chicago are manufacturing concerns about crime, he sputtered and bumbled through the rest of the interview, spending his time trying to prove that his party cares about crime as much as Trump does, thus deepening the false impression that he cares at all. For God’s sake, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Congress looked like he was on trial!

Trump does not care whether there are high rates of crime in American cities. If there is, so be it. If there isn’t, he’ll lie about it. He’ll accuse the local cops of faking the data. (He’ll get his congressional goons to validate the allegation by launching an investigation into it.) What’s important isn’t the substance of the allegation but whether the allegation justifies what he wants to do. If it does, he’ll send in the troops. If it doesn’t, he’ll find some other rationale for his malign goals.

Facts don’t matter to Donald Trump, because he doesn’t care what’s true. That seems to be the conclusion that Ken Martin finally came to. There is no point in searching for good faith in a president who has none. There is no point in compromising with a criminal when all a criminal sees in compromise is more reason to commit more crimes. 

Go ahead, Martin seemed to say. Shut down the government. 

But stay focused. 

Because “playing by the rules” is the biggest distraction of them all.

Jeffries could prove hopeless, but not yet! As I said, if Ken Martin can make the journey from bargaining with evil to fighting it, he can too.