Influential people are saying that the minority party is powerless, that your only option is to persuade Republicans to remember their better angels, and that resistance risks catastrophe.
That argument has a history. It's the same argument used to protect slavery. Preserving the Union is more important than ending the abuse. Accept the casualties. What would you do — risk civil war?
We've been here before. In 1788, the Federalists rammed through a Constitution designed to consolidate power. They moved fast, operated in secret, and told the opposition it was too late to fight. The Anti-Federalists were outmatched, disorganized, and losing.
They forced the fight anyway.
They didn't get everything they wanted. But they made the Federalists pay for every victory. They extracted the Bill of Rights — not as a gift from Madison's genius, but as a concession forced by resistance. Madison opposed it. Hamilton opposed it. They fought it tooth and nail. The Bill of Rights is a product of American resistance. Not reform. Not restraint.
Senate Democrats have 41 votes. That's enough to block funding and send Republicans to the table. They all know it. Instead: training, conditions, hearings. Start small, get less. That makes Republicans exactly as powerful as they claim to be.
So when people tell you "whatever you would have done in 1930s Germany is what you're doing now," tell them you don't need to go somewhere else for lessons.
--Are you a Loyalist, saying the British constitution just needs reform?
--Are you a Federalist, saying the U.S. Constitution just needs reform?
--Are you an ally of the enslavers, saying resistance will only create conflict?
That's what you're doing now.
Base it on what people really did. Not magical thinking about a country that persuaded abusive authority to end the abuse. That country never existed.
