THIS IDEA SHOULD BE DISCUSSED BY TYT LEADERSHIP…A MUCH BETTER IDEA THAN COURTING MAGA
The People’s Cabinet by Tim Snyder
In a shadow cabinet , parliamentarians from the opposition party follow the actual cabinet members, develop expertise in the relevant portfolios, and comment to the press. They remind the public that other policies and other approaches are possible, and get a chance to show off their skills.
Trump’s cabinet will be full of billionaires. A people’s cabinet would be a reminder that we need not be ruled by corrupt oligarchs.
Certainly one can imagine a number of forms of oversight. Journalists could form a team and agree to follow cabinet members. One can even imagine scholars doing something of the sort.
Opposition and resistance will take many forms. But a people’s cabinet would be a specific form of activity for politicians . It should be composed of present and past elected officials, and perhaps also past holders of high offices. Unlike journalists or academics or activists or others, such people bear not just ethical but political responsibility. They might have a political future in a restored American democracy. That is the point.
How might the Democratic Party arrange something like this? Unlike parties in parliamentary systems, . There is no tradition of an alternative cabinet in the United States. But that does not mean that generating one is impossible! After all, a member of the House of Representatives has already suggested doing this.
The chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is open Candidates could make a people’s cabinet part of their platform and explain how they would form it. This would be an obvious first step.
Or the chairs of the relevant House and Senate committees and subcommittees could serve in parallel as the people’s cabinet. Or one important congressional committee, such as Judiciary, could assign all of its members to serve as an alternative cabinet.
The essential point is to figure this out and get started!
These first six months of the Mump regime will be axial. Musk-Trump will have problems. Incompetence will tell The mumpers who want fascism in order to get to the oligarchy will clash with the mumpers who want oligarchy in order to get to fascism. Those who understand that they should just take credit for the Biden economy will clash with those who want tariffs and deportations. The mump crew will not do some of the things they promised, which is bad for them. They will do some of the things they promised, which is bad for the rest of us. But the things they mean to do are generally difficult, usually unpopular, sometimes in tension with one another, and often much worse in reality than they sound in campaign speeches.
There will be huge openings for those who want to defend the Constitution and propose alternatives. But we will need new ideas, new voices, and new forms of action: such as a people’s cabinet.
