Many strange things are afoot up in Washington, the latest being U.S. Rep. John Lewis leading his fellow House Democrats in a sit-in of the House chambers this week, protesting Republican refusal to allow votes on rather mild gun-control measures.
Such a takeover is unprecedented, but what’s really interesting is the issue that precipitated it. For years, Democrats cowered in fear at the prospect of having to take a vote on gun-control bills, considering it a no-win proposition. Now they’re going to extraordinary measures — including a filibuster last week in the Senate — to demand the right to be heard on such issues.
Yes, part of that’s attributable to the recent mass shooting in Orlando, as well as the recognition that in the week after that shooting, another 500 Americans were killed or wounded with firearms. Gun-safety advocates have long had the polling numbers on their side — in a new Morning Consult poll, 68 percent of Americans and 57 percent of Republicans said they would support banning assault weapons — but they have failed because they could never match the emotional intensity of the NRA and its allies.
That might now be changing.
However, I suspect that what we’re seeing goes well beyond the gun-control issue. When Democrats look at their opposition these days, they see a badly divided party led by the likes of Donald Trump, with some Republicans still muttering about contesting his nomination in Cleveland. They see Hillary Clinton raising tens of millions of dollars and eyeing red-state opportunities such as Georgia and Arizona, and on the other side they see Trump with a smaller campaign chest than many House members, still struggling to hire even basic staff.
They look to the crucial state of Florida, where Sen. Marco Rubio announced his re-election bid this week with an explicit repudiation of his own party’s nominee. They see other Republican politicians fearful of even uttering the name of their presidential nominee, and corporate America fleeing from association with the GOP. They watch the job approval ratings for President Obama — a man the Republicans have slimed for years as little short of a traitor — rising to levels exceeding those of Ronald Reagan at the same point in his presidency, and they note that just 30 percent of voters approve of the GOP’s performance.
They know that the social issues that Republicans long used to their advantage have now become big burdens for the GOP, and that Trump’s bigoted rhetoric has set back Republican outreach to minority voters for a generation or more. They see that income inequality, an issue that Republicans used to dismiss as “the politics of envy,” is now high on the agenda for both parties, and they can’t help but observe that the GOP solution remains more tax cuts for the wealthy, an approach unlikely to gain much traction.
In short, the Democrats have lost their fear of the Republicans, and for the moment at least, the Republicans are too confused and divided to do much about it.
