Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, chastised politicians for panicking about a potential Trump victory, arguing that America's system will hold and keep him in check like any other president.
Democrats have been reeling since President Biden’s widely-criticized performance in last week's presidential debate. The president’s appearance and gaffes had sparked yet another national furor about his ability to serve, leading many of his staunchest supporters to ask him to step down. By contrast, Golden called on fellow Democrats to stop worrying about former President Trump as if he were a threat to America's political system and accept that he will win in November.
"After the first presidential debate, lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee. Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise. It also didn’t rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that," Golden wrote in the Bangor Daily News.
He went on to argue, "Democrats’ post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy. I reject the premise. Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system."
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After talking about past trials and tribulations America has survived since its first Independence Day, he pivoted and said, "This election is about the economy, not democracy. And when it comes to our economy, our Congress matters far more than who occupies the White House."
"Some of Congress’ best work in recent years has happened in spite of the president, not because of him," he argued. "A handful of responsible Democrats, including myself and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, rejected Biden’s bloated ‘Build Back Better’ bill and instead passed a law that supercharged American energy production, saved Medicare billions of dollars and reduced the deficit."
He also cited another example of congress holding major political shakeups in check, this time under the Trump presidency.
"Years earlier, Congress stood up to the GOP establishment who tried to hijack Trump’s agenda to achieve their long-held goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act," he wrote. "Defeating them saved health coverage for tens of millions of Americans and protections for people with preexisting conditions."
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While he argued, "Maine’s representatives will need to work with [Trump] when it benefits Mainers, hold him accountable when it does not," he also said that even the Trump reforms he personally agrees with will face staunch political opposition.
"Congress will need to stand up to economic elites and so-called experts in both parties who are already working overtime to stop Trump’s proposed trade policies that would reverse the harms of globalization and protect American businesses from unfair foreign competition," he wrote. "We need to protect from extremists the law I helped pass that caps seniors’ insulin costs at $35 and forces Big Pharma to negotiate and lower the cost of prescription drugs."
He reiterated his earlier argument that a Trump presidency is not the peril to democracy some claim it will be.
"I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams," he wrote. "We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them."
