What Should Be Done With Members Of Congress Encouraging Violence Against Democracy?

Liam O'Mara has already officially informed the FEC that he's running in the Riverside County district held by GOP sedition-enabling Crooked Ken Calvert (CA-42). Last month, though he had exactly zero assistance from the DCCC, O'Mara's race was spectacularly closer than anyone predicted, drawing over 157,000 votes, more votes than many candidates the DCCC spent millions of dollars on. Here are 10 candidates and incumbents that the DCCC spent massive amounts on, each of whom received fewer votes than O'Mara:

• Rep Max Rose (NY)- 137,198

• Rep. Anthony Brindisi (NY)- 155,480

• Rep. TJ Cox (CA)- 84,406

• Rep. Cheri Bustos (IL)- 156,011

• Rep. Kendra Horn (OK)- 145658

• Rep. Collin Peterson (MN)- 144,840

• Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (NM)- 122,546

• Betsy Londrigan (IL)- 151,648

• Jackie Gordon (NY)- 154,246

• Gina Ortiz Jones (TX)- 137,693

If you'd like to help O'Mara defeat Calvert in 2022, please consider contributing to his campaign here. After all, Calvert was one of the seditionists who joined half the Republicans in Congress in signing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court-- a brief so idiotic that the conservative-controlled Court laughed at it and threw it in the garbage. Now senior New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell says Calvert and the other 125 openly trying to overturn the election should not be seated.

In his demand that the traitors who have been trying to overturn the election and have been fomenting mob violence, Pascrell "invoked Reconstruction Era safeguards to cleanse from our government ranks any traitors and others that would destroy the union."

In a letter to Pelosi, Pascrell cited Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution which "gives each chamber of Congress the ultimate authority to decide their membership."

He also invoked the 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of Southern secession and the Civil War. Section 3 of the amendment forbids anyone from holding office in federal or state government who "having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

"Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as members of Congress," wrote Pascrell, who is a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

"These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend.

"Consequently, I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator," he said.

O'Mara, who is eager to take Calvert on again, doesn't think Pascrell's idea is realistic. "I don't see a Constitutional basis for the no-seating argument," he told me this morning, "and there is no precedent for a new election. I view that stuff as a clever stunt without substance. Honestly, I get the impetus for this push not to seat the incoming Members, and I sympathize. They have, after all, signalled a lack of respect for the Constitution and for the principle of democracy, and they have decided that they are okay sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election for short-term partisan gain, and at the long-term expense of a stable republic. What I worry is that such things are not a productive use of our time, and play into Republican hands with respect to messaging. There is no chance of it working, given the need for two-thirds of the body to accede to the notion that an amicus brief is seditious, and Republicans will exploit it with their own base. More importantly, it does nothing to push back against the spectre of Republican control, and clings to a naïve notion that Republicans themselves will see that they are shredding our democracy. That's not how this stuff ever works-- liberalism and parliamentary manoeuvres will not preserve our democracy. We need to articulate our own vision of how we'll solve the country's problems, and in so doing win the next elections decisively-- that is how we defeat neofascism."

Another Member who instantly signed onto the brief was Mario Díaz-Balart, a swing district Republican with no fear of being challenged because of his cozy relationship with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and through her, the Florida Democratic Party and the DCCC. He had no opponent in November, even though Trump only won the district in 2016 by less than 2 points-- 49.7% to 47.9%. Bob Lynch ran for a Miami-Dade state House seat partially within Díaz-Balart's congressional district. This afternoon, he told us that "Díaz-Balart is the perfect embodiment of everything that is wrong with Miami politics. He sits at the confluence of Republican Hypocrisy/Corruption and Democratic incompetence. Mario is the nephew of Fidel Castro yet Miami Cubans continue to elect him while he rails on about the evils and danger of socialism to a district that has one of the highest ACA enrollment rates and people collecting Social Security in the country. You would think that there is a lot for Democrats to work with there but instead they didn’t even bother fielding a candidate to challenge him. Given the results in the rest of the county, it most likely would not have made a difference but it sends a horrible message that Democrats don’t even care about the largest swing county in the country. We have to get the messaging back on track. We can’t have people believing that Universal Healthcare will cause us to spiral into Cuban or Venezuelan style misery yet look the other way when members of our government try to overturn an election."