The Democrats Should Boycott Trump's Speech to Congress This Week

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : This Tuesday evening, Donald Trump will deliver an address to a joint session of Congress -- this year's version of the State of the Union.
57% : Democrats should be live the whole time, ignoring the purely political speech, and highlighting the real-world impact of what Trump has already done.
55% : If they go, Trump will look like every other president: a leader of the "whole" country.
40% : Trump ignores them, punks them, and then summons them to kiss his ring at his personal golf course in Florida -- and still the Democrats take no action against him outside the normal, expected political obstruction available to a minority party with no actual governmental power.
40% : Democrats will for the most part sit on their hands and stew, but they will look small and petulant when they don't stand and clap for the aforementioned claptrap that Trump spits at them.
39% : Again, Democrats who want to connect with their voters must show some form of real opposition to Trump and Musk
37% : Attending the speech not only gives Trump legitimacy he doesn't deserve, it also puts Democrats in the unwinnable position of trying to pick and choose which parts of Trump's agenda they support.
34% : I have been told that some members of the Democratic Caucus have been desperately trying to push the party to deny Trump his audience, and their efforts span from complete boycott of the State of the Union to acts of civil disobedience during the speech.
31% : A reasonable observer would not be able to distinguish between the Democrats' response to Trump and their response to George W. Bush.
28% : But, in a boycott scenario, Trump isn't speaking to a full house, and Democrats aren't showing up after the fact.
27% : My guest of honor would be Gwynne Wilcox, the National Labor Relations Board commissioner unjustly and illegally fired by Trump for the crime of being Black while protecting labor rights.
17% : Trump will probably trot out some family members of someone killed by an "illegal" immigrant.
15% : Trump will offer one of his ridiculous platitudes about the greatness of the American military (which he is denuding of all LGBTQ people) -- will Democrats not stand to "support the troops"?
6% : Ever since Trump returned to power, Democrats have talked about Trump (and the real president, Elon Musk) in the most aggressive terms: they've called him a liar, a fascist, and a direct threat to democracy; they've alleged he's an authoritarian dictator who has come to break the government in service of white supremacist ideations.

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