An Open Letter to Congressman Van Drew
January 10, 2021
Decades from now, whenever it’s the natural time for you to shuffle off this mortal coil, your obituary will say one thing and one thing only—Jefferson Van Drew was a member of the Sedition Caucus, one of the congressmembers who sought to overturn the results of the democratic election in 2020. Your name will forever be branded with the scarlet “S” of sedition, and included on the shameful list of elected officials who betrayed their oaths of office because they thought it would be more politically opportune to publicly lick the boots of a mentally unhinged, cartoonishly corrupt reality TV buffoon who had managed to become the most dangerously criminal president in our nation’s history.
I’m writing to you in the spirit of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It’s not too late to at least partially redeem your own legacy by doing the right thing and voting to impeach Donald Trump for his insurrection against the United States of America. I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending that there’s anything you could ever do to earn my future vote after your previous pledge of allegiance to the aspiring fascist autocrat, but I’m appealing to whatever loyalty you might still have to your constituents and your country. And, practically speaking, I’d like to point out that by hitching your wagon to white nationalist corruption, you’ve already politically boxed yourself into a corner. Either way, you’ll lose. ETTD (“Everything Trump Touches Dies”), so you may as well at least try to redeem your reputation in the annals of history.
If you do the right thing and break with Trump, the MAGAs will inevitably hate you, but some shred of your decency may remain intact. On the other hand, as more details are revealed about the violent January 6 coup attempt and Trump’s role in coordinating and instigating it, the taint of your association with Trump will haunt you forever. This is especially true if you oppose impeachment, and thereby stand with Trump’s attempt to violently force himself on a nation whose diverse majority emphatically does not want him. If you do that, you’ll lose all credibility with any sane Republicans who had voted for you because they believed you would be a moderate voice. In a future in which you’ve supported the outgoing president’s sedition, you may go out to Jersey Shore restaurants where you’ll receive warm pats on the back from hardcore red-hats who will pick up your tab for the drinks that bartenders and servers will secretly spit into. But your political career will be over. That’s the likely fate of someone who has aligned himself with the second Lost Cause.
There will be no way for you to pretend you weren’t on the side of trying to overthrow the will of the American people—and the will of the overwhelming number of people in our state of New Jersey. No one but Trump’s most thoroughly brainwashed cult members believe that he truly won the most votes in this past election. This is a president who lost the popular vote in the 2016 election by 3 million votes against a highly unpopular candidate, and then spent the next four years alienating anyone except his most extremist base. The Women’s March the day after his sparsely attended inauguration was the largest single-day protest in the country’s history. Trump’s approval rating almost never climbed above 50%, and he was behind Biden in every single reputable poll since Biden became the Democratic nominee. Trump’s term ended with him presiding over the worst pandemic response in the world, which led to the deaths of over 350,000 Americans and caused widespread economic desperation. One doesn’t have to agree that the devastation wrought by Covid-19 was completely Trump’s fault to acknowledge that his refusal to appropriately respond to it cost him votes he couldn’t afford to spare. Anyone who pretends to believe that Trump couldn’t possibly have lost the 2020 election is a bald-faced liar and will be recognized as such.
In closing, I’m asking you to do the right thing and vote to impeach Donald Trump before he can do any more damage to our once-proud Democracy. Please think beyond the political aspirations you’ve already squandered and vote in accordance with the oath you took to serve the constitution of the United States of America. At least have your legacy reflect that you were able to acknowledge a mistake and try to correct it to the best of your ability as an elected member of our government.
Sincerely,
A concerned constituent
