Are Democrats serious about making the Postmaster General testify?

Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic establishment are offering us another example of asymmetric partisan polarization.

On the Republican side, Bunker Boy and his cult have a illegal political coup underway and Republican elected officials are pretty much okay with it all. Although Maine Sen. Susan Collins has written to the Postmaster General urging him to "promptly address" the mail delays that he is deliberately and systematically causing to illegally assist the Republicans' voter-suppression. "I am concerned," she wrote.

This follows a proverbial sternly worded letter from Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats to him expressed the same concern.

Will Bunch has given us a picture of the Postal Service crisis in How we stop Trump from stealing 11/3 by mail Philadelphia Inquirer 08/11/2020 and Trump’s coup-by-mail is underway. America can’t wait until November to fight back 08/16/2020.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi decided that an impending coup was serious enough to bring the House back to Washington to do its job. But as Politico reports (Pelosi calls back House over Postal Service upheaval 08/16/2020), she doesn't want anyone to think she's been too harsh about something so minor the Republicans blatantly trying to sabotage a national election:

Pelosi and her leadership team held an emergency call Saturday to discuss several options to deal with the turmoil at the Postal Service as several rank-and-file Democrats from progressives to moderates publicly demanded action.

Some Democrats, including moderate Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), said [Postmaster General Louis] DeJoy should be arrested if he ignores a congressional subpoena to testify. Democratic leaders would not pursue that option, but Cooper’s suggestion, which was echoed by other Democrats, signals how angry lawmakers are about what’s unfolding at the Postal Service.

So, even facing a coup and the visible demolition of the Postal Service, establishment Democrats are still pre-compromising before the fight starts.

But let me guess: they'll write DeJoy another "sternly worded letter"! And make it Bipartisan with Susan Collins announcing that she's "very troubled" over the whole thing. If Collins had been around in January 1933, I'm sure she would have been "very troubled" over President Hindenburg's appointment of a new Chancellor, too.

Back in the 1990s, I read an article about the success of McDonald's in Austria. The national manager for McDonald's Austria at the time was a German guy. He commented that one thing that was unique about Austria customers is they would often order at take-out window, then park their car in the parking lot and eat the meal there rather than go inside the restaurant. "I'll never understand why they do that." he said.

I know more than I want to about the asymmetric partisan polarization in the US. But even knowing the corporate, neoliberal, often conservative and timid bent of the Democratic establishment, even knowing about their deeply-ingrained duck-and-cover instincts when confronting the Republicans, even knowing how much in hock they are to corporate donors - when I see them put out a message like this, I still think, "I'll never understand why they do that."

In this case, the Republican President is exceeding his legitimate Executive power for a criminal purpose, interfering with legal elections. Since elections are held by the states, it probably also adds up to breaking state election laws in all 50 states. He is being actively and passively supported by essentially his entire political party, Sen. Collins' concern notwithstanding."

Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership that controls the House of Representatives have to be pushed by grassrooots outrage into treating this like the crisis it is and using their legitimate investigative powers to discover the details of what is going on and expose it was widely as possible to the public. And then when they do - assuming Politico transcribed their intended message correctly - they say, oh, sure, we're going to call the Postmaster General to account for what he's doing to sabotage the national election. But, hey, if your decide to just give us the finger and ignore our subpeona, it's not like we're donna do anything about it.

How do the Republicans - and everyone else, for that matter - not take this as a big banner-sized message saying WE'RE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT STOPPING YOU?

Because in my mind, the most elementary negotiating approach in this would be to say, we're going to subpeona the Postmaster General. If asked if they will arrest him if he refuses, they could just say, oh, look, it's an irrelevantquestion. He's obligated to honor a subpoena. We assume he'll obey his legal obligation.

Speaking of which, why are the Democrats only requesting that he move his appearance up from the mid-September date he gave already? I don't know the exact process, but why not emphasize the seriousness of it by hitting him with a subpoena right away?

But the point is, when the Republicans are playing dodgeball on something so serious, it's not the time for the Democrats to insist on playing badminton instead.