Watching professional Democrats for, well, decades, I’ve noticed that they hate trying something that might fail, even when the cost of losing is minimal. Which is why they won’t adopt Brian Beutler’s strategy to attack Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (boldface mine):

Democrats have been wrestling with the challenge of making the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, famous. They have a lot of material to work with—his deep involvement in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his extremist views on abortion, homosexuality, Medicare, and Social Security. But it’s also a tall order…

Opportunity knocks! In providing reporters a timeline for his plan to release more security-camera footage captured during the insurrection, Johnson told them he’d taken affirmative steps to protect the January 6 rioters from justice. “We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day,” he said Tuesday, “because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.”

…But with just a little bit of initiative, Democrats could turn that into a big, lasting problem for him, rather than something that dissipates into the news cycle.

By obscuring the identities of the rioters, Johnson may run afoul of section three of the Constitution’s 14th amendment.

Most of the discourse and legal action stemming from section three has centered around Donald Trump, and his eligibility for the presidency, along with a handful of congressional Republicans who were most complicit in the riot itself. But Johnson may now have new exposure.

As a reminder, it reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, 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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

If you didn’t figure it out from the emphasis, I think Johnson provided aid or comfort to insurrectionists and is thus ineligible for the speakership, or even his House seat representing Louisiana. And even if judges are too scared or partisan to agree with me, I think Democrats should challenge the validity of his speakership and his membership in the House.

Courts have already adjudicated the question of whether January 6 constituted an insurrection (it did) and whether people who didn’t participate in the riot can be said to have “engaged in insurrection” or “given aid or comfort” to enemies of the U.S (they can).

…They should do these things because they’re right—and for a more instrumental reason: to keep the idea that Johnson might lose the speakership for aiding or comforting insurrectionists in the national discourse. To slow the forgetting process, so Americans will know that, less than three years after the insurrection, nearly every House Republican voted to elevate a leading insurrectionist to the speakership.

Democrats can make Mike Johnson famous, but it’ll be a lot easier if they really try.

Of course, these are professional Democrats, for whom ‘chickenshit’ is the default setting, so it won’t happen. But someday–probably when it’s too late–they’re going to have to learn that you need to tell people things over and over again, and the best way to do that is force the issue, even if you lose a vote.

A boy can dream anyway…