Not exactly a fun day for Steven Mnuchin — he spent it on Capitol Hill trying to justify his violation of law in refusing to hand over Trump’s tax returns — but he nonetheless managed to pull off a classic dick move of the kind the GOP routinely do, announcing publicly that the twenty dollar bill redesign to honor Harriet Tubman has been delayed until, well, he’s no longer Treasury Secretary.

“It’s not a decision that is likely to come until way past my term, even if I serve the second term for the president,” Mnuchin told the House Financial Services Committee. “So I’m not focused on that for the moment.”

 

“The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary’s down the road,” he said.

 

To be sure, this isn’t THE most critical issue facing the country, yes, it’s mainly a symbolic gesture, Andrew Jackson would probably shit a brick if he found out his face was on paper money, and geez, I don’t use cash all that much anymore…but this is exactly the sort of stuff that’s their stock in trade. Even the smallest issues are matters they’ll fight and claw over. They’ll never pass up a chance to do something that reeks of wingnut.

In contrast, Democrats, faced with Trump making Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan look like twin pillars of gravitas and moral rectitude, continue to play a “let’s-see-if-we-can-meet-them-halfway” game. That’s exactly how, over the course of a generation, we’ve devolved from Reagan to Bush to Trump. Even Clinton and Obama were, in their own ways, GOP-Lite.

I’m not saying Democrats should act like shitheels. But it’d be nice if every once in a while they’d push hard on things they believe in.