Eric's Daily: Pick a Lane and Stick With It

Hello and welcome to Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026 — fajitas, pinot noir, and bad poetry all sharing the calendar, which sounds like the setup for either a great dinner party or a genuinely uncomfortable one.

My calendar says it's Fajita Day, Ice Cream Pie Day, Pinot Noir Day, Mail Order Catalog Day, Couples Day, Bad Poetry Day, and Never Give Up Day. Grill up some fajitas, pour a glass of pinot noir, write your spouse the worst poem you can manage, and never give up on finding room for ice cream pie after all that.

Today In History:
1587: Virginia Dare is born on Roanoke Island, becoming the first child born in the Americas to English parents.
1590: John White returns to the Roanoke Colony after a supply trip to England and finds it entirely deserted, with no signs of struggle or violence — only the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post as a clue to what happened to the settlers.
1840: The American Society of Dental Surgeons is founded, becoming the first national dental organization in the U.S. to set professional standards.
1872: Montgomery Ward mails out its first mail-order catalog, launching an entire industry built on selling goods straight to rural doorsteps — the very reason for today's Mail Order Catalog Day.
1877: Astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Deimos, the smaller of Mars's two moons, just days after discovering its companion, Phobos.
1920: Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, supplying the final vote needed to guarantee women the right to vote nationwide.
1945: Indonesia adopts its first constitution, one day after declaring independence from Dutch colonial rule.
1963: James Meredith becomes the first black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
1966: Australian forces defeat a much larger North Vietnamese and Viet Cong force at the Battle of Long Tan, a victory still commemorated today as Long Tan Day.
1976: North Korean soldiers kill two American Army officers with axes in the Korean DMZ, an incident that becomes known as the "Poplar Tree Incident."
2012: Philippine Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo dies in a plane crash off the coast of Masbate.

Birthdays Today Include: Robert Redford, actor-director (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) (All the President's Men); Denis Leary, actor-comedian (Rescue Me); Elayne Boosler, comedian; Vincent Bugliosi, lawyer-author (Helter Skelter).

If today's your birthday too, happy birthday — have a Birthday, okay?

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I have a message for Democrats and those even farther left today. It runs a bit longer than some of my dailies. You might wanna pour yourself a coffee and maybe grab a nosh before sitting with this one. Oh, and keep your hands and feet inside the car until it comes to a full stop because here we go.

If you're planning to vote for someone this November on the misbegotten fantasy that they'll get one more crack at impeaching Donald Trump, do everyone within shouting distance a favor: retire the word "dictator" from your vocabulary. Permanently. Burn the flashcard. I mean, seriously.

You don't get to spend over a decade fantasizing about yanking a duly elected president out of office through impeachment, then wheel around and shriek "authoritarian!" the moment that same president wins another election fair and square. Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. Elections are a constitutional mechanism. Accept one as legitimate, and you don't get to declare the other illegitimate the second the outcome sends you reaching for the smelling salts. Pick a lane.

If your personal definition of "democracy" only functions when your guy wins, you're not defending democracy. You're defending your guy, and dressing him up in a toga to make the crush look less unattractive and nobler.

The same rank hypocrisy infects the increasingly tortured modern definition of "free speech." California's currently embroiled in a fight over legislation critics say could chill independent and investigative journalism, while supporters insist it merely protects immigration-services workers from targeted harassment. AB 2624 specifically has drawn accusations that it could be weaponized against citizen journalists; its supporters, naturally, reject the characterization.

Fine. Let's actually have that debate.

But here's the one principle that shouldn't be up for negotiation: government power over speech should absolutely terrify you no matter whose finger sits on the trigger. If your outrage over censorship evaporates the instant the censor has a D next to his or her name, you don't actually believe in free speech. You believe in approved speech. That's not principle. That's brand loyalty wearing a First Amendment costume and hoping nobody checks underneath.

While we're emptying out the hypocrisy closet, let's talk about Kamala Harris. If you spent 2024 cheering for Harris while pretending she'd emerged from the same presidential primary process that actually produced Joe Biden, spare me the lecture on electoral legitimacy. She didn't win a 2024 primary. Biden did. Then Biden abandoned his own reelection bid in July, endorsed Harris, and Democrat delegates handed her the nomination through a virtual roll call — 99% of participating delegates, zero actual voters in a booth. All of that because the party pushed him to do so. That’s a matter of public record. We all saw it. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's simply what happened, in front of everybody, on live television.

You can defend that process all day if you want. Argue the delegates had every legal right to make the call. Argue Harris was the obvious heir. Argue the convention itself constituted democracy in action. Fine, make the case. It should be amusing.

What you cannot do — not honestly, not with a straight face — is pretend millions of Democrat primary voters walked into polling places and chose Kamala Harris as their nominee. They didn't get the chance in 2024. And in 2020, in the few races she ran in, she never made it out of single-digit territory.  In the case of 2024, the party swapped candidates after the voting had already finished, with no additional voting involved whatsoever. Don’t you dare tell us that was Democracy in action.

If you spent all of 2024, and for that matter 2020 and 2016, insisting that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to democracy while in 2024 simultaneously demanding everyone genuflect before a meat puppet the party hid in the basement for literally an entire campaign, trying to shield him from any serious scrutiny, or a boozy nominee who never won a single Democrat primary, maybe now you understand why some of us found that particular lecture a little hard to choke down. Or perhaps you can't bring yourselves to that level of honesty. 

And speaking of that word — "democracy" — maybe shelve it for a while too, at least until we've finished abusing it into meaninglessness. "Democracy" shouldn't mean "the voters have spoken" only when your candidate wins, and "the republic teeters on collapse" the instant he or she loses. An election shouldn't be sacred right up until the wrong person wins it. And questioning an election result sure as hell shouldn't count as sedition when Republicans do it, but transform into "defending democracy" the second Democrats try the exact same move. You're not defending democracy, you're defending Democrats. There's a real difference. You don't get two definitions to swap out depending on the scoreboard. You get one. Pick it and live with it.

Then there's the word "felon." Yeah, yeah, we know. A New York jury convicted Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Fact, full stop. Prosecutors brought those charges under New York Penal Law §175.10, the provision that elevates falsifying records from a misdemeanor to a felony specifically when a defendant acts with intent to defraud that includes committing or concealing another crime.

If you're going to wave that conviction around as the crown jewel of your case that Trump sits uniquely beyond the pale, at least have the spine to describe what the case actually involved. Prosecutors didn't just charge "lying on a business record" and call it a day — they built 34 counts on top of a felony-elevation theory tied to reimbursements for the $130,000 Stormy Daniels payment and alleged efforts to disguise its purpose. That legal architecture deserves genuine scrutiny, not a hand-wave. You're welcome to argue the jury got it right. You're welcome to argue the conviction stands until an appeals court says otherwise. Both are arguably legitimate, if laughable positions.

But if your rallying cry is "nobody is above the law," then you'd better also care whether the law gets applied consistently, whether prosecutorial discretion gets exercised fairly across the board, and whether a genuinely novel legal theory gets the same skeptical treatment when the defendant isn't your political enemy of the hour.

"Nobody is above the law" means exactly what it says. It does not translate to "nobody is above the law, except the people I've hand-picked to prosecute my political opponents." That's not the rule of law. That's highly partisan lawfare wearing a borrowed judicial robe, and everybody watching knows it. Including you.

Here's another one for the pile: if you spent the Trump years howling that the Justice Department must remain sacrosanct and independent from politics, then turned around and cheered every single time federal law enforcement appeared to get weaponized against Trump's own political movement, don't you dare rediscover the sanctity of DOJ independence the moment the political winds shift against you. The principle doesn't get to change depending on who's in the crosshairs. If it does, you never actually held a principle in the first place. You were just wearing a team jersey and calling it a philosophy.

The same rot applies to elections generally. If you spent years insisting that merely questioning an election result marks someone as a threat to the republic, but you're now openly speculating on cable news about whether Trump will "refuse to leave" — despite the fact that he already left office once, peacefully, after losing under what can logically be considered at least questionable circumstances — kindly explain that particular gymnastics routine.

And before anyone reaches for January 6 as the trump card here: (pun intended) Yes, it happened. Yes, the violence was real. Yes, the people who committed actual crimes that day should face actual consequences for them. None of that requires abandoning the far more basic principle that Americans are allowed to question elections, challenge procedures, demand recounts, and litigate disputes without getting branded traitors for the crime of asking questions. You don't protect democracy by declaring certain questions permanently off-limits. You protect it by actually answering them. You don’t answer them by orchestrating a partisan stage show, either.

And let's recall your overt defense of people burning down cities toward that end. Somehow that was both okie and dokie to you, but January 6 was the one problem? Sorry, no sale.

Oh, and let's consider the calls that "Nobody is above the law" in light of immigration law. Remember, these are laws Democrats passed while in control of the legislature at the time. Remember Chuck Schumer?

And how is interference with Federal law enforcement, in this case regarding illegal immigration, not an insurrection? How does enforcing laws against fraud constitute racism?

If you're suddenly clutching your pearls over the Democratic Socialists of America and the broader radical left calling for abolishing or gutting institutions like the Senate, reshaping the judiciary, or shoveling authority away from elected officials entirely — welcome to the party, genuinely, better late than never. But don't you dare pretend these ideas materialized out of nowhere last Tuesday. And please don't pretend the Democratic establishment never cashed in on the votes, money, and grassroots energy that same progressive left generated for years. You don't get to spend a decade deliberately cultivating an ideological ecosystem and then clutch your chest in shock when some of the things living inside it start gnawing on the furniture. You built the terrarium. Don't act stunned it grew teeth. Remember the old poem:

There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Go ahead. Tell us how that poem isn't an apt description of where the Democrats find themselves with the DSA. YOU set this up. Now, own it. Or openly disclaim it. Somehow I doubt your honesty extends quite so far.

Nowhere does the contradiction glow brighter than around the slogan "No Kings." I have written about this in the past in this column. Fine. No kings. No dictators. No authoritarian strongmen running the show. Genuinely, sign me up — I'm fully on board with the concept in principle.

But here's the actual question nobody wants to answer honestly: does that principle still hold when the would-be king is your guy? Because if your real objection to Donald Trump isn't that a president wields too much unchecked power, but specifically that Donald Trump wields it, then you're not opposed to concentrated presidential power at all. You're opposed to the wrong person holding it. That's an enormous, load-bearing distinction, and pretending otherwise doesn't make it disappear.

If what you actually want is a president who crushes your political enemies, silences the people you can't stand, bulldozes through inconvenient institutions, and weaponizes government power against the other side — provided, of course, that president shares your politics — then stop cosplaying as a defender of constitutional government. You're not opposing kings. You're shopping for one with the correct party registration. That's not "No Kings." That's "No Kings Unless They're Ours."

And to the DSA, currently chanting for socialism while apparently skipping the ugly chapters of the history book you have obviously never read, remember that socialist and communist movements have repeatedly produced, or at minimum comfortably accommodated, brutally authoritarian governments — especially in the moment political power gets concentrated into a single party and that party crushes all opposition. Stalin's Soviet Union. Mao's China. Castro's Cuba. Those aren't obscure historical footnotes buried in a textbook nobody reads. You don't get to erase that record just because the word "socialism" tests well in your campaign focus group. And you don't get to pretend a political label magically inoculates human beings against the temptation to abuse concentrated power once they've got their hands on it. History keeps handing us that same lesson, repeatedly, at enormous cost. Apparently you keep refusing to actually absorb it.

So here's my advice to every last person tangled up in this circus:

Pick a position, and then actually stick with it when pressure shows up. If you believe impeachment is legitimate, say so — and accept that it's a constitutional remedy, not a consolation prize for losing an election.

If you actually believe elections are sacred, defend them even when the result makes you physically ill. If you believe in free speech, defend it loudest when the speaker says something that makes you want to put your fist through drywall. If you believe in an independent DOJ, defend that independence precisely when your own political enemies land under its microscope. If you believe in equal justice, demand it equally even for the defendant you despise most on Earth. If you believe in representative government, don't applaud when party insiders find a clever workaround for the voters and then slap the word "democracy" on the maneuver afterward.

And if you actually believe in "No Kings," then mean it without an asterisk. Not "No Kings I Personally Dislike." Not "No Dictators Unless They're Advancing My Preferred Agenda." Not "Democracy for My Team, Emergency Powers for Yours." Mean it, fully, or don't bother saying it at all.

Because there's already a word for people who believe political power is only legitimate when their own side happens to be holding it. That word isn't "Democrat." It isn't "progressive." It isn't "conservative." It isn't "patriot," no matter how many flag pins get attached to the argument. It’s “hypocrite.” Plain and simple. And just as certainly, it’s partisan. George Washington himself warned us that partisan loyalty was never a constitutional principle, no matter how loudly anyone insists otherwise.

At some point, everybody screaming these words at each other has to decide whether they actually believe in the institutions they keep invoking like sacred scripture — or whether "democracy," "rule of law," "free speech," "free and fair elections," and "no kings" are just decorative props, hauled out of storage exclusively when they're useful clubs to swing at the other side.

Because if every single principle you claim to hold conveniently vanishes the moment your own team benefits from violating it, let's stop pretending any of this was ever about principle in the first place. It was always about who's currently sitting in the chair. And (of course) whether the little letter next to his name reads D. Or, increasingly these days, DSA. And whether the approved talking heads over on CNN and MS NOW had already briefed you that morning on which principles you were scheduled to rediscover and be angry about, by lunchtime.

Time for you to admit to yourselves: That's not democracy. That's tribalism.

Here it is, people: Have the courage and intellectual honesty to pick a lane, and stick with it.

Thought for the Day: John White found nothing but a single carved word where a whole colony used to stand — proof that the scariest mysteries in history rarely announce themselves with violence, just with silence nobody can explain.

VIP members: Let’s hear from you. Your commentary makes this column what it is.

Take care, Gang. I’ll see you here tomorrow.

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