Many bad things are happening right now, clearly and obviously bad, but unfortunately, not everyone seems to be seeing it.
There are those who are heavily invested, oddly enough, in telling us that things aren’t bad and that if you say things are bad that is worse than the actual bad things. For example, the world’s richest man, who is seemingly a co-president despite not being born in the United States, did a Nazi salute during the inauguration. Not once, but twice.
Despite doing something that was about as Nazi as you can get without working at a concentration camp, the very reasoned and wise among the DC punditry did that thing where they give the absolute benefit of the doubt to any awful thing a Republican does. This is something only Republicans enjoy. Democrats do not get such breaks.
A good example is what Meghan McArdle at The Washington Post gives us the “missing context” of Elon’s little Heil Trump move and admonishes us for thinking doing something pretty evil was actually evil because we’re the ones who are bad for the country. Just imagine Trump jailing a colleague of hers for criticizing him and Meghan going to visit him in prison and lecturing him about searching for the missing context of his experience.
May all of you get the same benefit of the doubt in your life that a white right-winger gets on a regular basis.
Turning to our Democratic leaders, I think MSNBC Talker Chris Hayes is onto something here:
Feel deep in my bones that the backlash to all of this is going to be enormous. Not sure how it will manifest and when it will explode into view, but confident it’s coming.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-01-25T22:00:06.252Z
A lot of things are happening right now which have at least a decent possibility of waking Americans up to the fact that indeed, Donald Trump is not focused at all on lowering prices and no, the policies of the two parties are not the same. The horrors unfold daily, and if there is anything good at all to come out of this, the Democratic leadership have to be shaken out of their belief that this is the 1980s and Ronnie and Tip are having a beer after a long fight on tax rates.
For example, just hours after Elon Musk did his little Nazi salute, Chuck Schumer did the Democratic leader thing and failed to read the room.
It is time to look to the future.The challenges that face America are many and great.The Senate must respond with resolve, bipartisanship, and fidelity to the working and middle class of this country.
— Chuck Schumer (@schumer.senate.gov) 2025-01-20T23:53:18.751Z
Not the sort of energy rank-and-file Dems were looking for, as per the response. Then yesterday, Hakeem Jeffries posted this, which got dragged immediately:
christ just give AOC the job already
— shauna (@goldengateblond.bsky.social) 2025-01-26T21:38:39.604Z
Personally, my favorite response to this is one I saw on one of the other blogs I visit, a commenter said “maybe God needs to eat more fiber.”
In any event, this is a little concerning to me because the Consultant Class of the Democratic party often seems like it is not aware of what is going on at the moment, like when they stopped Tim Walz from mocking the GOP and Trump as “weird.” They seem to be constantly chasing that mythical white Trump voter like a nerdy weird guy trying to get a prom date with the cheerleader, with similar results. And at the same time, being dismissive at best towards the base.
More Perfect Union’s Faiz Shakir’s appearance on Molly Jong-Fast’s Fast Politics podcast is well worth a listen as they dig into the current mess that is the current Democratic Party communications strategy. Among the things that Shakir brings up is how Democratic strategists are so conservative and risk-averse that they are no match for the GOP’s nutso take-it-or-leave-it communications style. He notes how the party barely let Biden be himself even early on in his presidency when he was more able to speak clearly and had a faster wit. One example is his snarky response to Elon Musk back in 2022.
Shakir also noted how there seemed to be two Democratic Parties existing at once, one that pushed through a lot of really good legislation that 15 years ago they would have called too radical. The other party is the one who absolutely refuses to ever talk about those policy wins. He used Lina Khan’s excellent work as an example. Khan fought things like big grocery store mergers that would raise food prices and junk fees, things that should make her a folk hero. Instead, probably because big Dem voters hated her, they were quiet about it.
We can look at this stuff, and identify things to fix to take advantage of the many moments when Trump gets too far over his skis. Instead of batting around meaningless platitudes about bipartisanship that I can get ChatGPT to write, leaders like Schumer need to up the toughness and attacks. There is plenty to attack right now! Americans are beginning to see what Trump 2.0 will be like, and things like canceling cancer trials are on the table. Hard to see how this would be popular:
🧪 “Researchers who have clinical trial participants staying at the NIH’s on-campus hospital, the Clinical Trial Center, said they weren’t able to order test tubes to draw blood.”
I am not one of those Dems Suck people. I will vote Democratic no matter what. I know that the majority of Democratic elected officials are not going along with it all. But a lot of Americans want to see the people they voted for actually fight this tsunami of evil and not search for ways to work with it. At the very least, they should know that doing things that help Trump, like the Democratic Congresscritters supporting the Laken Riley Act, will eventually come back to bite them because that’s what always happens. You end up looking like a sucker, or worse.
The political door is wide open right now. Democrats should see this as a big opportunity to win back the small percentage of Trump voters who pulled the lever for him not out of hate or vengeance, but over a misguided belief that he would make things better economically. So far he has shown little to no interest in doing that. Go get ’em, people I voted for.
The last word goes to Thin Lizzy.
One point I’d make is for Democrats to take a look at what the Republicans are doing right this second. If the situation were reversed and Democrats held a tenuous trifecta of White House, Senate, and House, you know that the Democratic leadership would be dithering away, looking for the bipartisan in whatever they’re trying to accomplish.
The Republicans are just forging ahead, heedless of the whims of public opinion and favorability ratings and poll numbers. I like the Chris Hayes post above, but the enormous backlash he’s talking about isn’t a natural phenomenon; it doesn’t just happen, like an earthquake or a hurricane. It needs to be seeded and nurtured to grow and bloom. One of the ways the Democrats can nourish the backlash is to be on top of every outrage. Yes, it’s exhausting and won’t get much coverage in the media. Until it finally does begin to pay off. The media have been conditioned to take the Republican side, and proffer it even when no Republican says anything. We need to do their work for them and get the media conditioned to reporting the Democratic side of issues and developments.
It’s a lot of work and heavy lifting for minimal reward, but it’s something that can be built on. Stay true to Democratic (and democratic) ideals, and prove to the vulnerable and the powerless that they have a stake in the running of the country and who’s sitting in the big chairs.