Democratic Party leadership is making it clear that they intend to coast on anti-Trump sentiment rather than serious self-examination, open primaries, and vigorous policy debate and too many of their voters are just fine with that.
Anti-Trump Sentiment Led to Big Dem Wins in 2025
A string of wins in 2025 elections including the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races and a near-win in deep red territory has Dem leadership backing away from promises to publicly reckon with what went wrong in 2024.
It’s easy to see why when we read analysis like this from Bolts:
Trump’s return to power has been followed by … Republican setbacks, including Democrats’ sweep of all 13 statewide elections that took place this November, plus myriad gains for local offices.
Now, with this year’s contests nearly all completed after Tuesday, which saw Democrats stage an upset and flip a state House seat in Georgia, the extent to which the GOP struggled in legislative races has also come into view.
Democrats, buoyed by Trump’s unpopularity and a fired-up base, flipped 21 percent of all the GOP-held seats that were on the ballot throughout 2025.
According to Bolts’ analysis, Democrats gained 25 state Senate and House seats that were held by the GOP, out of the 118 that were resolved this year in regular or special elections.
The swing is even stronger than in 2017, when Democrats flipped 20 percent of all GOP-held legislative seats up for election…
So far all signs point to these trends continuing into the 2026 congressional elections.
DNC Uses Anti-Trump Sentiment as Excuse to Bury 2024 Post-Mortem
And a few election wins and some good polling numbers are all Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin needed to excuse his decision to bury the 2024 “after action report” he promised at the beginning of the year, per The New York Times.
Party officials have conducted more than 300 interviews with Democrats in all 50 states to create a document that Mr. Martin had once pitched as crucial to charting a path forward.
Mr. Martin will instead keep the findings under seal. He believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove counterproductive for the party as it tries next year to take back power in Congress, according to a D.N.C. spokeswoman who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the thinking behind his decision.
“Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win?” Mr. Martin said in a statement. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”
The core mission of raising and spending enormous amounts of money:
Some Democratic donors have demanded a more thorough accounting of how exactly the party and Ms. Harris spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks en route to losing every battleground state in 2024.
Since the election, it has come out that a former top aide to Mr. Biden, Mike Donilon, received $4 million from the campaign — even though he did not work meaningfully with the Harris campaign after Mr. Biden left the ticket.
The Bulwark reminds us of one consulting team in particular that has millions of reasons to want the report buried:
Democrats familiar with the process say a number of relevant stakeholders also aggressively lobbied the DNC in hopes of coming out unscathed. Top consultants on the Biden-turned-Harris campaign privately urged the DNC to keep their names out of the report. And there has been persistent chatter circulating in Democratic circles that Future Forward—the main super PAC backing Democrats, which brought in $613 million from donors last year—was pressuring the DNC to not make them look bad.
The decision to bury the report is also suspected to be hiding another uncomfortable truth:
Wonder why https://t.co/xRxY7Trueq pic.twitter.com/GfUOYgEHnq
— Hamid Bendaas 🇩🇿🇵🇸🇮🇷 (@HBendaas) December 18, 2025
Martin’s decision engendered an immediate backlash from former DNC member David Hogg, AOC chief-of-staff Mike Casca, Bernie Sanders whisperer Jeff Weaver, Pete Buttigieg’s Scheherazade Lis Smith, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Massachusetts Senate Candidate Seth Moulton.
None of that really matters to Martin and the Democratic congressional leadership though.
Anti-Trump Sentiment Driving 2026 Polling
Polling numbers like these have the Democratic Party deciders feeling fat and sassy:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) December 22, 2025
So fat and sassy that they’re complaining about all of the primary challenges incumbent Democrats are facing from the left.
What Part of ‘Let’s Coast on Anti-Trump Sentiment’ Do Progressives Not Understand?
CNN’s piece headlined “‘They’re attacking their own’: DC Democrats irked by surge of left-wing challengers with House majority on the line” tells quite a tale.
Democrats in Washington say primaries are simply part of life in a big-tent party. But privately, many see the surge in far-left challengers as an expensive headache that distracts from the party’s goal of seizing control of Congress next November. And it has infuriated some Democrats — including among the most vulnerable members — who fear the party will have to divert money away from the bigger fight against the GOP to protect incumbents in safe seats.
“I think we’ve got individuals who might be caught up in the moment, caught up in the internet,” said Rep. Greg Meeks, a fellow New York Democrat who has watched liberal challengers line up against many in his home state delegation. “To me, it is them missing the boat, though, because what they’re upset about and angry about is the President of the United States, and what we should be doing is uniting behind Grace [Meng] and Adriano [Espaillat] and [Ritchie] Torres.”
Rep. Juan Vargas of California was even more blunt: “The problem is, they’re attacking their own. It’s like, attack the other guys. … We will have spent this energy and money fighting amongst ourselves. And it’s really dumb.”
Top Democrats believe that most of their sitting members will ultimately prevail. But they acknowledge that the dozens of showdowns between incumbents and liberal insurgents across the country offers further proof of how younger, more progressive candidates are determined to pull the party leftward with a new generation at the helm…
And if there’s one thing a corrupt, ossified gerontocracy can’t stand is the prospect of a new generation at the helm.
One of the “our side” champions featured in the piece is Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) who was (according to CNN) “cheered on the left as the party’s top lawyer during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment,” but there might be a few substantive reasons he’s facing “the political fight of his life” from NYC Comptroller Brad Lander (NC readers will remember Lander from our Mamdani coverage).
But as Zephyr Teachout tweeted, Goldman’s Trump prosecution had at least one major short-coming:
“Remember too well when Goldman folded on including foreign emoluments violations – the President getting paid off by the Saudis — in the first Trump impeachment. It was a shocking fold — Trump’s foreign corruption is deep Achilles heel politically, getting paid more by Chinese gov than US gov—and he just… folded.”
But there is a big problem with the congressional Democrats’ feel good narrative: no one likes them, no matter how much anti-Trump sentiment there is.
Dems Are Historically Unpopular, Just Less So Than Trump
A new Quinnipac poll shows that congressional Democrats are hated, despite anti-Trump sentiment.
CNN talking head guy sums it up in infotaining fashion:
Cong Dems now have a -55 net approval, an all-time low & lower than the Dead Sea.
2 causes: Dems gives them a -6 pt net approval(!), & they're at -61 pts with indies!
The effect? Dems lead on the generic ballot is less than half of what it was at this pt in the 06 & 18 cycles. pic.twitter.com/Os17D7BkHR
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) December 18, 2025
And why would voters loathe congressional Dems? Let me count some of the ways.
Anti-Trump Sentiment Covers a Litany of Dem Sins
While I could dive into Congressional Dems’ refusal to jump in front of the anti-AI parade, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s long-term failure to even try to deliver Medicare for All, Schumer’s battle with members of his own caucus, the undying political career of zombie Kamala Harris, the latest episode of Democratic uber-insider Neera Tanden gets caught in an obvious lie and doubles down, but there’s one caper that’s been under my skin all month.
Let’s zero in on of the least likable members of the Democratic congressional caucus, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX).
Jeffries’ Endorsement of Trump’s Cuellar Pardon
Cuellar and his wife were indicted by federal prosecutors in the spring of 2024 accused of “accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank” for “adding language to defense spending legislation to prioritize ties to countries in the region, including with Azerbaijan, and working to kill legislation prioritized by members who supported Armenian interests” and coordinating “with a subsidiary of the bank on legislation that would have been beneficial to the payday lending industry” among other crimes.
Cuellar finally seemed cooked, much to the relief of local progressive Democrats who came within 300 votes of beating him (and the national Democratic leadership who backed Cuellar to the hilt) in 2022 and local Republicans who have long wished to dump Cuellar.
Then, on December 3, Trump waved his pardon wand, Truthing that “Sleepy Joe went after the Congressman, and even the Congressman’s wonderful wife, Imelda, simply for speaking the TRUTH” and Cuellar was free.
Unfortunately for Trump, Cuellar immediately filed for re-election as a Democrat, rather than switching parties as Trump had hoped.
Thus, Cuellar even fails to meet Simon Cameron’s definition of an honest politician as “one who stays bought.”
And that might be a clue as to why Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries celebrated Trump’s pardon of Cuellar telling CNN:
“I don’t know why the president decided to do this, [but] I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome,” Jeffries said.
“Listen, the reality is [that] this indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view. The charges were eventually going to be dismissed — if not at the trial court level [then] by the Supreme Court, as they’ve repeatedly done in instances just like this.”
Cuellar is an invaluable, and apparently irreplaceable “rotating villain” who can be relied on to consistently vote against the nominal positions of the Democratic party.
For example, Cuellar was one of six House Dems to vote to end the government shut down. Talk about a clutch team player!
Pelosi apparently loved him because he was consistently the only House Dem willing to vote against abortion rights. That kind of kayfabe cosplay can’t be bought at any price, although if interested parties offer him $600,000, all bets are off.
J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston, former DOJ anti-corruption prosecutors, just don’t get how the game is played and opined in The New York Times against this bipartisan pincer attack on law and ethics:
As former federal prosecutors who spent our careers rooting out public corruption, we see this for the wagon-circling that it is. The jury’s detailed, 54-page, multicount indictment against Mr. Cuellar was anything but thin, and he should have had to stand trial before a jury of his peers.
Mr. Jeffries’s embrace of Mr. Cuellar was a disturbing sign that Democratic leaders, when it is politically advantageous, may be willing to join in Mr. Trump’s degradation of the justice system. The way to combat a corrupt deal is to repudiate it — loudly, constantly and on a bipartisan basis — by forcefully advocating the rule of law. Anything less by the leaders of either party will only harden and justify Americans’ deteriorating faith in government and the justice system.
…
We have entered an era of such diminished respect for the rule of law that the president openly admitted that he pardoned a congressman — who was indicted and awaiting federal bribery charges — because he expected political loyalty in exchange. And instead of principled opposition from Congress, the leading Democrat in the House appears to have engaged in a corrupt bargain of his own, premised on unfounded criticism of the prosecution, to secure the pardon recipient’s loyalty.Mr. Jeffries most likely made the political calculation that retaining a House seat was worth engaging in the sort of unethical deals for which Democrats criticize Mr. Trump. Such a shortsighted choice to put party over country is harmful in several ways. Mr. Jeffries’s embrace of Mr. Cuellar validates Mr. Trump’s corrupt deal making and helps the president and his allies brush off valid criticism.
Apparently these naive do-gooders just don’t get the critical role Rep. Cuellar plays with his consistent willingness to stand out from the pack by being one of only two Democrats to vote against a a resolution to prevent the use of unauthorized military force against Venezuela, thereby preventing its passage.
Although the nine Democrats who didn’t vote at all also served in their way.
And while this “pervy GOP Bill allowing strip searches of migrant children” would have passed without his help, Rep. Cuellar was one of only seven Demcrats to vote for it.
Readers will forgive my cynical sarcasm as its more entertaining than typing out my rage in ALL CAPS while soaking my keyboard in impotent tears.
Blue MAGA Voters Get the Party They Want
I’ll wrap today’s meditation on the magick power of anti-Trump sentiment with this piece on “The Cult of Blue MAGA” by Evelyn Quartz which goes a long way toward explaining why corrupt and incompetent Democratic officials enjoy such enduring support.
…we aren’t dealing with politics so much as a managed simulation of democratic politics.
…
For …the Democratic establishment…the purpose of politics is the fight — not the material conditions that shape people’s lives: housing, health care, time off, good wages. She largely votes for and supports corporatist policies that have gutted all these things. Instead…we get viral clips, flashy rhetoric, and photoshoots in Vogue.What happens when critiquing power is applied selectively and only when it’s politically convenient? You get cult-like behavior.
Many of the most fervent anti-Trump, resistance-type liberals love to accuse Trump supporters of being in a “MAGA cult.”
…
But what these same liberals rarely acknowledge is that they, too, participate in a kind of cult. If the MAGA cult is centered around Trump, “Blue MAGA” is centered around opposing Trump — and both are caught inside a closed circuit. What happens when you tell anyone they’re in a cult? They get angry, defensive, and write you off as the crazy one.You often hear liberals say, “I’m not in a cult — I think for myself.” And I don’t doubt that they believe this. But start talking about the Israel lobby, the military-industrial complex, the surveillance state, the role of corporate money in both parties — and suddenly the conversation is over. These aren’t crazy fringe critiques, they’re the domains where major political decisions are actually made. And yet, for many in Blue MAGA, they are the exact places where dissent becomes impermissible.
…
In this sense, politics is hardly about reality at all. The stage from which the two cults perform outrage completely obscures our shared humanity and what nearly everyone wants from politics: a safe and prosperous place to live, a family, friends and community, a meaningful and dignified job, access to quality health care, a life outside of work. It’s so basic, politicians know this — that’s why they pay lip service to it. But their actions speak differently; for tens of millions of Americans, many of these things are completely unattainable. Mainstream politics, as it stands, has profoundly failed.To mask this, it becomes a battle between heroes and villains rather than a confrontation with the economic, social, and institutional forces shaping people’s lives, and neither side has any incentive — or even the conceptual awareness— to grapple with the conditions that produced Trump in the first place.
Will Democrats and their Blue MAGA voters figure out that anti-Trump sentiment is unlikely to outlive his second term by more than a few months in time to course correct?
Stay tuned but don’t hold your breath.
Here is a dreamy dream . . . that every DemParty officeseeker would run on these two things:
Thing One: Total no exceptions repeal of the Big Beautiful Bill. Call it the Big Beautiful Repeal.
Thing Two: Find and fire every single person throughout the Department of Homeland Security who is like the person shown in this video. Beginning by firing the person shown in this video.
” US border officer road rages on Canadians ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1pt3n2o/us_border_officer_road_rages_on_canadians/
Why would the Democrat Party change its behavior when it continues to be rewarded with enough votes to appear legitimate?
It figured out a long time ago that voters will vote for it regardless of its lying, corruption and warmongering, and that voters won’t vote for a third party in significant numbers to threaten its status.
Blue MAGA are POD people: POD – Protect Our Democracy.
They should have blue hats that say that.
Feel free to use it – I release it under the GNU All-permissive License.
As a recovering Democrat who cast his last POTUS vote for a Democrat for Marianne Williamson in the primary, and after Genocide Clone embraced Genocide Joe in the general election voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, I can say yes, Gaza was the number one issue for me, but growing right behind it was the repeated sabotaging of progressive candidates and policies such as happened to Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. Throw the bums out may work for Democrats in 2026, but who knows what will happen in 2028. I am sorry that there is not a loud, coherent progressive alternative ready to steal the Democratic base. Ask the Federalists and the Whigs, it is possible for a party in the duopoly to be replaced.
To be fair, if Harris had won all of Blue MAGA would be out to brunch
But Dem party sellouts are not something new whereas the vast sleaze of Trump2 is something new. I haven’t voted in some time but plan to vote Dem next time no matter how much I dislike them.
Trump must be stopped. He has no redeeming qualities which is why supposedly sensible people who defend him give themselves away. A year ago some of us thought the Dems deserved their defeat and they did but we now know that Trump deserved it more.
I plan to vote against all incumbents in the coming year. It sort of solves the problem of not wanting to reward existing Democrats for being so bad, while also creating the potential for the Republicans to lose seats.
I have no strategy for 2028 given the overly dynamic situation, as Lambert used to say.
But the problem is you know that a Democratic POTUS and Congress would just pick up right from where Trump left off, much like it did with Obama and a Democratically-controlled Congress after W. Bush. ICE expansion would continue as would aiding and abetting Israel, skrocketing healthcare premiums, as well as censorship, except the Democrats would either pretend it is not happening or try and re-brand it as something else. Nothing bad is going to get rolled back by the Democrats, so then angry voters get fed up and then vote Republican again so the cycle would continue.
The Democratic Party is just here to fundraise off of this endless doom-loop along the way since they are more like an investment advisory board for their wealthy donors rather than a political party at this point.
That’s why it was so important to have defeated Trump. If Harris had been elected, we would have had a year of inertial drift with three more years of inertial drift and stagnation to look forward to. And if Democrats had won the next Pres Election after that, they would have continued carrying forward their legacy of inertial drift.
But re-electing Trump this one crucial time means that the Democrats , should they win the 2028 Prez Election, will have Trump’s legacy of Fast-Forward Irreversible Yeltsinization to carry forward instead. Plus the legacy of Project 2025 and Project 2026 yet to come. TrumpenVance were given this unique opportunity to bequeath their DemParty successors ( if any) a Gilead Republic of Shit Headistan to carry forward.
That’s what I will do to, just as I did last election. It was not a matter of punishment or moral-stancetaking for me. It was an excercise in harm-avoidance and destruction-containment. It was a choice between 4 more years of Brezhnevian Stagnation or 4 new years of Hyperspeed Yeltsinian Burndown. Indeed, I think we can say that Trump is America’s Yeltsin and today’s Republicans are America’s ” Russia United” Party.
Its not your Grandfather’s UniParty anymore even though it would be comforting to think it still is.
I’ll confess that I hope there’s an American Putin whom Trump would hand off reins of power to, when he resigns as a Xmas gift to America in a year or so (can’t be New Year’s Eve, because we ain’t Russia).
Trump hates America. Why would he give America a Christmas gift?
But if it played out that way, who is your preferred Putin? J D Vance? Stephen Miller?
Because that’s the sort of bench that Trump would look to hand off to under this scenario.
Gabbard. Naganna happen, but one can dream.
She would be my choice too (of the GOPers not overall), but yea, not gonna happen.
Perhaps Modi would “help” her and set up a Righteous America Party, complete with militant armed wing to help “reform” America.
It’s a Big Tent and all are “welcome” inside. (Some restrictions apply. See Prospectus.)
i fully expect to never vote again>
even in local elections, which are all decided in the gop primary(did that once, for sheriff, and had a mailbox full of gop bs for a decade after).
evil is the only choice on offer…so i just wont vote, at all.
we must pass through the burning times before anything actually changes…for better or worse.
trump is almost the perfect vehicle for that.
when the warlordism comes to this afterthought of a place, i hope that i will have done enough to get myself(more likely my Eldest) into a position to be an enlightened warlord.
thats the most hopeful vision of the future i can manage.
How will your son cope with all the wannabe endarkened warlords all around his base?
Send them off on quests, like a much earlier warlord did.
“the problem is they’re attacking their own,” No, sorry, we’re not. Been a long time since I could delude myself that a Donkey on someone’s yard signs made them “my own”. Probably since my early 20s, so far back in the rearview mirror they’re scarcely visible.mAnd this millennium that has done nothing but worsen.
I mean, if the Cuellars and Jeffries of the land have a claim to my support why even bother.
And I can’t help nothing that the Vichy wing of the alleged party has no problem at all with attacking “their own” if they show the slightest tendencies toward even milquetoast leftism. This party unity road has the biggest one way sign ever seen.
Sure, if the Blancos screw up badly enough, the Colorados will get a bunch of offices back. But that will have nothing to do with actually solving any of our real problems. The descent into barbarism will simply be supervised for a while by people who construct slightly more complex paragraphs to justify it or to evade responsibility
I sometimes think if we were going to stand up a real leftist insurgency to take over a political party in this country, waging it as a populist takeover of the Republican Party might offer the best chances for success, slim as those might be. The Democrats are not even really a party that represents anyone anymore, they’re just a social club that collects funds from the gullible to keep itself in business, one that pays assorted family members and hangers on to conduct polling and “messaging” studies just for the purpose of moving the money around and around. It’s about fund raising and then paying themselves, and winning elections is only useful insofar as it serves those ends.
I think I agree.
We are in a time where people should do what they most believe in, because that is how they will do their best work. Every theory should be tried by those who believe in it. And they should respect every other theory-group’s right to do the same.
And let Darwin decide who turns out to be right.
Both parties are hopelessly corrupt and absolutely uninterested in solving problems.
We need to elect just enough independents in just enough mad-as-hell districts to throw a wrench in this frick/frack gridlock that has been set up. A very small number of Tea Party reps were able to wield a lot of control, and it can be done again by decent people trying to do something good.
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/01/g-s1-98267/ai-independent-candidates-congress-two-party-control
The net result of all this might be a repeat of the UK where Labour got back in because of the colossal failure of the Tories with a majority of seats in their Parliament. But Labour is just as much despised and their leader Keir Starmer especially so. Both parties equally detested by the British and no real emergent leaders in the wings that could reform the country. Farage is just more of the same and Corbyn too old and is not ruthless enough to do what has to be done.
I’m somewhat optimistic here in CA.
Finally there is a Left Unity slate, with Green and Peace & Freedom parties coming together on State offices. We have separate people for Governor unfortunately, but a complete list for the down ballot.
I’m running for CA State Treasurer.
While I’m a total novice, I know there is not chance of winning. What is important is for this slate to send out a message of an alternative to bau. I’m looking forward to harvesting good ideas and slogans from NC.
Everyone I’ve talked to here in Alameda Co. grumbles that we need an alternative, even virtual strangers I’ve asked for directions to get in the building where the Registrar of Voters is hidden in the county court house basement. What a lot of red-tape to run for office. The financial hurdle is over 6k to just get on the ballot, so we need to get thousands of signatures in lieu of payment. And with no Corporate donations, just money from us at the bottom of the pyramid.
That’s a good start. Thanks for investing your time and effort.
I have friends in LA and SF, I’ll let them know about you. Will your first name be enough?
Building an alternative is not easy thing. You must have some kind of program or lines of action on which everyone in the alternative agrees to follow and probably can be used to gain support if you can convince constituents in CA that TINA does not work. Yours must be seen as the only sensible approach, the only way out of disaster, out of hell. On the other hand you have to identify all the no-sense coming from the traditional parties and signal it clearly to the audiences. Probably the easiest part is the destructive one. Calling Democrats and Republicans BS. The most difficult is to draw the lines people have to cross to join.
I think back in the day that was called a Platform.
Have not heard of or seen one on the D side in decades.
I will be trying the link Yves provided to the Skunk Party. I recall that someone ecently mentioned a four tenet ‘platform’ assume it will be in the article or comments.
I am periodically tempted to file for the 2-year national House election here, if nothing else to get people thinking and talking, rather than straight- ticket automatoning.
We have gained a lot of doctrinaire White Christian Nationalist MAGA types, so the aritmetic is togh. But Trump, Putin, Maduro and Israel have got people thinking a bit more.
Good for you!
Please see the Skunk Party Manifesto! Lots to pick from in it: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/47719.html
Interestingly, the Chilean election mirrors recent anger at betrayal by the “left” party that actually supports oligarchic corporatocracy. One can’t expect much in the way of leadership as the empire collapses, though at some point we will get our Caesar with lots of shiny metals promising to clean out the Aegean stables.
I plan to watch the “interesting times” from overseas.
“the magick power of anti-Trump sentiment”
It has been ever thus … since that fateful election night in 2016 when Hilary supposedly sobbed uncontrollably and went on a tirade blaming everyone but herself.
It was the Russians … Trump was an asset … and BlueMAGA™ hung their hat on near six straight years of #RussiaRussiaRussia™ … nauseatingly delivered by the likes of Rachel Maddow night after night after night after night. The only thing that stopped #RussiaRussiaRussia™ was … ironically … Russia invading Ukraine … LOL
… but now it is no longer necessary to bring up Comrade Vladimir on a daily/nightly basis. Trump himself is the show now. #noCollusionRequired
Putin’s been replaced by Epstein.
And the Democrats can go all in a #TribalVirtueSignaling offensive because Trump has absolutely family-blogged up the economy, while showing undying fealty to #N10n15ts, unleashing #1C3 and ignoring the pleas of his own base … among other things. So yeah … #primaryChuckSchumer … but more likely #VBNMW
PS:
Newsom v Harris #’s – 2028 Democratic Presidential Nomination (via RCP)
I think Newsom will win. If he does, will he ask Harris to be his VP? Would she accept?
Thanks as always, Nat!
I well remember how the Dem leadership flew to Texas en masse to support Henry Cuellar n his campaign against a progressive insurgent. On my social media feed, stuffed with Berkeley liberals, my criticism of this desperate retrorgrade effort was met with unremitting scorn. The same people who sent checks to Bill Manchin (“because he’s a Democrat!”) were all in on Cuellar for the same spurious reason. They will never, ever learn, of this I’m convinced.
“And if there’s one thing a corrupt, ossified gerontocracy can’t stand is the prospect of a new generation at the helm.”
Ken Martin is 52. Neera Tanden isn’t much older. If you go by generational labels, 4 of the six House Dems who voted to end the shutdown belong to either the fictional X tribe or the fictional M tribe. I looked up the six names in the article you linked, and four were born afer 1964, but I don’t know where they’re drawing the made up lines between generations nowadays.I shouldn’t harp on one sentence in an otherwise great piece, but Generational talk is used to divide-and-conquer and promote centrists like Pete Buttigieg who offer no real change from older Dems. I suspect that if you looked at the campaign literature for the four representatives you’d see stuff about a new generation of leadership.
Fair enough, that was a throwaway line and not supported by the details of the figures in the piece.
But the US Congress is (almost) as old as it’s ever been (the previous Congress was the oldest ever) and that should probably change. Pew has a good breakdown of this Congress by age.
Bernie’s “Fight the Plutocracy” tour needs to be taught to all No Kings Rally participants and brought into homes, schools, places of worship, and tables on the street.
People have to be challenging, Why are we blaming immigrants when the Big, Beautiful, Bill in the next decade takes over $1 trillion in Americans’ healthcare and gives it to the top 1%.
You don’t have to do a study to to know that if you take $1 trillion from Americans’ healthcare people will die. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania put the death toll at 51,000 a year, This is more than 7 times of those killed on 9/11.
Mikie Sherrill toured the Democratic Clubs before the primary that got her the Democratic Party nomination for NJ;s governor. This was the week before the first NO Kings Rally. She didn’t mention the No Kings Rally at my club, but focused on having been a navy helicopter pilot. I thought it was a mistake, riding on the anti-Trump feeling. But, Mikie proved me wrong.
The Democrats have to be challenged on when they going to get our healthcare back. And, asked why don’t we have Medicare for All. Why do billionaires and millionaires pay taxes at a lower rate than a teacher, cabdriver, or mechanic. And, stop calling The Big Beautiful Bill a tax cut, It raises taxes on the rest of us when they cut taxes on the top 1% and top 10%.
All this makes me sick. All this, while the climate is ignored.
Does Trump even care about the Congress? He arrived in January and remarkably, within his first 100 days, signed 124 executive orders; Biden signed 162 in four years. Trump appears uninterested in working with the Congress to pass laws.
Moreover, as well as running about firing everybody, he placed tariffs on the whole world without running this through the Congress. He does what he wants and challenges others to stop him.
I give Trump credit for at least talking to the Russians in order to end the Ukraine war. Even though Trump seems out of touch with reality, that’s more than the Dems ever did. I don’t expect much from the Dems in terms of ending wars in Ukraine and Gaza, or making sense about what’s going on in Venezuela.
Trump has let it be known that he plans to run for a third term and he has a way to get around the 22nd Amendment. I wonder what the Dem plan is to stop him.
I am surprised there is no mention here of Corbin Trent, who writes the “America’s Undoing” blog on Substack and is now trying to get an effective national movement off the ground.
Perhaps I’m naive, but he’s the first national-level US political figure I’ve noted who pitches a limited number of well-defined genuine left social/economic initiatives (for the current US Overton window at least) AND has a reasonable strategy for electoral success. Read his “about” page and last few blog posts.
Corbin Trent merits the generous support of anyone who is in substantial agreement with the sentiment in this thread but who still has some slight hope of a brighter future.
I remember about three years ago reading this NPR piece about Democratic PAC money supporting more extreme Republicans in primaries in order to be able to run a candidate off of anti-Trump sentiment instead of having to differentiate themselves in policy and leadership capability against a more moderate Republican.
My guess is the autopsy report probably reflects on the effectiveness of that strategy. Given it worked before according to NPR, it wouldn’t be surprising if it did end up helping get Democrats elected in certain districts. However, if it was effective in 2024, it was likely financially inefficient in doing so, when many Democratic candidates in that recent election ended up taking significant debt or had to dramatically outspend to compensate for the financial boost they gave to the MAGA candidate.
Of course, if the report showed the strategy backfired in 2024 and actually got multiple MAGA candidates elected instead of moderate Republicans that were anti-Trump/open to filing impeachment, much less their own milquetoast candidates, that would be a scandal Ken Martin would want to suppress as much as possible. It might not crack that remaining 18%, but it would certainly motivate that 18% to force a leadership restructuring, and/or stop funding that money because it was wasteful at best, and counterproductive in the worst case.
Here’s to hoping someone leaks that report.
My hypothesis is that over the years the Dems have become, quite literally, Professional Losers™. They excel at losing. One might even say that they make an art out of it, maybe even a science.
The trouble is that they never really lose. Because two-party hegemony is intractably baked-in at the state level, they can’t really lose. They’ll always get about half of congress and it doesn’t really matter to them whether they are in control of congress or not because there’s not much they want to get done except slow down what the republicans- a party that truly wants to use power and which will use power- are doing. That way they can tell us how hard they’re working and if those dang meanie republicans weren’t so powerful they’d usher in a new utopia. You’d better believe it.
They stand only for what polls say because they don’t stand for anything else. And if they lose, they can always comfort themselves that they did what the polls told them to do, believed what polls told them to believe. So, you know, it’s not their fault. They are our nations most precocious children and what they want is a fun career in politics where they can meet important people and eat fine meals for free and insider trade and tell the little people what to do and etc. and etc. They continually bring only poll-tested rhetoric to what amounts to a nuclear war.
If you don’t believe me, look at the fact that they are running (again!) continual loser Amy McGrath for senate in Kentucky- a seat which she has already lost once after she lost a congressional run in Georgia. McGrath has proven to be nothing more than a loser and she is continually rewarded for it. Why? I think we all know it’s because those greedy chuds only see fundraising dollars that come from their ‘sky-is-falling,’ ‘just-moments-away-from-fascim’ e-mails and text messages. They’ve built a nice little industry out pickpocketing voters desperate to see something change for the better. And there are still enough people who don’t know what time it is and continue to donate.
In the McGrath case, I think this is literally strategic losing. But I doubt McGrath herself is in on it. I think they’re puffing her up and have been for a decade. If this is correct, it suggests to me that Dem strategists have gotten adroit at selecting the sorts of ineffective politicians who are and once 1) very clever and telegenic but who 2) somehow are also remarkable idiots or remarkably naive. I think Jeffries fills that bill very nicely. He basically seems like Pelosi’s pet parrot to me.
If there was a true blue-wave in 2026, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. They would need are Cuellars and Sinemas they can muster so that they can continue in their ineffectual ruination. I really hope those ‘left’ challengers can get some traction. I’m so tired and depressed of this whole thing.