For the last five years, since I left the Democratic Party, I’ve been waiting for any sign that they’ve emerged from the Doomsday Bunker at long last, regained their perspective, come back to the real world, and are finally prepared to build a future for all of America because a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The Democrats were booted out, not once but twice. In between, they had the chance to show us all that they were on the better side. If Trump were so terrible, what could they offer in return?
The problem is that they’re still the party of Barack Obama, and to criticize any of it, to change course on anything is an affront to him and all that he built. To confront their failures, they must confront his. And they won’t do that.
They failed to protect the border, the children, the workers, the families, and the businesses. They failed to keep us safe and failed to include us all in the American dream, choosing to focus instead on their wheel of oppression, which has now landed on illegal immigrants.
True, no political party has amassed as much power as they still have. It was power they did not want to lose. I know. I was there. I didn’t even realize there was another America outside the one we built, with the help of the internet. It was a brand new world that felt like the future.
But it was a world that left at least half the country, the working-class half, behind. When we emerged in 2016, shocked that they did not want to live in our utopia, it sent us cascading into mass delusion that Trump was an existential crisis instead of a duly elected leader for Americans who wanted to change.
Rather than understand that, rather than work to fix the problem, rather than reach out to those abandoned, discarded masses, it’s been this. Petulance, temper tantrums, narcissism, self-pity, unending hysteria, like spoiled children who don’t get what they want on Christmas morning.
Senator Adam Schiff has announced he will boycott Trump’s State of the Union, joining a growing list of, it must be said, weak and unappealing Democrats no one feels inspired by or wants to vote for.
According to Newsweek, these are the Democrats who plan on playing hooky.
Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland
Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona
Representative Becca Balint of Vermont
Representative Greg Casar of Texas
Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas
Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington
Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois
Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey
After mocking Turning Point USA’s half-time, these Democrats are now doing the same thing, planning an alternative rally to boycott the State of the Union.
According to Reuters:
About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have announced their participation in a “People’s State of the Union” event on the National Mall, near the Capitol, to highlight their opposition to the Republican administration’s policies, organizers said on Wednesday.
Yeah, it will probably play like Kamala Harris’s closing argument to the “people” on October 29, just before Donald Trump cleaned her clock.
Now, it’s deja vu all over again. Remember eight years ago when they boycotted the State of the Union? Yeah, good times. Do you think they had any idea Trump would come back and win in 2024?
Nothing ever feels authentic. It always feels performative. They simply swap out whatever the current thing is and then fall in line like obedient robots. Harris was installed after they pushed Joe Biden out, and he pushed out any potential candidates who might defeat Trump.
Now, instead of the screeching Me Too fanatics, it will be the screeching No Kings/ICE OUT fanatics. Sounds charming!
They are running in place, getting nowhere, because they have nowhere to go. They’ve never confronted their failures, or the America under Obama that many voters did not want. Kamala Harris, like every Democrat, had nothing to sell but fear - fear of Trump, fear of the future, fear of change.
Their platform is built on elevating the weak and the marginalized, so they need a constant supply. They need a sick America. Not a successful, healthy America. Trump projects exactly the opposite, and it drives them insane. So all they’re left with are their violent fits, their temper tantrums, their protests, and their boycotts.
Yes, they have all of the cultural power. They have most of the wealth. What they don’t have are the people. If they did, they would not have lost to the guy they tried to impeach, throw in jail, remove from ballots, and even assassinate.
You can’t be the side with all of that power and still treat the other half of the country like human garbage. They know that, at least some of them do. They just don’t know any way out by now. Their party has been hijacked by a cult.
All the people have is a vote, and since they voted against the Democrats, they’re invisible. No American raped, assaulted, abused, or murdered by an illegal immigrant on their watch has any value whatsoever to them.
Only Jon Fetterman seems able to exist in any kind of reality that makes sense to the rest of us, maybe because he has Trump supporters in his life and doesn’t get his reality only from MS-Now and the New York Times:
In ten years, they’ve never figured out that it wasn’t about Trump at all. It’s always been about them, about freeing America from the clutches of their increasingly insane and out-of-touch policies. The Democrats gave people like me no other options but to vote against them. Trump is in power now only because he survived, and no one else could.
In Lionel Shriver’s excellent new novel, A Better Life (review forthcoming), she points out that the dominant culture on the Left isn’t raising Americans to fight for their place in this country anymore, but to be among the elite who don’t have to work and don’t have to leave behind their offspring to build on what they have. That’s the spirit America was founded on. Watch the full video here.
And that’s where Donald Trump comes in. That is what MAGA is about, and it’s why he’s built a strong movement that demands a secure border. He wants to fight for a better America and to inspire generations to rise up and fill those shoes.
Trump is making big moves, generational moves, and the Democrats and their ruling class don’t know how to match it or deal with it. Trump was able to do the hard things like ending “gender affirming care,” securing the border, and trying to make peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. He’s set up Trump accounts for young people to start building their finances early. No tax on tips or overtime or social security - these are some of the bold ideas he’s pushed forth that the Democrats pretend don’t exist.
That’s why he’s the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning. There is no one else of his generation who could or would even try to do what he has done, to fight for a strong America, to fight for a better life for all of us.
Maybe he fails more than he succeeds, but the point is, he’s trying. He wants the fighting spirit that founded this nation back. He’s not giving up on those discarded, forgotten Americans the Democrats seek to jetison and replace.
The state of the Democratic Party now seems to be fighting for a sicker, more helpless America that can’t leave anything for the next generation. They have found a kind of religion in identity, and that matters more than their identity as Americans. All they have to sell is fear, insisting everyone go along with their mass delusion, yes, even ten years later.
They should not be surprised if Americans say, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
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