It didn’t take long for Democrats to revert to form: a call to arms. Or rather, the streets. For Democrats, that’s a distinction without a difference. Arms, streets — it’s all the same and it’s all the Left.
Democrats have been straining to play nice, all while chomping at the bit to be themselves. Instead, they have struck the pose of contrast to the caricature they created of Jan. 6, 2021, and with which they sought to tar conservatives and Republicans.
“Extremists,” “insurrectionists,” “threats to democracy” they chanted as mantras, hoping that saying it enough would make it fact. More than a message, that has been their script since Jan. 7, 2021. When Donald Trump’s second inauguration came, Democrats were self-consciously conscious to not be Jan. 6 — at all costs, they wanted to maintain the contrast that existed in their minds.
Then came Hakeem Jeffries’s statement last week. Regarding the Trump administration agenda, Jeffries said: “We’re going to fight it in the streets.” It took less than two weeks for Democrats to drop their forced façade of moderation.
Welcome back to the faded memories of the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 upset over Hillary Clinton and their extended tantrum for the next four years. There was the lecture of Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his family at the Hamilton show. There were repeated disruptions of the electoral vote count of Trump’s 2016 victory. There were refusals to serve Trump administration officials when they went to restaurants. There had been Rep. Maxine Waters’s unhinged call for harassment.
Then there were the memories of 2019 and 2020, when flush with their midterm takeover of the House, Democrats had unleashed countless investigations and hearings of the Trump administration. There was Speaker Pelosi defiantly tearing up Trump’s speech as she stood behind him at his 2020 State of the Union address. There were not one, but two, impeachments of Trump and a staged and stacked Jan. 6, 2021, investigation.
Beginning in 2023, the tools of Democrats’ radicalism were put away — as though another inconvenient Hunter Biden laptop — as they copped a pose of moderation juxtaposed to extremism. Democrats unleashed lawfare to formalize the juxtapositional theater they had been pursuing.
Trump was indicted — not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times — by four different Democrats in four different locations. Democrats thought that would be enough to keep him busy and sufficient to cement the image of Trump they wanted America to have. He was charged with felonies. At least one of the Democrats’ four ships had to come in, and then he would be a convicted felon. All the while, they practiced their “convicted felon” epithet.
To ensure their contrast would be complete, Democrats used every device to make it so. Biden repeated the magic words because he was different from Trump. He went to Independence Hall to say them; he went to Valley Forge to repeat them. When it came time, he promised that he would not pardon his son (though he did, plus his family). He promised because Democrats had to contrast completely with the image they had created of Trump. (RELATED: Pardons Shouldn’t Stop Investigations)
When Biden couldn’t make this contrast stick, Democrats handed the script to one of their own. Kamala Harris pursued the same strategy and said the same words. She was happy to the point of joyful.
But the strain was starting to show. Harris wasn’t at her best in trying to make the contrast. Harris had always been at her best when working from a set of talking points — and even more, when these called for her to be nasty and sharp. And this was also where her audience — the Left, for, after all, she was one of them — was at their best too.
With glued-on, grim grins, Democrats watched as Harris too faded. Then as she lost. Then as her defeat was clearly a landslide — losing every swing state, then the popular vote, then the Electoral College by almost 100 votes.
Even as their frozen grins trembled with anger, Democrats were determined to keep their congenial contrast. They fought to hold it through the two-and-a-half months of transition. Even as Trump dominated everything from the reopening of Notre Dame to the Hamas-Israeli ceasefire negotiations; even as Biden abdicated, and Harris vanished. Democrats fought to endure. (Trump and the Advent of the Pax Americana)
As Trump took office, Democrats tried to not crack the contrast they wanted America to see. Trump’s whirlwind of initiatives blew through Washington and Democrats flapped amidst their gusts and gales; they fought to hold themselves together.
Then, with no leader, no agenda, and no oxygen, Democrats could take it no more. Just days into the next four years, Democrats cracked, and Hakeem Jeffries spoke their words. The words that Democrats know so well and longed to say — to scream from the parapets — for so long.
Jeffries brought Democrats back to where they are most comfortable. To the street. To who they are, who they really long to be.
Jeffries’s words aren’t a slip of the tongue. They aren’t misconstrued. They aren’t open to interpretation. They’re an admission. An admission that Democrats’ strategy of juxtaposition hasn’t worked. America hasn’t bought it. Trump’s now more popular than he’s ever been. So, Jeffries is admitting by not pretending any longer. The façade is over. The mask is dropped. And for Democrats, the street is theirs again.
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READ MORE from J. T. Young:
The Left Is Agog at Trump’s Audacity … Because He Meant What He Promised
As California Burns, Is It Also Awakening to Disastrous Democrat Policies?
Joe Biden: The Most Dangerous Man in America
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.