If the game is insincerity, Democrats are doing just fine. As it is, the party is aiming for connection and missing. 

Fundamental misunderstandings animate all of the Democratic Party’s “problem” areas, such as men and religion. And its reaction to the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration has not done it any favors. From protest songs and dances to bill blocking, what might be intended to come off as cohesion rather comes off as falsity.

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Authenticity is one aspect. A most recent public effort put forward by frontmen Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), among other Democratic politicians, reveals nothing but the typical talking points. The lawmakers each recorded their own versions of the same script and circled the point that “Trump and Musk are taking away vital services from you so they can fund tax breaks for billionaires.” Democratic campaigns usually sound like echo chambers about tax breaks. This time, though, they are absolutely indistinct from one another.

That was surely by design, but as a preview of the Democratic Party’s game plan for the midterm elections and beyond, it is a poor reflection. Politico’s reporting on its solutions to “regain working-class trust” include standard image-based recommendations: Calls to “embrace” patriotism, “own” mistakes, and “move away” from left-wing influence will work as well as any other party’s posturing.

But to “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)” means just that: looking at these groups as “real” and being able to hold conversations with them. Democrats will likely not start reshaping their politics in ways that enable this solution.

OUR AGE OF HEGELIAN CONSERVATISM

For now, they oppose matters of principle with insistence upon opportunity and equity — as with Senate Democrats’ rejection of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. Or a variation on the same, when Democrats argued that the Republicans’ Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was a “sham bill” that was interested in exploiting anti-abortion opportunities.

Even as they learn the social ropes that Trump and Vice President JD Vance seem to have mastered, it is apparent that the Democrats can do little to support what should be both the start and end of their endeavors, namely the family. It will not be because they are not “American worker” enough but because they have set a limit to how much they are willing to transform.