Much has been made of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) pumping their pruney fists and chanting “we will win!” at their rally outside the Treasury Department on Tuesday. Their vampiric appearance overshadowed any point they hoped to make about the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and its leader, Elon Musk.
CNN’s resident liberal-slayer Scott Jennings spoke for the nation last evening on News Night with Abby Phillip when he doubled over in laughter and asked for the clip to be played again.
Normally, I wouldn’t shed a tear for old Chuck and Maxine (and they sure as heck wouldn’t shed one for me). But once my laughing fit subsided — and who could help but laugh? Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was literally shaking his cane like Abe Simpson in front of the podium! — I felt a twinge of pity. It hadn’t occurred to them how embarrassing the visual would be, nor how frail they’d become, how utterly beaten.
They really thought this was going to move the political needle in their direction. Your heart has to break for them — at least a little.
So, too, did Democratic Senators believe their unsightly demonstrations at the confirmation hearings would reverse the tide. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) breathless and jittery diatribe about women and LGBTQ individuals serving in combat during Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing made Hegseth look downright serene by contrast. Likewise, the sound of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) hysterically cracking voice during Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s hearing — “No, I am not!” she shrieked in a previously undiscovered vocal register — made Kennedy’s scarred vocals sound melodious.
The split screens for Democrats have never been less favorable. And in this hyper-plugged-in political age, little else seems to matter.
That’s got to be what confounds them and perhaps hurts them the most right now. To Democrats and their media allies, MAGA is the American Taliban. Or, as Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) put it during the rally Tuesday, “Nazis” who should be “met in the streets.” And yet, the public continues to prefer the MAGA movement to them. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, the Democratic Party is now viewed favorably by only 31% of the public, the lowest mark in the history of the poll. Meanwhile, the Trump-led GOP enjoys the largest favorability advantage it’s ever had.
This state of affairs leaves the Democratic Party with only two pathways forward. The first is to embrace political nihilism. Rather than implement the necessary changes to become a viable political party again, it can simply blame people for not being enlightened enough to submit to their rule.
If the Democratic National Committee’s recently completed search for a new chair is any indication, this appears to be the preferred route. During a public forum last week, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post asked prospective candidates to raise their hand if they believed racism and misogyny played a role in former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in November. Each person raised their hand, and Capehart congratulated them for answering correctly.
“That’s good, you all pass,” he said.
The emphasis on what’s supposedly wrong with the people as opposed to what’s wrong with Democrats is suicidal. It speaks to a party no longer concerned with winning elections because it no longer believes it can.
In this light, it’s no surprise that Democratic rhetoric is becoming increasingly threatening. The party is frustrated by its inability to win using conventional political methods. They are desperate and flailing wildly and failing to think things through. At this point, they might just prefer to watch the country burn.
“If they do not see the light, we will bring the fire,” Pressley said ominously during her remarks on Tuesday.
The second path, of course, would be a sincere search of the soul. Doubtless, this would lead to a new generation taking the helm. There is a real hunger for change in some Democratic circles, but they remain too few in number to kickstart the process.
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Tim Ryan’s reaction to the Schumer video captures their current mood:
“I just don’t even know what to say anymore when I see this kind of stuff,” he posted Wednesday morning on X. “Is it Saturday Night Live or real life? Does anyone really think this is the future of the country? This is the only alternative to Trump’s America? It’s just so depressing.”