Where are the Democrats?

There is absolutely no pushback from Democrats that breaks through the noise of what Trump is doing

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Where are the Democrats?

Every single day, Donald Trump and members of his administration do something so outrageous that the founders are rolling over in their graves.

From a messaging perspective, every single day is a gift to Democrats.

But where are they? Seriously, have you seen any consistent, daily pushback from any prominent Democrats?

When Trump was cooling his heels at Mar-a-Lago for four years, his messaging apparatus was on Joe Biden every time he sneezed — and even when he didn’t. Trump and his MAGA allies flooded the zone so hard that they would often outshout the White House, which nominally has the biggest bully pulpit in the world.

But today, there is absolutely no pushback from Democrats that breaks through the noise of what Trump is doing. In fact, it’s even worse. Max Tani of Semafor published this gem on Memorial Day:

In Washington this week, I spoke with a few congressional staffers who said that they had tried using Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk, but they gave up after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.

This is how Democrats think they are going to win the messaging battle, by shriveling up and going back into their turtle shells because they are “getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence?”

You’re damn right we’re angry at their impotence. We’re angry at their capitulation, at their inability to forcefully counter Trump’s message, at their fear of both corporate media and their own base.

Take Rep. Ro Khanna, who is running all over the country in a bid to establish himself as — what, exactly? A viable presidential nominee? He spent the better part of Jake Tapper’s book launch week all over the news, self-flagellating over his previous defense of Joe Biden’s mental health, which he now understands was “a mistake.”

He is not alone. Former Democratic South Carolina Rep. Joe Cunningham chimed in with this:

“How are some of these national frontrunners or people who are already barnstorming states like South Carolina or Iowa expected to look voters in the eyes with a straight face and say, ‘Trust me, even though I got the 2024 election so terribly wrong? There’s no courage on display by any of the folks whose names are being circulated right now.”

What? No wonder these people are getting the crap kicked out of them by rank-and-file Democrats on social media. Trump is subverting the Constitution, imposing tariffs that explode inflation, cutting healthcare from tens of millions of people and ignoring court orders. But yes… whatever will voters think three-and-a-half years from now about what Democrats said about Joe Biden in 2024?

Arguably the smartest thing that Trump and his followers ever did was to ignore the Beltway press and set their own narrative. These Democratic politicians, on the other hand, are so in thrall to the narrative established by Washington pundits that they actually believe the rest of the country cares about whatever it is that a television producer decides will be the topic of the day.

We’ve heard more from Democrats about Biden in the last few weeks than we have about Trump — or, at least, they have more effectively broken through in trashing Biden’s mental health than they have in trashing the current president of the United States, his policies and his mental health.

This pathetic display is why even Democrats have a dismal view of the Democratic Party. Only 75% have a favorable view of their party, the lowest rating in the last six years. It’s not because, as the Beltway media would have you believe, the party failed to own up to Biden’s diminishment. It is because the party has forgotten how to fight on its own terms, not on the media’s terms.

I’ve worked at and around cable news for a long time, so let me explain how these narratives get set: at some networks, the orders come from the top to ride a certain topic relentlessly across every show, day and night. (How do you think Benghazi and the migrant caravans seeped into Republican consciousness so efficiently?) At other news networks, the producer or maybe the anchor decides on what will get the maximum amount of views and builds the show around it. They will check the front page of the New York Times or other establishment media and do a segment or even multiple segments around that. If they can get a politician to do something unexpected - like trash the former president of his own party, for instance — they will ride that like a horse at a rodeo as long as the horse lets them.

But Trump has refused to abide by that. At a time when everyone, including his closest congressional acolytes, was lamenting his behavior in inciting an insurrection on January 6, Trump refused to concede a thing. In short order, the narrative flipped — at least in Republican circles. It didn’t matter what the papers or the networks were saying. By the time Trump was finished, MAGA politicians and aligned media were all rowing from the same boat. January 6th was a day of love, the people at the Capitol that day were patriots and if there was anyone to blame, it was a combination of Nancy Pelosi, the Capitol Police and the Deep State.

How effective has this been? Even corporate media is not spending much time lamenting that Oklahoma is now teaching that the 2020 election was stolen as part of its history curriculum. Republican pundits either pretend that January 6th was a love-in or, at best, keep their mouths shut when the topic comes up.

The point is that no one on the Republican side runs to CNN to render his clothes about how an insurrectionist could possible have been elected as president of the United States. But on the Democratic side, too many politicians feel the need to beat themselves up in public about Biden’s declining health.

With that kind of gutless behavior, I am surprised that Democrats have retained 75% approval. As someone who has dedicated her career to electing Democrats up and down the ballot, I am part of the 25% who strenuously disapproves — and will continue disapproving until Democrats learn how to communicate, get a backbone and make it clear that they are no longer playing by corporate media’s rules.

If they don’t throw the old playbook out quickly (and by quickly, I mean, yesterday), they will perpetuate the narrative that the party is going the way of the Whigs. And narratives that go uncorrected have an unfortunate way of becoming reality.

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Further Reading:

Photo by Nadia Sitova on Unsplash

Semafor: Analysis: The party of cringe

The Washington Post: Democrats rattled again by fresh claims that Biden aides hid his frailty

Politico: The Biden question hanging over the 2028 field

Pew Research: Views of Congress, parties and courts

The Independent: Oklahoma wants to teach kids Trump’s false version of the 2020 election where he was cheated out of victory