The widely reported forum in early February to showcase potential candidates for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship was portrayed as an anomaly. Eight candidates for the DNC chair appeared at Georgetown University under the auspices of MSNBC to make the case for why they should lead the party.
Instead of an aberration, as Democrats tried to spin it, the forum demonstrated in no uncertain terms why the Democrats lost in 2024, and how difficult it will be for them to change course and embrace reality instead of the cloud cuckoo land lived in by their activist base.
“I just want to give you all a little bit of something that’s been on my heart,” cooed Dr. Quintessa Hathaway, one of the candidates for DNC chairman.
What was on her heart was a song.
Nobody laughed. No one groaned. It was taken as business as usual for the DNC. And in that, it was.
“Democrats are deeply fractured, rudderless, and struggling to figure out at the most basic level what their message and strategy should be,” Holly Otterbein wrote in Politico Magazine. Otterbein interviewed more than 30 Democratic leaders and consultants for the piece.
She continued, “Some longtime Democrats are worried, even enraged, that few of their leaders have reexamined their prior positions — let alone shown a willingness to consider a dramatic break with party norms or practice.”
Regardless of what end of the ideological spectrum they're coming from, radicals do not "reexamine their prior positions" in preparation for changing them. Right now, it's Democratic Party radicals — socialists, greens, gender identity true believers, radical feminists, racialists, and other identity freakazoids — who are in control of the levers of power in the party and are in no hurry to let go.
That forum in early February never addressed the most basic concerns of the American people: prices and the border. That's a major reason why Democrats lost the Senate and the presidency.
Democrats are fixated on the idea that if only they can expose Donald Trump as the Hitler wannabe he truly is, the scales will fall from the eyes of voters, and Democrats will sweep back into power. Even though Trump has been a part of the American political landscape for two decades, if the American voters haven't come to hate him by now, they never will.
But they still can't let it go. They're like bad swimmers treading water, hoping they don't drown before someone rescues them.
“I don’t know if Dems realize how fu**ed they are right now as a brand,” said a Democratic strategist who wanted to remain anonymous. “It was a bunch of people politely discussing how many deck chairs on the Titanic should be reserved for transgender people,” said another campaign consultant.
Nearly two months later, Democrats still haven’t bottomed out. The party has lurched from strategy to strategy in their efforts to confront Trump, mostly falling flat. Democrats interrupted and stormed out of Trump’s joint address to Congress, which had the effect of making their rowdiness the story and sparking new intraparty feuds. That was followed by the release of cringeworthy videos on social media pegged to the “Choose your fighter” trend and Gen Z slang that tried to be playful but were roundly mocked as reeking of desperation. The party’s latest attempt to emulate the kind of authenticity that voters associate with Trump is using more four-letter words.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett is the new Democrat social media star. Her incoherence fits perfectly with the party's inability to develop a message beyond "be tolerant of transgenders" and "be nice to people of different colors." They have lost the working class, who want to hear what Democrats are going to do about prices and immigration. They have yet to hear anything of substance.
Until voters hear an opposing viewpoint that doesn't insult them for knowing how to define a "woman," Democrats are going to remain in the wilderness.
