Thursday Essay: What in the Actual Hell Is Wrong With the Democrats?

Look, I know I try to keep these essays highbrow, even when we're talking about matters no more weighty than the latest Superman reboot. But on some mornings, a slightly hungover pundit pulls on his bathrobe, sits down with his first cup of coffee to scan the headlines, and then for the umpteen-billionth time has to pick his jaw up off the keyboard, and shout these timeless words at the screen: What in the actual Hell is wrong with the Democrats?

Now that I've vented my spleen and a few other organs — you'd better believe my Subscribe & Save include bulk packages of monitor wipes — let's get to the somewhat more highbrow thinking behind the shouts.

But only somewhat, I promise. 

Two recent items set me off so badly that I pined for Bill Clinton and the old Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC). Remember when they pulled the party back toward the center three-plus decades ago? It feels like three centuries. 

First was a nasty syllogism from "Democratic Strategist" Ed Kilgore, in an Intelligencer piece lamenting that off-year voters in New Jersey and Virginia aren't ready to embrace a candidate like the "obscure young Muslim socialist state legislator" virtually set to become the next mayor of New York City.

Calling Zohran Mamdani's rise "a great story," Kilgore praised his "upbeat, issues-oriented campaign" and how he "leapt over the many obstacles to change and reform posed by New York City’s byzantine political system."

Here's Kilgore's syllogism:

• Change is required in NYC.
• Mamdani is change.
• Therefore, NYC needs Mamdani — and so does the rest of the country.

Ugh. It's that kind of "thinking" that ruins a great city. Or an entire nation, if our post-DLC/Obama-inspired Democrats get their way.

Usually, I try to be careful to distinguish between professional Democrats and Democrat voters. Dem pols enjoy an advantage that's built into leftist demagoguery: something for nothing. It's easy to sell people on free stuff, and more difficult to play the bad guy — which conservatives and Republicans are usually forced to do — who has to tell people No.

So I try not to judge Democrat voters as harshly as I do professional Democrats, whether or not they're elected officials. 

But sometimes... man, we do have to judge, and I do mean harshly. 

Watch this clip:

DISGUSTING! No Kings protestor in Bradenton says she's HAPPY Charlie Kirk got sh*t and would be glad if I DlED too. All because we dare to ask them questions! 😡 pic.twitter.com/BdqDGYBu1L

— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) October 21, 2025

Just an old Democrat, casually telling a young woman to her face that she hasn't yet decided if the younger woman ought to be murdered.

Then a few days later, progressive podcaster Jennifer Welch played that video for her viewers and added, "Listen up, Democratic establishment. You can either jump on board with this, or we're coming after you in the same way that we come after MAGA. Period."

Democrats have done everything but write assassination into the party platform. Seriously, what in the actual Hell is wrong with them?

That older woman is part of what Tod Lindberg — in an unsettling new Commentary piece — called "the assassination fan base."

The wounded Reagan quipped to the lead doctor on his trauma team, “I hope you’re all Republican.” What made the quip amusing is that both Reagan and the team knew it mattered not in the least whether its members were Republican. The doctor, a Democrat, amusingly but perhaps a bit solemnly replied, “Today, we’re all Republicans.”

I think most Americans would like to live in a world where such an exchange is still possible. I’m not sure it is.

Stick a pin in that thought because I'll come back to it momentarily. But first, see how far the Democrats have fallen.

Samuel G. Freedman once described in a New York Times op-ed how the Democrats made themselves the "default" party for immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century:

The same scene was unfolding simultaneously in scores of American cities, including New York with Tammany Hall and Mayor Curley's Boston. At the outset, the bargain between the Democratic machine and the immigrant voter could not have been more pragmatic. The machine gave the immigrant a job or a garbage can or some cash on Election Day; the immigrant gave the machine his or her vote and a wide berth for corruption.

But something more profound was transpiring. The urban machines, however unsavory their style, offered the waves of Catholic and Jewish newcomers a foothold in the American political system. By the sheer weight of their numbers -- 20 million immigrants entered America between 1880 and 1924 -- these voters help to wrest the Democratic Party from the nativist grasp of William Jennings Bryan. Then they formed the backbone of the New Deal coalition.

FDR's particular genius — through populist legislation sold during his "fireside chats" — was making his party the default for people who weren't particularly political. If you were an immigrant, you voted Dem. If you belonged to a union, you voted Dem. If you wanted to be associated with "nice" things like the social safety net, civil rights, or stopping Nazi aggression... you voted Dem. 

If you weren't a rock-ribbed Republican, you defaulted to Democrat, and that only really started to change in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, but it took Donald Trump — and the Democrats' self-radicalizing upper echelons — to completely upend the electoral applecart the Donks started assembling all the way back in the 1880s. 

Trump had plenty of help. From Democrats.

Who, after all, wants to be associated with the "nice" old lady casually wishing death upon a friendly interviewer, or any of the rest of the assassination fan base? If the Democrats used to sell themselves as the party that loved old people, now it's the party of old people with murder in their hearts.

I mean, somebody had to inspire Ryan Wesley Routh and Tyler James Robinson — and it sure as hell wasn't Donald Trump or Charlie Kirk.

And Another Thing: Anybody else thinking of this exchange between Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts from Conspiracy Theory?

Jerry: David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck...

Alice: What about them?

Jerry: Serial killers. Serial killers only have two names. You ever notice that? But lone gunmen assassins, they always have three names. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman...

Alice: John Hinckley. He shot Reagan. He only has two names.

Jerry: Yeah, but he only just shot Reagan. Reagan didn't die. If Reagan had died, I'm pretty sure we probably would all know what John Hinckley's middle name was.

I know, right?

Even a once-sharp operator like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is in denial deeper than the Mariana Trench:

Journalist Alison King, who moderated the discussion posted to the school’s YouTube channel, asked Pelosi whether she agreed with many Americans that Democrats went “too far to the left” on cultural issues, immigration or economic policy, citing the election outcome as evidence of a widespread sentiment. Pelosi immediately dismissed the idea and delivered lengthy remarks, during which she argued her party merely reflected Americans’ beliefs.

To paraphrase Sarah Palin, "How's that 80/20 stuff workin' out for ya, Nancy?" We know the answer to that one, courtesy of the New York Post: "In 2013, 51% of voters viewed the Democratic Party as 'out of touch,' but the number surged to 70% in 2025," according to a survey conducted by the Democrat-affiliated, center-left Welcome organization.

The Post report continued: "The issues garnering the lowest level of support for Democratic prioritization included protecting illegal immigrants (23%), hiking taxes to increase spending on 'social programs' (24%) and protecting LGBTQ rights (25%)."

But here's Clueless Nancy, chiding conservatives: "If they find that offensive with their DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] initiatives and they want to sell it as ‘We’re all so left.’ It’s ridiculous."

Barack Obama was always the master of selling radical ideas under a shiny veneer of moderation, but these days, not so much. He's so concerned with the condition of the party he pulled so far to the left that he's openly pushing for censorship.

"Part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion," Obama told attendees at the Connecticut Forum in June. "We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts. That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints."

Obama and his cronies will determine what the facts are, and then there will be no diversity of opinion. 

Just like Orwell warned us.

Once again, What in the actual Hell is wrong with the Democrats?

We can certainly poke fun at the Democrats' self-sabotage, and in fact, I'm contractually obligated. But there's a danger there, too. Sometimes the crazy ones capture enough of the public imagination to win some important office — I'm looking at you, Zohran Mamdani — and then the laughter must give way to tears.

So it isn't that the Dems won't keep scoring election wins, because they will. 

I used to believe that there was nothing easier in the world to sell than liberty — "Live your life the way you want to!" — but I was sadly mistaken. "Something for nothing" is the easiest thing to sell, because so many people are willing to switch off their brains every time they hear it. Humans are temptable creatures, going all the way back to Eden.

Bad policy is what we've long come to expect from our friends on the Left, but the trap they're in is one of their own making. Democrats, sad to say, accomplished most of their Big Government goals long ago. But — and here's the catch — having no inherent limiting principles, leftism by nature must go off the deep end. 

Take the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), for example. Founded in 1980, the HRC's original focus was on basic civil rights-type issues for gays and lesbians — workplace discrimination, fair treatment in federal employment, etc. Having won on real issues worth pursuing, the HRC didn't declare victory and close up shop. Instead, they went all-in on butchering teenage bodies in pursuit of trans "rights."

And Another Thing: I believe all lobbying groups are like that, to be fair. Mothers Against Drunk Driving won just as bigly as HRC ever did. They didn't just succeed in getting stricter laws; the group helped change a culture that used to think driving drunk was kinda cool. But since then, MADD evolved into Angry Spinsters Against Anything Remotely Fun. 

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said of FDR that he had "A second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." It's that temperament that maybe saved us from something far worse — FDR honestly believed he was saving American democracy (cough, cough) from totalitarianism. 

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence," FDR supposedly said during the Great Depression. "People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made," like in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. With that second-rate intellect of his, FDR seems to have honestly believed the New Deal was the only thing standing between a hungry people and some homegrown Hitler. 

But the Great Depression was a long time ago, and America's poor are often A) obese, not hungry; and B) trapped in dependency on and by the Big Government programs created by FDR and expanded by LBJ.

Having gotten their New Deal and their Great Society, today's Dems are largely stuck pushing fringe issues with candidates who are completely fringe outside of the country's deep blue enclaves. Democrats can be a party of weirdos, sickos, and foreign ideologies, but they certainly can't be a majority party that way.

Even Jonathan Chait — someone I agree with only slightly more often than I drink a non-alcoholic beer — couldn't help but take notice of the disconnect between professional Democrats and the voters they're supposed to woo:

On a recent panel of progressive activists analyzing what went wrong in the 2024 election, the author, activist, and failed political candidate Qasim Rashid spoke with confidence about the way forward for the Democratic Party. The problem, he insisted, was not that Democrats had strayed too far from public opinion but that the party had grown too solicitous of it. “Saying the right thing timidly,” he proclaimed, “is less effective than saying the wrong thing loudly.”

Bold strategy, Cotton — but we know exactly how it plays out, too. Chait noted that Rashid has run for office three times and lost badly each time. "In 2020, he lost his race for Congress by 16 points in a district Joe Biden lost by four," and yet his new firm, specializing in "relational messaging to inspire and mobilize communities to advance economic justice, social equity, climate action, and protect our democracy," is called Just Win.

Yet it's the Rashids, the Mamdanis, and the Omar Fatehs who are heralded as the fresh young faces of the Democratic Party and not the more moderate Dems trying to reinvigorate '90s DLC-style thinking with the Majority Democrats caucus in Congress, and the new Searchlight Institute think tank.

"Liberal Patriot" Ruy Teixeira believes the whole party requires "Two, Three, Many Sister Souljah Moments!" in reference to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign when he called out rapper/activist Sister Souljah over her racial comments — to show moderate voters he wasn’t captive to his party’s loudest radicals. 

Using the traditional 0-10 Sister Souljah scale, where zero is doing nothing at all, 5 is barely adequate, and 10 is what Bill Clinton did, I’d give today’s Democrats a 1 for the occasional grudging admission in interviews and the like that maybe the Democrats have overdone their noble commitments a little bit (though of course their heinous opponents are 100 percent wrong). And the 1 might be generous.

But the closest thing the Democrats have today to a moderate in a position of real power is New York's spineless Sen. Chuck Schumer, who now takes his cues from next year's primary threat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Dems like Schumer are probably right to fear their left flank. As I wrote on Monday, inspired by events in an increasingly Muslim-dominated Britain, "The revolution always eats its own, and it's the 'soft' elements that get marched to the guillotine, find themselves with their backs up against the proverbial wall, or are forced to dig their own mass graves." Schumer is soft, and he knows it. If AOC isn't actually a killer, she seems to me a likely enabler of killers. 

How are people like Teixeira or groups like Welcome supposed to pull their party back toward the center under these conditions?

And Another Thing: During final edits, I looked at the word count — and this is the longest Thursday Essay yet. Because when you ask, "What in the actual Hell is wrong with the Democrats?" you're going to find a butcher shop's worth of red meat. Enjoy the meal!

If, by some miracle, Mamdani loses next week, Dems huddled in their safe spaces will complain that either Mamdani didn't campaign hard enough, that evil right-wing forces sabotaged him, or that the voters suck. But most likely they'll do all three.

Win or lose, however, I'd wager that our progressive friends will only grow angrier. Angrier when they lose, angrier when their policies once again fail to create the paradise of True Communism for the New Soviet Man. 

Maybe that's the answer to my question, "What in the actual Hell is wrong with the Democrats?" Angry when they win, angry when they lose, and sometimes violently lashing out at those who dare to point it out. 

I've repeated variations on this line over at Instapundit for almost a year now, and yet it remains evergreen — are you ready for it again?

The Democrats can't stay stupid forever, but they sure seem determined to try. 

Last Thursday: You Only Think the 'Trans' Crisis Is Over