The Democrats have lost their sense of normalcy
Too many Democrats blame the voters. Too few have introspection to ask themselves why they lost to a convicted felon, a person that they condemned as a Nazi.
You know we are heading into the summer political slow season when we stumble across stories like this one from The New York Times that assigns animal characteristics to voters.
It got a lot of play on the Right, far less on the Left, because it is insulting to Democratic voters.
While it is based on the work of a single Democratic researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio, it helps explain why the Democratic Party has sunk to a near-historic low approval rating of 27%. Voters see Republicans as “apex predators,” like tigers, lions, and sharks, while Democrats are seen as tortoises, slugs, and sloths.
Which would you rather be? I guarantee no Republican would pick a tortoise.
This animal metaphor explains why the majority of Americans handed the Democrats a political and cultural rejection in November. Americans don’t want to be seen as weak and dithering, as in Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. They chose strong, and certain, with Donald J. Trump, even though that also meant stupid, which many of his policies and remarks are. Such as when he said “I don’t know” when asked if he has to “uphold the Constitution.” Defending the Constitution is in his oath of office, which he took with his hand on the Bible.
Here’s the oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
But this isn’t about him; it’s about the hapless Democrats, who not long ago managed to elect an inexperienced Black man to the presidency before drifting hard to the Left and crashing into the shoals of mainstream American beliefs. Democrats have lost their sense of normalcy.
Let’s grant, because all the polls agreed, that the economy was No. 1 for most American voters in 2024.
What came next? A tie, of sorts, between hatred of an Open Border created by Joe Biden, and accommodating a tide of illegal immigration, tied in with Americans rejecting, in overwhelming numbers, obsession with personal pronouns, and biological men competing in athletics against biological women.
To the majority, Democrats reminded them of another animal — the bat. As in bat-shit crazy.
Don’t believe me? Former Barack Obama chief of staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel characterizes his party as “weak and woke,” with a brand that is “toxic.”
Is this guy a liberal, or what? Maybe “was” is the better verb.
Forever Democratic strategist James Carville carped about the “identity wing” of the Democratic Party, adding that Bernie Sanders and AOC have pulled it too far to the Left.
He said the party needed to become “an effective and smart opposition party, not a bunch of hoo-ha screaming and yelling.”
The party can’t succeed merely by defining itself as anti-Trump. It lost that bet two times out of three.
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the party needs to make a clearer case to voters about how it would be different from Trump and his Republican allies, citing issues such as taxes, wages, and health care.
So far, I have heard no such ideas from Democrats.
On the GOP side, Trump is a hyperactive idea machine.
Some may be crazy, like wanting to annex Canada, but every day he comes up with new ideas — whack-a-mole tariffs, no tax on tips and overtime, sealing the border, defunding Harvard, closing the Department of Education, paroling convicted felons, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, banning men from women sports, reassessing the food pyramid, invoking 18th Century war powers, restoring full flow shower heads, dismantling environmental protections, holding hour-long press conferences at the drop of a red MAGA hat, excluding AP from the Oval Office, threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal . . .
Look — I know half of these are insane or illegal, but his is an action presidency, and whether you like it or not, many people do like it. And yes, I know his approval rating is about 45%, but 45% is about 150 million Americans. And it is much higher than the Democrat brand.
The disaffection with Democrats by Democrats has been brewing for a long time.
In presidential elections, the last time Democrats won the white vote was 1964, Lyndon Johnson versus Republican Barry Goldwater, who was roundly rejected for being too extreme.
Now it is the Democrats who are too extreme, with a few exceptions.
In 2024, Democrats lost the working class vote, and not for the first time. It seems incredible, but Republicans are becoming the party of America's working class. Dems are more likely to be seen as Wall Street.
Too many Democrats blame the voters. Too few have the introspection to ask themselves why they lost to a convicted felon, a person that they condemned as a Nazi.
If the voters chose a Nazi over you, what does that say about you?
Too many Democrats are like a comedian who blames the audience when a joke bombs.
No, when a joke bombs it is the comedian who is to blame, not the audience. It usually comes from a failure to read the room.
Democrats are not reading the room. America is now center right.
The Left says the party’s mistake was not going more to the Left.
Outside the coastal elites, and some college campuses, I see no desire to go farther left. What I see is a desire for the Democrats to return to the common sense center.
It starts with learning how to talk to people.
In addition to gender, the Left is lost in language. When the Language Police tell you it is taboo to say something, it’s a short step to not being able to think something.
That will be my next column directed at the tortoises, slugs, and sloths.
