The candidates for DNC Chairman appeared at a debate early this year. When journo Jonathan Capehart asked them, "How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris's defeat?", all of them raised their hands. Capehart told them, "That's good, you all passed." Consider what this tells the voters: That the Democrats consider most of them morally defective. Next, consider what it tells the Democrats: That it is the voters who need to improve instead of the Democratic Party.
One of the odd things about this exchange is Capehart's belief that his job as moderator wasn't just to ask the candidates questions but to voice his approval or disapproval of their answers: "That's good, you all passed." Passed what?
The meeting of the Public Safety Committee of Portland, Oregon's city council on July 9, 2025 offers a vivid case study of the very dynamic Justin Vassallo warns against in his critique of the Democratic Party: the dominance of sectarian identity politics over broad-based, majoritarian strategy.
The meeting, convened to address the city’s sanctuary status and recent ICE enforcement actions, was intended as a listening session but quickly became a display of hardline progressive ideology.
While the official purpose was to gather input on the city’s response to federal immigration arrests—most notably at the local ICE facility where several asylum seekers had recently been detained—the meeting was dominated by radical activist rhetoric that equated immigration enforcement with fascism, white supremacy, and genocide.
Speakers invoked Holocaust imagery repeatedly, likening ICE activity to Nazi roundups and detention facilities to “concentration camps” and “Alligator Auschwitz.” Many insisted that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” declaring U.S. immigration law inherently illegitimate. Several speakers claimed that the U.S. is waging genocide against indigenous and Latino populations through deportations. The prevailing position was absolutist: federal agents were likened to death squads, all forms of resistance were considered justified, and any defense of legal process or public safety was dismissed as complicity with fascism.
This sectarian framing left little room for dissent. A small number of attendees voiced concerns about lawlessness, neighborhood disruption, and the dangers of escalating confrontation with federal authorities. They emphasized the need to protect both immigrants and the local community through peaceful and legal means. These speakers were frequently booed or shouted down, their calls for nuance or civic restraint met with contempt. One dissenting speaker, for instance, called for police to protect residents from ongoing protests, only to be derided as a reactionary and accused of siding with ICE.
City councilors offered a range of responses—none fully distancing themselves from the dominant narrative. One councilor voiced support for protestors but urged them to consider the impact on neighborhood residents, asking that resistance be balanced with the right to live in peace. This moderate appeal was met with jeers and accusations of betrayal. Another councilor gave a fiery denunciation of ICE and its collaborators, calling them “the great cowards of our time” and warning that the federal government would continue “to do whatever they want.” A third councilor went further, warning that the assault on immigrants was a prelude to political executions under a second Trump term, declaring the U.S. to be in a state of authoritarian collapse.
This session illustrates the problem Justin Vassallo identifies in his critique of the Democratic Party’s trajectory: a deepening reliance on symbolic identity politics and moral absolutism that leaves little room for coalition-building or pragmatic governance. Rather than confronting the ideological overreach on display, city leaders largely echoed or indulged it. Public discourse has become dominated by a framework that sacralizes protest, treats law as violence, and places ideological purity above democratic persuasion.
Opposing views were not only unwelcome—they were treated as illegitimate. This signals not a healthy deliberative process but an activist-driven struggle session, in which expressions of concern for legal norms or civic order are cast as reactionary. The party’s unwillingness to disentangle itself from this kind of maximalist, identity-first politics continues to shrink its appeal to working-class, moderate, and immigrant voters who want fairness and order—not revolution by metaphor.
The elephant in the room is that the Democratic Party is dominated by angry women. Cancel culture meant that there is limited pushback and it is still largely verboten to discuss.
What it means electorally is that the Democratic Party is openly hostile to the second-biggest demographic bucket in the US - and since more females than males identify as LGBTQ, you could argue it is the biggest.
Gen X men put up with it because they had families to support. Millennial men internalized the messaging and tried to please. The younger generation wants no part of it.
Exactly this! The Democrats are now the party of open borders, defunding the police, racial quotas, trans lunacy, and a host of other pathologies embraced by their activist class. Add to that an all-consuming arrogance and contempt for those who disagree with them or vote for candidates outside the party. It’s a toxic mixture that they’ve spent decades building up to and they are now reluctant to abandon it because hating the unenlightened masses just feels so good. Some of the most irrational, hate-filled people I know are older, educated Democrats.
I’m “pro-war” when it comes to siding with Israel against Islamist radicals and with Ukraine against Putin’s Russia. Those are reasonable wars to support as they further the cause of democracy and Western values. The Democrats seek to denigrate and undermine Israel, while expressing support for a corrupt UN and the Palestinian barbarians that they enable. Under Biden, Ukraine received just enough military aid to lose the war slowly. Trump’s recent flip to strong support for Ukraine’s military is very encouraging and removes a major doubt among those of his supporters who wished for more and better weapons to be given to that country. Russia understands force and only force and the US under Trump can ensure that’s what they meet in Ukraine.
I agree with you about Israel, but I strongly disagree with you about Ukraine. Mere discussion of bringing Ukraine into NATO did not constitute aggression and was certainly no justification for sending tanks and troops into Ukraine (which was real aggression). Putin is a murderer and a war criminal who should be brought to justice, not supported by those who fail to see who he clearly is.
People who want that are fighting to the last Ukrainian or alternatively advocating for nuclear war. When German reunification happened the US promised the then Soviet Union that NATO would not move one inch further east. Been about 1000 kilometers. Trump unfortunately doesn't seem to be cutting Ukraine or the lunatic Euros loose.
Nato with US support did aggress against Russia and ethnic Rusians in Ukraine but Russia was also wrong in invading Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have both also commited war crimes. The Israeli responce to October 7th is not war at all, but mass killing of civilians, -estimated at likely over 400,000 at this point. War crimes if there ever was! Netanyahu has a well earned international warasnt for his arrest for crimes against humanity, -he cannot travel to most countries now without risking ending up at the Hague. Increasingly, Israeli tourists cannot travel to may places around rhe workd, or without risking trouble in general. Hamas was also responding to existing long standind acts of Israeli agression, though Hamas are often far from kind and just themselves... Thing is, two wrongs do not make a right. Two acts of aggression don't bring peace, even if one or both are " defensive"). Instead, they make the whole world blind!
That's an over-simplefication.. Democrats are probably more pro war on average at this point but not that long ago that distiction beloenged to Republicans. Both parties have long often had horendious foreign policy.
My political affinities lie with the former Democratic party defined by FDR and Clinton. For some inexplicable reason I want to reform the current party to mirror that successful coalition and so here I am. But lately I have been wondering whether or not this is simply wasted emotional energy pining away for politics which have been lost to history. Perhaps I associate being a Democrat with a sense of being on the righteous side of history and an optimistic view of what an amazing country we have and what it can become. And just maybe that's because I felt this way when I was young and everything was novel and full of promise. I look at the current Democratic party and I can't see the optimism or feel the promise, only anger and hostility over immutable physical characteristics and victimhood. So here is a challenge for our talented writers - please tell me why I should continue to give a damn.
Regarding to your last sentence, I often ask myself the same question. There are times when I feel like trying to reform the Democratic Party from within is doomed. What leads me to keep trying, and to keep seeking out others who want to save the Democrats, is this: the Republicans are even worse. Even if Trump is gone after 2028 (no sure thing), I have no faith in Vance or any other Trump acolyte to save America.
I am late Gen X. This is how I felt for years and now that ship has clearly sailed away, mostly out of sight at this point, only holed up in memory of what once was. I.E. I am now no longer a Democrat but a true imdependent who did not even vote for US president this last election. Well, I wrote in Jimmy Dore actually! But I know that doesn't count.
The very sociel structure of society has changed so much sense the 1990s or even the early 2010's -there is really no way even for someone like Obama to be president now, much less a Bill Clinton type figure. Not that I am any fan of Bill, far from it. I think he was terrible actually. I do very much wish we could have people like former Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich in office again however!
What they have in common is that they represent not only politics but also perspectives on life that although still common (but faiding) among voters, can no longer lead someone to any high level office at the national level (nor even governors) within todays Democratic Party. And they represent broader perspectives that are just not readily discussed publically at this point, and are often considered fringe when they are.
Basically, as much as society was divided even back then, I think Obama's first term and maybe the first half of his secund term was the last time the US really had a dominant culture or sense of nationhood that still transcended partisan devisions. Yet felt distictntly meloncholy to me at the time somehow, though I could't quite put my finger on it back then. But as the adult child of blue collar Hippies I could sense, living in the city, that something big, huge and beginning well before my time was ending even as it made something of a final push and renewal durring those years, while something new but somehow ominous feeling was being created...
Those years were also the years of the final counterculture as such, -back when Hipsters were an actual artistic underground counterculture with people from many walks of life, before what was left became just another upscale lifestyle group. Urban Bohemia was revived a final time before being scatered to the winds of time and place. Little did I yet know just what was being thrown away! The very social and cultural world that formed me into who I was, was rapidly dissapearing before my eyes.
Democrats remain focused on dividing the country into neat demographic subgroups, then seeking to capture enough of these artificial and disparate entities to win power. It’s a fool’s exercise because these defined groups don’t exist so neatly in the real world, and it’s impossible to message coherently. Witness Hispanic Americans voting for border control, 25% of African Americans voting for a “racist” Donald Trump and, my favorite, “White Dudes for Harris”.
It’s not about branding people like cattle and expecting them to vote in lockstep. It’s about policies. Leftist progressives hijacked Democrats’ talking points, centering on issues like transgender surgeries for minors, an open border, and men being welcomed into women’s sports. Until the party decides who’s in charge and what they stand for that American voters actually want, Republicans will continue to have the upper hand. A keffiyeh-wearing Donkey is not a winning look.
“ the first and biggest obstacle to a new era of reform will be inside the Democratic Party itself.”. Well said. A question, what is a synonym for “ commonality politics”? Would it be common sense?
One thought of a way forward would be to highlight annd encourage current elected Democrats to enforce the law. For example in the recent ICE raid on the California marijuana farm; why hasn’t California's OSHA already been there to be sure that the employer is following safe workplace practices? Where is Californias Department of Labor ensuring that the hundreds of employees are being paid the property wages? Where is the CA Dept of Human Services to rescue the minor children and find their parents? And where is CA Environmental Protection Department to be sure only legal chemicals are used on the crop and hazardous material are disposed of according to the law.? IT IS UNBELIEVABLE! Why does blue state California allow a workplace straight out of 19th century Charles Dickens? It is way past time for the blue states to do the job they already have. Or else why would voters want more Democrats in office?
Here's a hint: "Recent reports indicate that Graham Farrar, co-founder and president of Glass House Farms, a large cannabis farm in California, has made donations to California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic candidates."
No, really? That couldn't be. I am sure that would never happen... We don't have issues with corruption or extreme nepotism in California government!!! (Sarcasm)
This was very well written and researched, but in some ways, it seems to miss the forest for the trees. Dems lost the election, to one of the most divisive candidates in US history, for 3 reasons, inflation, immigration and child social engineering. Yet it is easier to find a live unicorn in DC , than a Dem that will admit the obvious. Nor can they even manage, to soften the edges of their policies.
For example recently, an ICE raid yesterday found 300 people working illegally and a dozen unaccompanied migrant children, seemingly trafficked into forced labor, on a legal CA Pot farm, alongside a convicted rapist and pedophile.
Perhaps I just missed it , but it seems not 1 Dem mustered the strength to call a Press Conference and thank ICE for freeing child slaves, on US soil. Not one had the courage to say, while they do not agree with Trump methods, thank God these children were freed. How do we find more of them? Surely Dems realize, these will not be the last migrant child slaves ICE finds. I cannot decide if Dems are that afraid of their far Left, or if Party leaders now really believe, 300K children in bondage, on US soil, is an acceptable price for a borderless America.
Likewise for child sex changes. We are nation that does not allow the tattooing of children, due to the permanence of the choice. The idea of allowing 12 year olds to remove healthy body parts or purposefully end their adult fertility, sometimes before it begins, was once unthinkable. Yet CA will now go to war with DC, attempting to ensure child sex change surgeries continue. Dems could have simply proposed separate locker rooms and athletic categories for trans athletes, while advocating irreversible treatments occur after age 18, but Dems, near uniformly, refuse to seek middle ground.
Dems consumed with identity politics do themselves no favors, but until there is a Come to Jesus moment, regarding the border and child social engineering, other issues are background noise.
The Dems really don't care about slave children, illegal labor practices, environmental violations, or anything else unless enforcement against these things can be used to harass business owners who are not supporters, or other people they deem disposable.
This is a logical, plain fact column that (from my perspective, thankfully) will be ignored by the elites.
By my purpose is only to remind everyone this DID NOT END WITH THE ELECTION. The party/partisan shifts are still going on and almost universally moving bigly in the R direction. Just the latest, CA Rs, having gained 230,000 net on Democrats in the state since November, added another 23,000 nets in June. Don't be fooled by a "primary halo" in NJ, either. We saw in PA that as soon as the primary was over, the voter registration advantage moved back to Rs there.
But there are two other big structural problems that are going to wipe out about 10 EVs or House seats. First, Texas (and likely Ohio) are going to redistrict. Seth Keshel, who stays up on the county shifts, says this could add EVs. Second, I mentioned above the party SHIFT in registrations in CA, but there is another much larger dynamic going on, which is that a Judicial Watch lawsuit force CA counties to do a voter roll purge. So far, in only half the counties reporting, over 2.1 million have been taken off the rolls. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say that probably 60% of those are Democrats. By the time LA and other counties report, it will be close to 3.5 million removed, or approx 2 million Democrats---while on the other end Rs have flipped 270,000. Not parity, but certainly a clusterbomb on Democrat seats there.
This constant diagnosis is such a waste of time. The majority of Americans don't trust the Democrat Party. They opened the border and allowed in 12 to 20 million illegal migrants, of whom were 500,000 criminals, and did nothing about it. They ignored inflation while it was ravaging the lower and middle classes. And now the Democrat Party won't condemn the violence going on against ICE. It's obvious that they want Trump to send in more Marines and national guard so they can say Trump is a dictator and a fascist and whatever name they can think of. The majority of Americans want illegals deported!!! Trump is doing just that despite all the judicial headwinds. AMERICANS DON'T TRUST DEMOCRATS. I am an unaffiliated voter who voted for Obama twice because I didn't trust the neocon Republicans who brought us into war and wanted to police the world. Democrats need to face facts and embrace what Trump and the Republicans are doing because that is what the majority of Americans want. Right now, they are heading to a dead end. Trump is bad. Trump is bad. Trump is bad. The Democrat message is crap.
Majority Democrats sounds like just the latest performative flavor of the month designed not to reform the party's conspicuous political misdirection, but rather to disguise it.
When the so-called political "Big Tent" fails to discriminate against lawbreakers, illegal aliens (actually one in the same) and elitist authoritarian Leftists then it is only buying time, not rebuilding.
The essential problem for Democrsts is that their party has been hijacked by a radical Left so completely out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, including many if not most pre-progressive, pre-woke Democrats.
In a final act of irony, perhaps the Democratic Party will yet be saved by DJT's most egregious political misstep to date; promising yet failing to deliver on release of the infamous Epstein pedophilia client list.
When MAGA Republicans start abandoning him, you know both parties are facing strong political headwinds ahead.
I've given up on Democrats. They are like old Goldwater conservatives. -- true believers that are going to sink the ship. The woke treat their beliefs like a religion -- maybe the Calvinists or the Puritans?? If they could get lightning to smote the unbelievers, they would. And they would feel so virtuous.
This is an updated version of the "hyphenated American" vs. the melting pot, a dichotomy that was a prominent feature of politics at the turn of the 20th century. The melting pot prevailed while ancestry wasn't totally subsumed. The Democrats have swung very hard toward a neo-hyphenated perspective, and will not even listen to anyone who speaks up for the melting pot, which is and always has been far more popular.
"Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall" Prov 16:18 NKJ To me, the theme of the comments and somewhat in the article centers around arrogance. No doubt, this will seem ironic to those who aren't exactly Trump fans, and that's a fair point. But the Lord hates 'haughty eyes', which I believe is strong in the progressive left and is apparent on the right too.
I want Trump to admit more often when he's wrong (I believe any aspiring politician would do well in understanding how powerful humility is), I want the radio cheerleaders to be more humble and I want Trump supporters like myself, to always be acutely aware of how deceivingly evil pride is.
I know, in my soul, gender affirming care for minors, men in women's sports/spaces, color over character, and a lawless border are wrong, to name a few, but I don't believe that's arrogance, I believe that's the gift of discernment from the Holy Spirit. Without question, the typical progressive would say the opposite with the same conviction. The difference, IMO, is I'm trying to be led by the Word, not man's wisdom, God bless
Nice try, Majority Democrats, but you have sat back for decades and watched the money, energy, and drive on the Left all migrate to the progressive extremists, and let it happen because you kind of agreed with their ideas and loved their energy to trample on the conservatives. Now you have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind and don't know what to do. You allowed universities and other cultural institutions to become infested with hard leftists who indoctrinated a whole generation of young people with activist ambitions, no usable job skills and therefore lots of time on their hands, and resentment against the system that promised them elite status and delivered barista jobs.
Centrist ideas have no chance to fuel the kind of energy that the Left promises to its followers. The people who want centrist policies have jobs, families, lives, and don't have time to show up to protests and rallies, or to live online posting angry diatribes against the slightest deviation from the Leftist articles of faith. Whatever you think of Trump, and don't tell me in replies how bad he is because that is not my point here, he has remade the Republican party into something far more appealing to many centrist voters than it used to be, and many of its new voters are former Democrats who have abandoned a party increasingly out of touch with where they are. The Dems won't get them back anytime soon after such a huge breach of trust. And where is the money to support a Majority Democrat movement? The big money for Dems now is on the far Left, another consequence of the changes in elite culture and societal institutions so carefully fostered by the Democratic Party since the 1960s.
I was never a Democrat but have observed from the outside for many years. I don't think the Democrat party is salvageable at this point, the institutional capture by the Left is complete. Yes, there are still some nominal Democrats in office who say more sensible things, but they usually vote with the crazy Left when they actually must go on the record, or fail to vote for common sense popular policies when proposed by Republicans. Very few have the courage to stand up to the cancel mob. Look what they do to John Fetterman every time he says something that makes sense to normal people, they are absolutely vicious. Not many politicians have the courage that he does to stand up to that much abuse. No party that tears apart its own that way has much chance of survival, I think, in a pluralistic culture.
And a different point, being Leftist is ultimately exhausting emotionally. A follower is required to be amped up to 11 all the time and angry at everything, nothing is good, it's all not just bad but evil, fascist, Nazi, racist, etc. Humans are not built to exist at that kind of fight-or-flight stress level for long periods of time without some down time, but that's not allowed to be a good Progressive. Research on the human nervous system has shown that, not only it is very detrimental to our health to be in a highly negative emotional state constantly, but it does not allow our brains to think, evaluate situations, or to learn anything from what is happening around us. We can only react in pre-programmed ways to the events - and Progressivism prescribes the "correct" reaction. It's no wonder that the rates of mental illness and depression among self-described leftists is much higher than among conservatives.
The candidates for DNC Chairman appeared at a debate early this year. When journo Jonathan Capehart asked them, "How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris's defeat?", all of them raised their hands. Capehart told them, "That's good, you all passed." Consider what this tells the voters: That the Democrats consider most of them morally defective. Next, consider what it tells the Democrats: That it is the voters who need to improve instead of the Democratic Party.
One of the odd things about this exchange is Capehart's belief that his job as moderator wasn't just to ask the candidates questions but to voice his approval or disapproval of their answers: "That's good, you all passed." Passed what?
Was he being sarcastic, perhaps?
The meeting of the Public Safety Committee of Portland, Oregon's city council on July 9, 2025 offers a vivid case study of the very dynamic Justin Vassallo warns against in his critique of the Democratic Party: the dominance of sectarian identity politics over broad-based, majoritarian strategy.
The meeting, convened to address the city’s sanctuary status and recent ICE enforcement actions, was intended as a listening session but quickly became a display of hardline progressive ideology.
While the official purpose was to gather input on the city’s response to federal immigration arrests—most notably at the local ICE facility where several asylum seekers had recently been detained—the meeting was dominated by radical activist rhetoric that equated immigration enforcement with fascism, white supremacy, and genocide.
Speakers invoked Holocaust imagery repeatedly, likening ICE activity to Nazi roundups and detention facilities to “concentration camps” and “Alligator Auschwitz.” Many insisted that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” declaring U.S. immigration law inherently illegitimate. Several speakers claimed that the U.S. is waging genocide against indigenous and Latino populations through deportations. The prevailing position was absolutist: federal agents were likened to death squads, all forms of resistance were considered justified, and any defense of legal process or public safety was dismissed as complicity with fascism.
This sectarian framing left little room for dissent. A small number of attendees voiced concerns about lawlessness, neighborhood disruption, and the dangers of escalating confrontation with federal authorities. They emphasized the need to protect both immigrants and the local community through peaceful and legal means. These speakers were frequently booed or shouted down, their calls for nuance or civic restraint met with contempt. One dissenting speaker, for instance, called for police to protect residents from ongoing protests, only to be derided as a reactionary and accused of siding with ICE.
City councilors offered a range of responses—none fully distancing themselves from the dominant narrative. One councilor voiced support for protestors but urged them to consider the impact on neighborhood residents, asking that resistance be balanced with the right to live in peace. This moderate appeal was met with jeers and accusations of betrayal. Another councilor gave a fiery denunciation of ICE and its collaborators, calling them “the great cowards of our time” and warning that the federal government would continue “to do whatever they want.” A third councilor went further, warning that the assault on immigrants was a prelude to political executions under a second Trump term, declaring the U.S. to be in a state of authoritarian collapse.
This session illustrates the problem Justin Vassallo identifies in his critique of the Democratic Party’s trajectory: a deepening reliance on symbolic identity politics and moral absolutism that leaves little room for coalition-building or pragmatic governance. Rather than confronting the ideological overreach on display, city leaders largely echoed or indulged it. Public discourse has become dominated by a framework that sacralizes protest, treats law as violence, and places ideological purity above democratic persuasion.
Opposing views were not only unwelcome—they were treated as illegitimate. This signals not a healthy deliberative process but an activist-driven struggle session, in which expressions of concern for legal norms or civic order are cast as reactionary. The party’s unwillingness to disentangle itself from this kind of maximalist, identity-first politics continues to shrink its appeal to working-class, moderate, and immigrant voters who want fairness and order—not revolution by metaphor.
You can learn the details in the July 13 Substack piece "The Sanctuary Cities 'Conversation' " by Max Steele here: https://recalibrateportland.substack.com/p/the-sanctuary-cities-conversation?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2855266&post_id=167916257&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=8bzqv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I just visited my son who lives in Eugene, Oregon. Oregon is just so beautiful and Eugene seems fine. But I sure hope he doesn’t move to Portland.
The elephant in the room is that the Democratic Party is dominated by angry women. Cancel culture meant that there is limited pushback and it is still largely verboten to discuss.
What it means electorally is that the Democratic Party is openly hostile to the second-biggest demographic bucket in the US - and since more females than males identify as LGBTQ, you could argue it is the biggest.
Gen X men put up with it because they had families to support. Millennial men internalized the messaging and tried to please. The younger generation wants no part of it.
Exactly this! The Democrats are now the party of open borders, defunding the police, racial quotas, trans lunacy, and a host of other pathologies embraced by their activist class. Add to that an all-consuming arrogance and contempt for those who disagree with them or vote for candidates outside the party. It’s a toxic mixture that they’ve spent decades building up to and they are now reluctant to abandon it because hating the unenlightened masses just feels so good. Some of the most irrational, hate-filled people I know are older, educated Democrats.
They are also the pro-war party
I’m “pro-war” when it comes to siding with Israel against Islamist radicals and with Ukraine against Putin’s Russia. Those are reasonable wars to support as they further the cause of democracy and Western values. The Democrats seek to denigrate and undermine Israel, while expressing support for a corrupt UN and the Palestinian barbarians that they enable. Under Biden, Ukraine received just enough military aid to lose the war slowly. Trump’s recent flip to strong support for Ukraine’s military is very encouraging and removes a major doubt among those of his supporters who wished for more and better weapons to be given to that country. Russia understands force and only force and the US under Trump can ensure that’s what they meet in Ukraine.
Israel was responding to aggression . Russia was the victim of aggression by NATO.
I agree with you about Israel, but I strongly disagree with you about Ukraine. Mere discussion of bringing Ukraine into NATO did not constitute aggression and was certainly no justification for sending tanks and troops into Ukraine (which was real aggression). Putin is a murderer and a war criminal who should be brought to justice, not supported by those who fail to see who he clearly is.
People who want that are fighting to the last Ukrainian or alternatively advocating for nuclear war. When German reunification happened the US promised the then Soviet Union that NATO would not move one inch further east. Been about 1000 kilometers. Trump unfortunately doesn't seem to be cutting Ukraine or the lunatic Euros loose.
The Soviet Union no longer exists. We have no such agreement with the current government in Russia that I’m aware of.
Nato with US support did aggress against Russia and ethnic Rusians in Ukraine but Russia was also wrong in invading Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have both also commited war crimes. The Israeli responce to October 7th is not war at all, but mass killing of civilians, -estimated at likely over 400,000 at this point. War crimes if there ever was! Netanyahu has a well earned international warasnt for his arrest for crimes against humanity, -he cannot travel to most countries now without risking ending up at the Hague. Increasingly, Israeli tourists cannot travel to may places around rhe workd, or without risking trouble in general. Hamas was also responding to existing long standind acts of Israeli agression, though Hamas are often far from kind and just themselves... Thing is, two wrongs do not make a right. Two acts of aggression don't bring peace, even if one or both are " defensive"). Instead, they make the whole world blind!
That's an over-simplefication.. Democrats are probably more pro war on average at this point but not that long ago that distiction beloenged to Republicans. Both parties have long often had horendious foreign policy.
My political affinities lie with the former Democratic party defined by FDR and Clinton. For some inexplicable reason I want to reform the current party to mirror that successful coalition and so here I am. But lately I have been wondering whether or not this is simply wasted emotional energy pining away for politics which have been lost to history. Perhaps I associate being a Democrat with a sense of being on the righteous side of history and an optimistic view of what an amazing country we have and what it can become. And just maybe that's because I felt this way when I was young and everything was novel and full of promise. I look at the current Democratic party and I can't see the optimism or feel the promise, only anger and hostility over immutable physical characteristics and victimhood. So here is a challenge for our talented writers - please tell me why I should continue to give a damn.
Regarding to your last sentence, I often ask myself the same question. There are times when I feel like trying to reform the Democratic Party from within is doomed. What leads me to keep trying, and to keep seeking out others who want to save the Democrats, is this: the Republicans are even worse. Even if Trump is gone after 2028 (no sure thing), I have no faith in Vance or any other Trump acolyte to save America.
Just curious, what policies would you like to see to "save America"? That means different things to different people, what does it mean to you?
I am late Gen X. This is how I felt for years and now that ship has clearly sailed away, mostly out of sight at this point, only holed up in memory of what once was. I.E. I am now no longer a Democrat but a true imdependent who did not even vote for US president this last election. Well, I wrote in Jimmy Dore actually! But I know that doesn't count.
The very sociel structure of society has changed so much sense the 1990s or even the early 2010's -there is really no way even for someone like Obama to be president now, much less a Bill Clinton type figure. Not that I am any fan of Bill, far from it. I think he was terrible actually. I do very much wish we could have people like former Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich in office again however!
What they have in common is that they represent not only politics but also perspectives on life that although still common (but faiding) among voters, can no longer lead someone to any high level office at the national level (nor even governors) within todays Democratic Party. And they represent broader perspectives that are just not readily discussed publically at this point, and are often considered fringe when they are.
Basically, as much as society was divided even back then, I think Obama's first term and maybe the first half of his secund term was the last time the US really had a dominant culture or sense of nationhood that still transcended partisan devisions. Yet felt distictntly meloncholy to me at the time somehow, though I could't quite put my finger on it back then. But as the adult child of blue collar Hippies I could sense, living in the city, that something big, huge and beginning well before my time was ending even as it made something of a final push and renewal durring those years, while something new but somehow ominous feeling was being created...
Those years were also the years of the final counterculture as such, -back when Hipsters were an actual artistic underground counterculture with people from many walks of life, before what was left became just another upscale lifestyle group. Urban Bohemia was revived a final time before being scatered to the winds of time and place. Little did I yet know just what was being thrown away! The very social and cultural world that formed me into who I was, was rapidly dissapearing before my eyes.
Democrats remain focused on dividing the country into neat demographic subgroups, then seeking to capture enough of these artificial and disparate entities to win power. It’s a fool’s exercise because these defined groups don’t exist so neatly in the real world, and it’s impossible to message coherently. Witness Hispanic Americans voting for border control, 25% of African Americans voting for a “racist” Donald Trump and, my favorite, “White Dudes for Harris”.
It’s not about branding people like cattle and expecting them to vote in lockstep. It’s about policies. Leftist progressives hijacked Democrats’ talking points, centering on issues like transgender surgeries for minors, an open border, and men being welcomed into women’s sports. Until the party decides who’s in charge and what they stand for that American voters actually want, Republicans will continue to have the upper hand. A keffiyeh-wearing Donkey is not a winning look.
“ the first and biggest obstacle to a new era of reform will be inside the Democratic Party itself.”. Well said. A question, what is a synonym for “ commonality politics”? Would it be common sense?
One thought of a way forward would be to highlight annd encourage current elected Democrats to enforce the law. For example in the recent ICE raid on the California marijuana farm; why hasn’t California's OSHA already been there to be sure that the employer is following safe workplace practices? Where is Californias Department of Labor ensuring that the hundreds of employees are being paid the property wages? Where is the CA Dept of Human Services to rescue the minor children and find their parents? And where is CA Environmental Protection Department to be sure only legal chemicals are used on the crop and hazardous material are disposed of according to the law.? IT IS UNBELIEVABLE! Why does blue state California allow a workplace straight out of 19th century Charles Dickens? It is way past time for the blue states to do the job they already have. Or else why would voters want more Democrats in office?
Here's a hint: "Recent reports indicate that Graham Farrar, co-founder and president of Glass House Farms, a large cannabis farm in California, has made donations to California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic candidates."
No, really? That couldn't be. I am sure that would never happen... We don't have issues with corruption or extreme nepotism in California government!!! (Sarcasm)
This was very well written and researched, but in some ways, it seems to miss the forest for the trees. Dems lost the election, to one of the most divisive candidates in US history, for 3 reasons, inflation, immigration and child social engineering. Yet it is easier to find a live unicorn in DC , than a Dem that will admit the obvious. Nor can they even manage, to soften the edges of their policies.
For example recently, an ICE raid yesterday found 300 people working illegally and a dozen unaccompanied migrant children, seemingly trafficked into forced labor, on a legal CA Pot farm, alongside a convicted rapist and pedophile.
Perhaps I just missed it , but it seems not 1 Dem mustered the strength to call a Press Conference and thank ICE for freeing child slaves, on US soil. Not one had the courage to say, while they do not agree with Trump methods, thank God these children were freed. How do we find more of them? Surely Dems realize, these will not be the last migrant child slaves ICE finds. I cannot decide if Dems are that afraid of their far Left, or if Party leaders now really believe, 300K children in bondage, on US soil, is an acceptable price for a borderless America.
Likewise for child sex changes. We are nation that does not allow the tattooing of children, due to the permanence of the choice. The idea of allowing 12 year olds to remove healthy body parts or purposefully end their adult fertility, sometimes before it begins, was once unthinkable. Yet CA will now go to war with DC, attempting to ensure child sex change surgeries continue. Dems could have simply proposed separate locker rooms and athletic categories for trans athletes, while advocating irreversible treatments occur after age 18, but Dems, near uniformly, refuse to seek middle ground.
Dems consumed with identity politics do themselves no favors, but until there is a Come to Jesus moment, regarding the border and child social engineering, other issues are background noise.
The Dems really don't care about slave children, illegal labor practices, environmental violations, or anything else unless enforcement against these things can be used to harass business owners who are not supporters, or other people they deem disposable.
This is a logical, plain fact column that (from my perspective, thankfully) will be ignored by the elites.
By my purpose is only to remind everyone this DID NOT END WITH THE ELECTION. The party/partisan shifts are still going on and almost universally moving bigly in the R direction. Just the latest, CA Rs, having gained 230,000 net on Democrats in the state since November, added another 23,000 nets in June. Don't be fooled by a "primary halo" in NJ, either. We saw in PA that as soon as the primary was over, the voter registration advantage moved back to Rs there.
But there are two other big structural problems that are going to wipe out about 10 EVs or House seats. First, Texas (and likely Ohio) are going to redistrict. Seth Keshel, who stays up on the county shifts, says this could add EVs. Second, I mentioned above the party SHIFT in registrations in CA, but there is another much larger dynamic going on, which is that a Judicial Watch lawsuit force CA counties to do a voter roll purge. So far, in only half the counties reporting, over 2.1 million have been taken off the rolls. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say that probably 60% of those are Democrats. By the time LA and other counties report, it will be close to 3.5 million removed, or approx 2 million Democrats---while on the other end Rs have flipped 270,000. Not parity, but certainly a clusterbomb on Democrat seats there.
Redistricting doesn't affect EVs, except in ME and NE.
And Rs will gladly take those to seats. But it will affect the House. And the census will do the rest.
Again: Other than Nebraska and Maine, redistricting does not affect EVs. Did you skip that government class?
This constant diagnosis is such a waste of time. The majority of Americans don't trust the Democrat Party. They opened the border and allowed in 12 to 20 million illegal migrants, of whom were 500,000 criminals, and did nothing about it. They ignored inflation while it was ravaging the lower and middle classes. And now the Democrat Party won't condemn the violence going on against ICE. It's obvious that they want Trump to send in more Marines and national guard so they can say Trump is a dictator and a fascist and whatever name they can think of. The majority of Americans want illegals deported!!! Trump is doing just that despite all the judicial headwinds. AMERICANS DON'T TRUST DEMOCRATS. I am an unaffiliated voter who voted for Obama twice because I didn't trust the neocon Republicans who brought us into war and wanted to police the world. Democrats need to face facts and embrace what Trump and the Republicans are doing because that is what the majority of Americans want. Right now, they are heading to a dead end. Trump is bad. Trump is bad. Trump is bad. The Democrat message is crap.
Majority Democrats sounds like just the latest performative flavor of the month designed not to reform the party's conspicuous political misdirection, but rather to disguise it.
When the so-called political "Big Tent" fails to discriminate against lawbreakers, illegal aliens (actually one in the same) and elitist authoritarian Leftists then it is only buying time, not rebuilding.
The essential problem for Democrsts is that their party has been hijacked by a radical Left so completely out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, including many if not most pre-progressive, pre-woke Democrats.
In a final act of irony, perhaps the Democratic Party will yet be saved by DJT's most egregious political misstep to date; promising yet failing to deliver on release of the infamous Epstein pedophilia client list.
When MAGA Republicans start abandoning him, you know both parties are facing strong political headwinds ahead.
Read up on the DNC's total joke of a "re-do" election because someone claimed the gender-parity rules weren't followed. For pity's sake.
I've given up on Democrats. They are like old Goldwater conservatives. -- true believers that are going to sink the ship. The woke treat their beliefs like a religion -- maybe the Calvinists or the Puritans?? If they could get lightning to smote the unbelievers, they would. And they would feel so virtuous.
This is an updated version of the "hyphenated American" vs. the melting pot, a dichotomy that was a prominent feature of politics at the turn of the 20th century. The melting pot prevailed while ancestry wasn't totally subsumed. The Democrats have swung very hard toward a neo-hyphenated perspective, and will not even listen to anyone who speaks up for the melting pot, which is and always has been far more popular.
"Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall" Prov 16:18 NKJ To me, the theme of the comments and somewhat in the article centers around arrogance. No doubt, this will seem ironic to those who aren't exactly Trump fans, and that's a fair point. But the Lord hates 'haughty eyes', which I believe is strong in the progressive left and is apparent on the right too.
I want Trump to admit more often when he's wrong (I believe any aspiring politician would do well in understanding how powerful humility is), I want the radio cheerleaders to be more humble and I want Trump supporters like myself, to always be acutely aware of how deceivingly evil pride is.
I know, in my soul, gender affirming care for minors, men in women's sports/spaces, color over character, and a lawless border are wrong, to name a few, but I don't believe that's arrogance, I believe that's the gift of discernment from the Holy Spirit. Without question, the typical progressive would say the opposite with the same conviction. The difference, IMO, is I'm trying to be led by the Word, not man's wisdom, God bless
Nice try, Majority Democrats, but you have sat back for decades and watched the money, energy, and drive on the Left all migrate to the progressive extremists, and let it happen because you kind of agreed with their ideas and loved their energy to trample on the conservatives. Now you have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind and don't know what to do. You allowed universities and other cultural institutions to become infested with hard leftists who indoctrinated a whole generation of young people with activist ambitions, no usable job skills and therefore lots of time on their hands, and resentment against the system that promised them elite status and delivered barista jobs.
Centrist ideas have no chance to fuel the kind of energy that the Left promises to its followers. The people who want centrist policies have jobs, families, lives, and don't have time to show up to protests and rallies, or to live online posting angry diatribes against the slightest deviation from the Leftist articles of faith. Whatever you think of Trump, and don't tell me in replies how bad he is because that is not my point here, he has remade the Republican party into something far more appealing to many centrist voters than it used to be, and many of its new voters are former Democrats who have abandoned a party increasingly out of touch with where they are. The Dems won't get them back anytime soon after such a huge breach of trust. And where is the money to support a Majority Democrat movement? The big money for Dems now is on the far Left, another consequence of the changes in elite culture and societal institutions so carefully fostered by the Democratic Party since the 1960s.
I was never a Democrat but have observed from the outside for many years. I don't think the Democrat party is salvageable at this point, the institutional capture by the Left is complete. Yes, there are still some nominal Democrats in office who say more sensible things, but they usually vote with the crazy Left when they actually must go on the record, or fail to vote for common sense popular policies when proposed by Republicans. Very few have the courage to stand up to the cancel mob. Look what they do to John Fetterman every time he says something that makes sense to normal people, they are absolutely vicious. Not many politicians have the courage that he does to stand up to that much abuse. No party that tears apart its own that way has much chance of survival, I think, in a pluralistic culture.
And a different point, being Leftist is ultimately exhausting emotionally. A follower is required to be amped up to 11 all the time and angry at everything, nothing is good, it's all not just bad but evil, fascist, Nazi, racist, etc. Humans are not built to exist at that kind of fight-or-flight stress level for long periods of time without some down time, but that's not allowed to be a good Progressive. Research on the human nervous system has shown that, not only it is very detrimental to our health to be in a highly negative emotional state constantly, but it does not allow our brains to think, evaluate situations, or to learn anything from what is happening around us. We can only react in pre-programmed ways to the events - and Progressivism prescribes the "correct" reaction. It's no wonder that the rates of mental illness and depression among self-described leftists is much higher than among conservatives.