Donald Trump is back. Stronger than ever, and with control of both houses of congress.
Democrats, therefore, took a pounding.
So, as the second Trump term goes into gear, who have Democrats put in power to challenge him?
With few exceptions, exactly the same people who were running things when Trump took over. The ones who oversaw Democrats losing the presidency – including 7 out of 7 swing states that could have changed the result – along with the House and the Senate.
Did they not learn a thing?
Democrat strategist Chai Komanduri understands this perfectly. Here is his obviously partisan, but strategically correct, take on the Democrats’ political death wish, excerpted from his article at MSNBC via msn.com:
As Trump is upending every democratic norm in existence, the Democratic Party is doubling down on status quo and seniority — to the detriment of both the party and the country.
In the Senate, Democratic leadership hasn’t changed in almost a decade. That leadership’s response to the first two weeks of the Trump administration has been sclerotic at best: We had Minority Whip Dick Durbin issue a joint memo with Republican Chuck Grassley that no one will read, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer talking about how people are “aroused” by the administration’s funding freeze (leading to this funny rebuke from Seth Meyers) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the third-ranking Democrat, bragging about her Inauguration Day limo ride with Trump. The New York Times reported that in a phone call last week, Democratic governors ranging from Minnesota’s Tim Walz to Kansas’ Laura Kelly to Kentucky’s Andy Beshear begged Schumer and Senate Democrats to push back more forcefully against the new administration.
In the House, things are slightly better: The top three Democratic leadership positions changed hands at the start of the last Congress (and unlike their Senate counterparts, House Democrats did gain seats this cycle). But in December, House Democrats, partly at the urging of the 84-year-old former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to be the top Democrat on the crucial Oversight Committee. The Democratic caucus cast her aside in favor of Rep. Gerry Connolly, a 74-year-old who had just been diagnosed with cancer.
The insistence on continuity is baffling given that the party’s reputation is in tatters.
Democrats should learn to elevate new voices who connect to more voters, especially younger Americans plugged into the new media. Instead, they are staying with what they know, while the country as we know it is collapsing around us.
Is the country collapsing around us? If you’re a partisan Democrat in love with the current status quo, maybe. If you’re not, the answer is probably no. Sorry, Chai.
But if you’re a Democrat still baffled by how in the world Donald Trump got back in the White House, and upset by the fact that the “strategies” which allowed this to happen were orchestrated by a bunch of geriatric career pols who desperately need to be replaced, you should be thanking Chai Komanduri for this wealth of logic and common sense….
…provided that they would be replaced NOT by the hard left “squad” lunatics, but by the (sadly) dwindling, but absolutely necessary, contingent of moderate Democrats who connect with everyday citizens.
Simply stated, if the Democrat message is back to the middle, this can work, and I hope it does.
But if the Democrat message is “we haven’t gone far enough, let’s make those college activist kids with the keffiyehs and transgender activist slogans really go out and protest for us”? This can’t work, and I’m glad it won’t.
Your choice, Democrats.
