Democratic Delusions

If we truly want to defeat MAGA, we need to get a grip on reality.

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If twice-beaten Democrats and other never-Trumpers truly want to dismantle the MAGA movement, we need to find a grip on reality. We need to learn the difference between “what is” and “what ought to be.” Folks, we need to get over our delusions.

Don’t waste your breath telling me how deluded Trump is. I know. I’ve known for years. I’ve known longer than you cared to know. Which is why I get so angry when Democratic elites perpetuate his political petulance.

Here are three recent examples of Democrats and other never-Trumpers refusing to face reality.

MAGA isn’t going to self-immolate

I have one word for schadenfreude-sniffing never-Trumpers who think the feud between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk might be the beginning of MAGA’s end: Stop.

Just stop. How many premature burials do we need to witness before we stop counting on Trump to fall to a self-inflicted wound? From “Grab ‘em by the pussy,” hate-raging POWs, and inciting an insurrection around the 2020 election to 34 felony convictions, extorting Ukraine, praising and modeling dictators, and offering bleach injections to COVID-19 victim from the White House, historians may one day conclude that Trump survived more scandals than every previous U.S. presidency combined.

Every outrage, every blunder, every sign of weakness or division has been misread by never-Trumpers as a sign that the end his nigh. So it is as we watch Bannon and Musk tangle over the H1B visa program.

In his influential Substack newsletter, Democratic consultant Dan Pfeiffer called the feud a “welcome distraction.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said it revealed “a consequential schism in the MAGA world.” Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for The Bulwark, declared, “You didn’t necessarily expect the coalition to break down quite this quickly.” They are smart politicos with important voices, but I just have to say stop.

Please stop.

This sideshow is a feature, not a bug. Trump loves the infighting; he’s like a googly-eyed schoolgirl watching two boys fight over her. MAGA voters love the bluster bombing; they are animated by grievance and vengeance. While they prefer to watch Democrats in disarray, Trump’s troops will happily take sides in an intramural squabble.

Trump and his lemmings are not going to destroy the MAGA movement. That’s our job.

It’s not the voters’ fault

Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria published a column this week with his spin on a troubling trend in liberal circles — and that is to blame voters for electing Trump rather than looking inward and asking how pathetically out of touch does the Democratic Party need to be to lose twice to a clownish bully.

Zakaria takes it to the next level, suggesting that Democrats stop trying to court a powerful voting bloc. In a story headlined, “Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying,” Zakaria displays the clueless arrogance that loses elections to populist panderers like Trump.

Ever since the Democratic Party embraced civil rights in the 1960s, it has been slowly losing the votes of the White working class, largely on issues related to race, identity and culture. This shift accelerated over the past 20 years as the party moved further left on social and cultural issues. The two successful Democratic presidents of the past 60 years, Clinton and Obama, pursued market-friendly economic policies but recognized that the average Democratically inclined voter was culturally more centrist than party activists and elites. Biden campaigned as a centrist but moved sharply left on a host of these issues, from immigration to diversity, equity and inclusion to transgender rights. Those policies led a significant number of working class Hispanic and Asian Americans — many of whom are culturally conservative — to shift their votes in 2024 to the Republicans.

Democrats have many electoral advantages. They have a solid base of college-educated professionals, women and minorities. Many of the swing voters who have helped them win the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential elections are registered independents and suburbanites. Perhaps they should lean into their new base and shape a policy agenda around them, rather than pining for the working class Whites whom they lost decades ago.

Surrender, Democrats. Zakaria and too many other liberal influencers want Democrats to surrender this voting bloc because they think White working class voters are too racist and stupid to understand what’s good for them. Or because it’s too hard to win them back. Or because Democrats don’t need them — there are enough “registered independents and suburbanites” to win elections, they say.

This argument ignores the fact that tens of millions of voters in places like Macomb County, Mich. voted twice for an African American named Barack Obama before they voted twice for Trump.

It ignores the great history of the Democratic Party, enriched and advanced in the 20th century by working class voters. It ignores the moral obligation to be worthy of the men and women who built — and still build — America.

It ignores math. We can’t have a durable, governable center-left supermajority in America that doesn’t include White working class voters.

Joe Biden isn’t a great president

Don’t take my word for it. Any polls will tell you what most Americans think of Biden’s presidency — and Democratic elites are to blame. They ignored, even covered up, the inconvenient truth about his physical and mental fitness, a dereliction of duty that destroyed his legacy along with the best chance of preventing Trump’s return to office.

In a badly belated piece of reporting, the New York Times this week showed how Biden’s inner circle shielded the public from the truth.

They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president. At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing.

They had Mr. Biden use a teleprompter for even small fund-raisers in private homes, alarming donors, who were asked to provide questions beforehand. They came up with replacing the grand steps that presidents use to board Air Force One with a shorter set that led directly into the belly of the plane. They chastised White House correspondents for coverage of the president’s age. They hand-delivered memos to Mr. Biden describing social media posts the campaign staff had persuaded allies to write that pushed back on negative articles and polls.

Mr. Biden’s fumbles continued this week. In announcing a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday he confused the emir of Kuwait with the emir of Qatar and said Hezbollah rather than Hamas was responsible for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He also referred to his national security adviser as “Secretary Jake Sullivan” before catching himself.

This story could have — and should have — been reported before the election, months before. It’s not the first post-election catchup piece, nor will it be the last. One of the most infuriating and revealing anecdotes comes at the top of the story, where the Times quotes Biden aide Mike Donilon telling the president in mid-2022, “Your biggest issue is the perception of age.”

Perception? There is no “perception” of age. You are as old as you are.

Biden is 82 years old. He was too mentally and physically frail in 2022 seek a second term. And yet, he froze out a field of younger, stronger Democratic leaders who could have competed in an open primary and emerge with a Trump-thumping nominee.

Putting Trump back in office is Biden’s singular legacy.

That’s tough for many of you to read, and I’m sorry. I take no pleasure in writing it about a man I’ve known, and generally liked, for three decades.

But just because Democrats wanted to think Biden was fit for a second race against Trump doesn’t mean he was.

Trump ought not be our next president.

But he is.

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