It’s easy to forget that President Donald Trump’s rise began with an assault on fellow Republicans, not Democrats.
Of course, Trump made waves by questioning former President Barack Obama’s claim to birthright citizenship in 2011. But he didn’t become a true political force until he savaged low energy Jeb Bush (Jeb!), Little Marco Rubio, and the rest of the Republican establishment in the 2016 primaries. That’s when America realized something new was happening.
Trump’s dynamic rebellion catapulted not only him into the national spotlight, but also the Republican Party, whose national relevance had faded since former President George W. Bush’s fall from grace, with approvals dipping to the mid-20s by the time he helicoptered back to his Texas ranch. In the years that followed, the Tea Party’s groundswell fueled GOP congressional victories, but it failed to produce strong national leaders during the Obama era.
The 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls epitomized the party’s troubles, offering nothing fresh beyond Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” tax plan and each battling to appear more opposed to the Obama agenda than the next. A dissatisfied primary electorate vacillated from one candidate to another in that uninspired scrum, with Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and eventual winner Mitt Romney sharing time in the national lead.
It’s easy to see shades of the 2012 GOP in today’s Democratic Party, where a restless base drives mass demonstrations, yet whose agenda is fundamentally oppositional and whose national leaders lack stature. The party is full of energy and desperate for unity but lacks the leaders and positive vision necessary to unify its constituent parts.
Meanwhile, fealty to sacred cows keep them from an internal reckoning that could spark renewal. Democrats’ unwillingness to criticize Biden-era policies on the border, inflation, and hot-button cultural issues, and even to voice obvious concerns about his mental capacity, rendered them out-of-touch and left them vulnerable to countless political blind spots.
The 2012 GOP similarly resisted internal criticism, languishing in Bush-era pieties like uncritical support for free trade and military interventionism. Only Ron Paul proved willing to challenge prevailing orthodoxy during the primary, and debate crowds booed him lustily for his efforts, especially his criticisms of the Iraq War, while his mainstream conservative rivals shook their heads in disbelief at his every utterance.
It’s possible that Democrats today are mired in a deeper refusal to engage in meaningful self-scrutiny. Their coalition — Zohran Mamdani-style progressives, shapeshifting establishmentarians in congressional leadership, and meat-and-potatoes moderates such as Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) — is fractured but not warring, as exemplified by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) refusal to endorse or challenge Mamdani’s socialist policies in New York’s mayoral race. The Democratic factions orbit one another like distant planets, drifting further apart without the gravitational pull of unifying ideas and leaders.
This drift springs from a paralyzing fear of internal conflict, driven by three forces that stifle the factional clashes needed for renewal.
For one, the hyper-conformity of the woke era conditioned liberals to view every conceivable circumstance as part of a Manichean struggle between good and evil in which only two sides existed: the “right side of history” and the wrong side, anti-racism and racism, allies and enemies. Breaking with orthodoxy meant joining forces with the worst possible element of humanity: white supremacists, Nazis, etc. Even the appearance of nonconformity came with severe social and professional consequences. In an environment where words amounted to violence and awareness of one’s “privilege” demanded constant monitoring, self-censorship became the norm. Breaking out of this deeply rooted and fear-based behavior will demand true courage and savvy.
The second cause flows from the first: To ensure the “right side of history” prevails, Democrats became obsessed with avoiding the appearance of giving aid to Trump’s “wrong side,” even indirectly. This led them to suppress reasonable doubts about obvious things, such as Biden’s mental decline, Kamala Harris’s political talent, or the state of the economy and border. Preventing Trump from winning even a single news cycle demanded rigid and artificial messaging alignment. This forced positivity came at the expense of both short- and long-term political goals, causing Democrats to appear untrustworthy, callous, and downright ignorant of the problems most Americans saw in their government. Ironically, this empowered Trump and the Republicans all the more.
Finally, Democrats’ aversion to internal conflict springs from not having had much practice of late. Not since 2008 has the Democratic Party held an open, honest, and rigorous presidential primary, which is the forum where parties traditionally test ideas and leaders to forge unity among its factions. From the crucible of competitive primaries emerges bold and battle-tested governing visions. Without them, parties are stuck with stale ideas and outdated modes of politics and campaigning.
While technically open, the 2016 Democratic primary was marred from the beginning with accusations by supporters of Bernie Sanders that the Democratic National Committee was biased toward the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Wikileaks dump later validated these suspicions, revealing internal emails showing DNC staff mocking Sanders and discussing ways to undermine his campaign. Interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazille, who gave Clinton’s campaign advance information about presidential debate questions, later admitted that the DNC was financially beholden to Clinton. The tipped scales prevented a true intraparty competition and crowned an unpopular nominee whose troubles were never truly reckoned with. The primary was a coronation in all but name.
The 2020 primary was similarly managed by insiders. After early Sanders victories, the party establishment rapidly consolidated behind Joe Biden, with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar quickly dropping out to endorse him and effectively ending the race. While evidence of 2016-level corruption never emerged, the perception of a tipped-scale contest lingered among a large bloc of the Democratic electorate.
The 2024 coronation of former Vice President Kamala Harris following Biden’s withdrawal robbed the party of another opportunity for productive conflict and renewal. Party bosses again tightly managed the selection, tossing their full support behind the vice president without allowing Democratic voters to have their say. Harris’s highly scripted rollout followed the stale Obama playbook with its emphasis on her identity as the first black female nominee, replete with Obama-esque magazine covers depicting her gazing aspirationally into the distance and an Obama-esque campaign slogan “A New Way Forward,” which was an adaption of Obama’s 2012 slogan, “Forward.”
DEMOCRATS PROVE ONCE AGAIN THEY’RE THE STUPID PARTY
Meanwhile, fractures in the party’s coalition were downplayed and at times outright ignored as party leaders attempted to keep the focus on Trump. A telling example of internal debate being suppressed came during the first night of the Democratic convention in Chicago. During Biden’s speech that capped the first night, a group of pro-Palestinian protesters erupted in the back of the United Center, holding up a Palestinian flag and booing wildly. As Biden struggled through his scripted remarks amid the uproar, the lights over the protesters’ section of the arena were shut, leaving them shrouded in noticeable darkness. It is therefore no surprise that the party has yet to settle upon a cohesive and unifying position on Gaza or on anything else, for that matter.
The Democratic Party’s commitment to being the “anti-Trump” party has left it in ruins, with its approval ratings at historic lows. It desperately needs, as the GOP once did, an internal rebellion led by a bold, unapologetic figure (Rahm Emanuel? Jon Stewart?) willing to slay their sacred cows, confront uncomfortable truths, and forge a unifying vision from the ashes.