Democrats need to fire their leaders
"Elections have consequences," as one fellow put it
Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.
Donald Trump is currently assembling his cabinet like Adam Sandler assembles the casts of his family comedies — filling it with his off-putting buddies based purely on what they feel like doing that week — and once again testing the bounds of how much stupidity this country can handle before fully collapsing.
Elon Musk (one of the federal government’s biggest contractors) and Vivek Ramaswamy co-charing an agency on government waste with the acronym DOGE? It’s an idiotic idea and guaranteed disaster, but Trump did promise some version of it during his campaign, so Americans are going to have to see it explode for themselves.
I’m working on a piece about a big progressive victory last week that I think can provide a roadmap for a lot of important campaigns to come, but that will come later this week. Tonight, I want to shift from Trump’s clown show to a fundamental issue facing Democrats.
Note: This is going to be a long four years — and perhaps much longer, if Donald Trump and his newly empowered Republican Party accomplish their goals.
As right-wing media metastasizes, billionaires use outlets as tools of appeasement, mainstream media fails, and corporations sell off news divisions, we need independent media to step into the breach. Please make this work possible — just $5 a month makes all the difference.
Democrats desperately need to fire their leaders
In early 2009, President Barack Obama quieted Republican complaints over his economic plans with a simple reminder: “Elections have consequences,” he said, a subtle flex that inaugurated a new era of Democratic power. A decade and a half later, it’s time that Democratic leaders experience some consequences.
The biannual tradition of post-election finger-pointing among Democrats is in full swing, but after a loss like the one they suffered last week, it won’t be enough to engage in some superficial rhetoric and an “autopsy” conducted by a consulting firm with clear vested interest in the status quo. Jack Nicholson’s Joker said it best:
A failure this spectacular, at a moment when failure wasn’t an option, should have triggered a cascade of resignations from DNC officials, Senate leadership, and anyone else who played a role in the party’s collapse with the public and in the power structure of American politics.
Here’s a brief glimpse at the record that will be left behind:
Two presidential election losses to Donald Trump, a moron and scumbag who would be selling reverse mortgages on infomercials in any other country
A second loss that included a defeat in the popular vote
Losing the Senate and House without ever delivering on voting rights protections, abortion protections, or any other fundamental promise
A Supreme Court stocked with corrupt ultra-conservatives who Democratic senators protected every step of the way
With a legacy like that, incumbent Democratic leaders should be spending their evenings ashamed of having failed so many people and relieved that we don’t live in Edo-era Japan, not trying to dodge responsibility through Beltway media or sending more fundraising requests to tapped-out, disappointed voters.
No excuses left
Any success that Democrats have had over the past decade and a half has been the product of anger and organizing done outside the purview of cautious Washington handlers.
Obama first swept to power as an insurgent candidate, riding deep frustration with the Democratic establishment and a basic aversion to Hillary Clinton, avatar of Third Way centrism and the party’s decline into accessory to neocon warmongering. But it would be the last time that Democratic voters were able to force that kind of change, in part because Obama and his team chose cult of personality over grassroots movements. Since then, leadership has taken every opportunity to silence dissent while talking a big game about saving democracy.
Popular uprisings like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter were co-opted and snuffed out. This year, House leadership stood by as their crypto donors and friends at AIPAC spent tens of millions of dollars to oust progressive incumbents and reinforce right-wing talking points (more on that later). Democratic leaders ostracized Bernie Sanders supporters and threw Black Lives Matters protestors under the bus, then pretended to be perplexed when young men, people of color, and working class voters all shifted toward the GOP.
To make things worse, while rats flee sinking ships, it’s the filthy old bottom-feeding rodents that are skittering back from obscurity, trying to retake control of the Democratic Party.
Philippe Reines, the irrelevant hatchet man for two-time failed presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, went on CNN last week to provide unique and constructive insights like Democrats are “being held hostage to the far left” and that trans kids playing girls sports was a decisive issue.
His centrist enforcer counterpart Rahm Emanuel, who is as responsible as anyone for Obama’s fatal decision to prioritize bankers over bankrupt homeowners, chimed in with similarly mean and off-base complaints about the “woke” left, which at this point exists as a political entity only in the minds of Fox News viewers. Luckily, it was in a publication called Puck News, so few people have read it. Best that he stays in hiding in Japan, anyway.
Democrats have a cultural problem, but it has nothing to do with a few kids struggling with their identities. As I wrote yesterday, the overarching problem is that people simply don’t trust Democrats, starting with the octogenarian leaders who have been the most consistent faces of the party since George W. Bush was in the White House.
This was a winnable election, but these Democratic leaders — including those behind the scenes — were too disconnected to understand why voters were unhappy with the direction of the country. Democrats refused to offer a new vision, even when handed the chance by President Joe Biden’s belated exit. Declining to run a populist campaign only reinforced that this was the same old party, run by the same old figures who have become avatars of elitism.
The choice to spend weeks barnstorming with Liz Cheney will go down in history as one of the worst in campaign history, first because it was so obviously a stupid idea and then because it actually resulted in fewer votes for Harris in the places where those “Country Over Party” events were held. It was Tony West who convinced Harris to avoid attacking big business and Wall Street, but her coddling of big tech came straight from the old Chuck Schumer playbook.
House Democrats were also neutered by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ close relationship with AIPAC, which no doubt influenced his decision to stand idly by as the billionaire-funded front group and its affiliates hammered away at some of his caucus’s most vibrant populists. The crypto lobby poured record sums into this election, shaping Democratic primaries in ways that produced milquetoast centrist nominees who were then beaten in general elections. If the idea was to minimize the impact of that spending, it certainly failed.
There were ways that a united Democratic Party could have beaten those big money attacks. The issues in this election really were not all that hard to predict — back in March 2022, I warned that housing costs would help determine the election. Americans have been screaming about inflation for years. It was all so obvious. At this point, I’m listing these things not for vindication or to criticize individual tactics, but because they really embody the central disconnect and disinterest so plagues this party.
Republicans are dangerous and generally unhinged, but it’s worth noting that their party leadership is forced to listen to the conservative grassroots. GOP lawmakers adopt their voters’ pet issues and adjust their own organizing principles based on popular sentiment, knowing all along that they will be toppled in primary elections and humiliating all-night leadership elections.
Their Democratic counterparts have never had to face any kind of accountability or experience the consequences of their failure, perhaps in part because they’ve bamboozled the media and scared rank-and-file party supporters into thinking that they are keen political minds worth trusting. The actual evidence suggests that they either have no clue what the public wants or just don’t care to deliver on it.
We won’t go back
Democrats and allies have also been scrambling to understand why so many young people switched to the GOP. There is no one reason — as I’ve written time after time, it’s a complicated problem — but it did not help that Democratic leaders are just old and unable to authentically context with young people.
They don’t have an intuitive grasp on social media, don’t listen to podcasts or watch Twitch streams, and don’t have any shared cultural or even historical reference points. Republicans like Markwayne Mullin are attuned to UFC, Josh Hawley writes books and leads seminars for young men, and JD Vance is addicted to content. Even if you put the right wing media advantage aside, these guys know how to reach people in ways that Democrats like, terminally addicted to Morning Joe, do not.
(Plus, would you really want Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Dick Durbin, and their contemporaries to appear on these podcasts, YouTube shows, and other media?)
We are entering an era that will unleash a torrent of new cruelties on us every single day, and the country will need leaders who are not afraid to fight with a speed, aggression, and determination that people like Dick Durbin could never approach.
Even if you believe that they’ve done a good job in the past, it should be clear that the Democratic Party cannot stick with these same leaders and expect voters to see them differently or Republicans to think twice about abusing its various levers of power.
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When I joined Substack this year, this was my first paid subscription. What drew my attention was your attack on Nikki Fried and the Florida Democratic Party which had yet another disastrous election, even worse than 2020. Sadly, though, we individual Democrats have no say in who gets to lead. You cannot join the Democratic Party. Hell, we weren’t even given the opportunity of a primary in Florida because Fried said it wasn’t necessary.
The only issue I have with your article is that the problem starts with democratic primary VOTERS, who are overwhelmingly older, better off and have that do-not-rock-the-boat attitude. I live in a San Francisco suburbs, my state representatives are the worst Democrats on housing, always abstaining because they get many calls from NIMBYs that call themselves liberals.