Friday, May 2, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Last week, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois lambasted the Democratic Party for its lackluster response to the lawless, reckless, heartless administration of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. He pointed out that instead of confronting this threat to American democracy, they keep uttering meaningless slogans and opinions on how to defeat Gargantua, fighting with bows and arrows instead of with machine guns. That’s not exactly how he put it, but that’s exactly what he meant. You don’t respond to a bully by negotiating with him; you punch him in the nose. He suggested that Democrats should be out protesting every week against this imperial presidency, which is trying to change America into its own image.
The Democrats have been losing their way and their message for a while. They were always the party of the poor, the disenfranchised, labor unions, minorities, and liberals. The Democrats gave us civil rights, healthcare, social security, equal rights for women (although women are still being stiffed in many ways), Medicare and Medicaid. They always looked out for the little guy. It all began to change under Bill Clinton, the most consequential president of my lifetime, and was further continued under Barack Obama. They started taking minorities and the labor unions and poor people for granted, and shifted their attention to the more affluent.
Hillary Clinton was the first to feel the backlash of this decision to be more moderate, from the voters in the swing states that always swung blue. NAFTA, and the great migration of factories and industries to countries with cheaper labor forces, along with the perception that the black and Hispanic vote were in the bag, were part of their undoing; that, along with misogyny. It gave a carnival barker like Trump the perfect vehicle to exploit the fears of those who felt disenfranchised, disconnected and discouraged by what they were experiencing. Immigration and racism fueled that building opposition, and we are where we are now, with an opposition trying to find its way back to relevance.
Don’t get me wrong, and forget the pundits comparing the Democrats’ poll numbers against Trump’s. That is unfair; and they did the same thing to the Republicans in 2008 after Obama and the Democrats took the House, the Senate and the White House. Two years later the Republicans took back the House by a landslide, and lost the Senate by a few seats. The same thing will happen in 2026, in my opinion.
When a party is leaderless, it is hard to poll them accurately. The Democrats are trying to claw their way back into relevancy, but with Schumer and the old guard they don’t have a chance. These are the same people who didn’t fight back on immigration until it was too late; the people who were too politically correct to offend those who needed offending. They forgot what matters most to the voters, not the poll-driven responses to people’s concerns. They were fighting under the Marquis of Queensbury rules, while Trump and the Republicans were using knives and hammers instead of gloves, to get their points across, and they succeeded!
Now it’s time for these tired politicians to turn over the keys to a younger, more vibrant, more confrontational crowd. One that inspires young people, allays the fears of the older generation, gives voice to the disenfranchised, and starts letting the oligarchs know that they cannot continue to buy elections, that they can no longer control the trajectory of this great country. The old playbook is just that, old and worn out and irrelevant.
I don’t know who will step in and fill the void, but I know that Pritzker is correct, we have to change the party to fit the times we are living in. Fight fire with fire. We shall overcome doesn’t work anymore, nor does Kumbaya, nor do gratuitous promises that are almost always unfulfilled. We need change!
Glen
An update: Why are Patrick Faber and Shyne and Saldivar still in the news? Weren’t they all ingloriously defeated in the last election? Why does the UDP have them hanging around when they’re of absolutely no value or use to a party that is trying to reconstitute and reconstruct itself? Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe they learned nothing from that embarrassment they suffered a few weeks ago. The worst part is that everyone is a victim; they are all victims, and someone else is to be blamed. Sounds like Trump. Time for a change.
Glen