The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Making Sense of Democrat Disarray and the Future of the MAGA Revolution

Posted on | March 16, 2025 | 11 Comments

We have had a pleasant couple of days laughing at the misery of the Democratic Party. After Chuck Schumer abandoned his threat of a government shutdown, grassroots Democrats erupted in fury at what they saw as Schumer’s “betrayal” of the anti-Trump cause:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued Schumer’s “almost unthinkable” move caused a “deep sense of outrage and betrayal” across the Dems’ ideological spectrum — and pointedly didn’t rule out a primary challenge against him.

Unfortunately for AOC’s dreams of running a Democratic primary campaign against Schumer, he won’t be up for election again until 2028, by which time he’ll be 77, and is more likely to retire than to seek a sixth term in the Senate. Three years is a long time in politics, and we can’t predict the future, but how likely is it that Schumer letting this continuing resolution pass in March 2025 will still be an issue in November 2028, even if he did decide to run again?

Democrats are divided and demoralized, and the angriest voices among them are also the loudest. They have lost their way in large measure because the Biden presidency, coming as it did on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots, was built on a foundation of delusion. It was possible, if you were a Democrat, to believe that Biden’s victory was a decisive rejection of everything Donald Trump represented, and that Democrats would never suffer any negative consequences for whatever errors of policy subsequently ensued.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the errors of the Biden era were numerous and quite harmful, and the appearance of the 2020 election as a decisive anti-Trump referendum proved to be an illusion. Once Biden’s cognitive decline became undeniable, and he was forced off the ticket in favor of Kamala Harris, there was a decisive shift in the other direction, yet even then Democrats remained in denial. The media kept hyping up the “joy” of Kamala’s campaign, and the usual suspects produced polls showing Harris leading Trump by four, five, even six points during that August/September period. They wanted to believe . . .

False hope turned to bitter disappointment, and Democrats have still never recovered from the psychological trauma of November 5.

Believing they had forever banished the Trump menace four years earlier, Democrats found themselves in a waking nightmare — Trump didn’t just squeak by with narrow margins in the so-called battleground states, as he had in 2016, but actually won the nationwide popular vote by a margin of 2 million votes. This wrecked their narrative about Trump’s first term, where the “Russian collusion” hoax promoted by Hillary Clinton had fostered the idea that Trump’s presidency was illegitimate. Now the shoe was on the other foot — anyone could compare the vote totals from 2024 with the totals from 2020 and see that some 6 million Democratic votes had mysteriously disappeared. Were they ever real? Did Biden actually win in 2020, or had Democrats stolen that election with their mail-in voting mischief and ballot-harvesting schemes?

Once the election was over, Biden drifted off to Delaware and, if the media tried to avoid making Kamala Harris the scapegoat for Democrats’ defeat, certainly her reputation asa a loser made it difficult for her to be viewed as a potential future party leader. Matt Margolis at PJMedia summarizes the Democrats’ current leaderless condition:

After their humiliating defeat in the government funding battle, a devastating new CNN poll shows the party’s favorability has cratered to an abysmal 29%—the lowest since 1992. The numbers don’t lie; this is a spectacular fall from grace.
The party has hemorrhaged support, suffering a jaw-dropping 20-point collapse in favorability since January 2021, when Joe Biden was inaugurated. . . .
The leadership vacuum is so profound that when asked who leads the Democratic Party, one respondent summed it up perfectly: “No one. That’s the problem.”

Now, take at the chart at the top of this post, from Ballotpedia, and you’ll see that 67% of Democrats in the House of Representatives were elected by margins of 15% or more. Life is easy for a Democrat in a D+15 district. Two-thirds of Hakeem Jeffries’ caucus don’t have to worry about getting reelected, ever. They can stay in Congress until the day they die. It is from the ranks of these Democrats in safe districts that the greatest rage against moderation or compromise will be heard. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez was reelected by a margin of about 38 points — 69% to 31% — and can go as far out to the radical extreme as she wishes without any fear of electoral repercussions. But if she drags the rest of the Democratic caucus with her, that’s going to be a much smaller caucus, because it’s going to be hard for Democrats to compete in “battleground” districts if AOC is calling the shots. Let’s take a closer look at those districts:

Democrats face a problem of simple arithmetic — of the closest districts in the country, more are currently held by Democrats than by Republicans. So if, in the next midterm, each party were to flip half of the other party’s “battleground” districts, the result would be a net gain for Republicans. Of course, we can’t predict what the political climate will be in November 2018, but the Democrats have more members holding onto their House seats by slender margins, compared to Republicans. In fact, Republicans have more “safe” districts than do Democrats, by a significant margin. Even though Speaker Mike Johnson has a very narrow Republican majority, he has more protection against a complete wipeout in the midterms, whereas Democrats risk a net loss of seats, even in a midterm election where the president’s party historically loses congressional seats. If the GOP plays its cards right between now and November 2026, they have an opportunity to deal Democrats another shattering blow like they did last November.

If the “MAGA Revolution” seeks to have a lasting impact, there needs to be a laser-focused effort to achieve Republican victory in the 2026 midterms. Securing another two-year hold on majorities in both the House and the Senate, at a time when Democrats are unpopular and suffering a leadership vacuum, would bring about a real crisis for the “progressive” grassroots of the Democratic Party going into the 2028 presidential election campaign. The prospect that J.D. Vance (or whoever wins the GOP nomination in 2028) could win what would in effect be Trump’s third term? Oh, you think Democrats are panicking now, just you wait and see! Maintain the MAGA momentum another three or four years, and they’ll all be fleeing the country like Rosie O’Donnell.



 

Shop Electronics at Amazon

Save on Groceries and Everyday Essentials

Shop Amazon Basics

Office & School Supplies

Category: Congress, Election

Comments