The old men and women of the Democratic Party didn’t want to listen.
They thought it was business as usual, even though everything happening around them told them otherwise.
We will wait him out, they thought, and it’ll soon be over.
“That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it,” George Carlin famously said. However, the Democrats thought they would wake up after four years and everything would be fine.
At the fancy dinner parties around Washington, the well-heeled diners huddled around their Georgetown canapés and ensured there was enough chablis in the fridge to last through until 2028.
Well-stuffed with decades of somnambulance, they closed their eyes to reality and hibernated, leaving Joe Biden to mumble his excuses and Kamala Harris to consider sleepwalking into another disastrous nomination.
But this week they have been shocked awake. Not by Trump, but by the realization they may no longer be invited to the Party.
The young progressives are on the march, and they will not look back.
There should always have been a (bloodless) revolution, of course. A bully like Trump only responds to force, and the lack of any serious opposition for the past 18 months has emboldened him.
But a civil war within America’s only viable political alternative could have repercussions way beyond November’s midterms.
It was foolish to believe Zohran Mamdani’s triumph was a New York phenomenon, just as it was short-sighted to treat a genuinely instinctive leader like AOC as a left-wing lunatic.
When David Hogg tried to fund primaries for younger Democrats to usurp the tired, out-of-touch incumbents, he was shut down.
The aging lawmakers have been part of the system for so long they did not see a way out of it when Trump’s opponents were desperate for something new or somebody different to rally around.
And now it’s too late for them.
The DNC is now a small tent, and the young are no longer interested in breaking through. They are doing it for themselves.
Of course, it’s hard to believe that Graham Platner didn’t know what a Nazi symbol was when he had it tattooed on his arm. Of course, the scourge of anti-semitism cannot go unchallenged.
But progressive primary winners like Melat Kiros and Claire Valdez are just the start. Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed could be next. The establishment Dems are under attack.
More importantly, the progressives are winning.
The Democratic Party has awoken to a very different future, but it will not be a movement until it finds a leader to rally behind.
Whatever you think of the Republican Party—and many Republicans are deeply unhappy about where they find themselves—they were quick to understand that politics was no longer about policy but personality.
They rode Trump all the way to the presidency, only to be bucked once he settled into the White House a second time. Even now, the Republican leadership is afraid to stand up to a president who doesn’t really give a f--- what they think.
Steve Bannon, of all people, recognizes the potential of a Tea Party-style roots movement. After all, the Tea Party propelled Trump to the presidency.
But for all the talk of a new Democratic dawn, where are the big personalities?
Is Gavin Newsom too much a product of the system, despite his clever social media presence? Maybe.
Is Jon Ossoff worthy of the comparisons to a young Barack Obama? We will see.
Will Kamala Harris realize her chance has gone? Unlikely.
The Democrats need to find a way to ease off the self-destruct button.
Because Trump and his MAGA minions will be beating them over their heads with their “Communist” mantra from now on. They are rubbing their hands with every progressive success. The left has always provided an easy target, especially when Democratic lawmakers have been enriching themselves along with Republicans while supposedly serving the people in Congress.
Hypocrisy is a despicable trait, whatever your politics.
The revolution starts here, but will it finally evolve into an effective opposition?
Will the old stand aside and usher in the new?
They had better. If it collapses into in-fighting, the disastrous result in 2028 could be a third Trump presidency.
