With midterms nearly a year away, one might think the Democratic Party would be exploring ideas and developing policies to help Americans. Instead, elected Democrats across the country are still trying to boost their agendas with anti-Trump rhetoric and advertisements despite how little it has benefited the party over the last decade.
They seem convinced they’re fighting for the people when all they appear to be doing is pandering to progressive activists. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle built around a common enemy, but to pivot into a new strategy this late in the game could be disastrous for them.
### Self-Entrapped Democrats
Democratic nominees for governor in New Jersey and Virginia are going the extra mile to portray their Republican rivals as an extension of Trump while attacking him. One New Jersey advertisement accuses Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli of aiming to be “the Trump of Trenton.” Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee in Virginia, has reportedly spent millions painting her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, as a mouthpiece for the president.
“Sears speaks for Trump,” says the narrator in one advertisement.
In California, as part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s campaign to win over voters in a redistricting effort, a flurry of ads urges the electorate to push back against the president. “We can stop Trump cold,” says Newsom in one advertisement.
November is right around the corner, too, so we’ll soon have an idea of how effective this strategy was in these races.
Liberty Nation News’ Public Square polling aggregator shows Spanberger ahead by 7.6% and Sherrill by 5.4%. But when you narrow the field, remove polls older than 30 days, and exclude surveys with fewer than 1,000 people, both leads shrink, Spanberger’s by nearly half.
If either nominee loses, though, it seems highly unlikely that the Democratic Party will reconsider its strategy and develop something more complex. If they win, perhaps future races will see even more anti-Trump ads – if that’s possible.
“I worry that Donald Trump is like crack cocaine for our party,” said Celinda Lake, a seasoned Democratic pollster, speaking to *The New York Times*. “Trump is very seductive because when you put up an ad that’s anti-Trump, you get a lot of small-dollar contributions, you get a lot of activists saying, ‘Great job!’”
### Trapped in a Feedback Loop
Elected Democrats are seemingly stuck in a feedback loop, provoked by the left’s loudest advocates. It feeds the delusion that their party must continue resisting Trump because it’s what “the American people want.” Democrats then “stand up” to the president, encouraging their supporters and creating the idea that some form of progress has transpired. Around and around they go.
Once in a while, Democrats will get a big theatrical show of support with events like the No Kings rallies, which may lead them to believe that their base represents a majority. But just because hordes of people walk through cities holding signs does not mean the party has fallen back into the public’s good graces.
Seven million protesters can fill a lot of narrow streets, but that number is nowhere near the 77 million who voted for Trump in 2024. A few crowds do not equal a majority.
### Career Over Country
In another excellent display of self-entrapment, Senate Democrats might have backed themselves into a corner amid negotiations with the GOP to reopen the government. If they capitulate to Republican lawmakers and jettison their demands for extending the tax credits that will soon expire under the Affordable Care Act, the base will likely clobber them.
One senator, speaking under anonymity, told *The Hill* that “centrist Democratic colleagues would vote to open the government ‘yesterday’ if left to their own devices but don’t want to risk an angry backlash from the base.” Others expressed concern that the potential fallout “could end their political careers.”
It’s not just their base they’re terrified of, though.
“Democratic strategists say the main driver of the political fear within the Democratic caucus is online fundraising,” explained *The Hill*. Vote to open the government, get thrashed by the base, and see low-dollar donations drop drastically; or vote to keep the shutdown in place, watch the money roll in, and enjoy praise from colleagues and online fans.
For many, it’s not what is best for the country that motivates them, but what is best for them.
Still, it all boils down to Trump, it seems, and what they imagine he represents. Remove the president from the picture, and donors and activists would most likely push the Democratic Party to compromise because who wants to keep the federal government shut down and force people into financial hardships? But Trump’s involved, so none of that appears to matter.
### Negative Identity
After nearly ten years of lashing out at Trump and trying to frame everything he does as an outrageous ploy to become an authoritarian leader, the party’s identity now seems to hinge primarily on Trump. Nobody seems to know what the Democratic Party stands for, only what it is against.
It’s all part of “the enormous reassurance that comes from having an enemy,” said historian Morris Berman in *Dark Ages America* (2006).
“The German philosopher Hegel referred to this as ‘negative identity,’ the process of creating an identity for yourself by defining yourself against something. Ultimately, he said, it never works, for to say ‘I am not that’ is at root empty; it doesn’t tell you who you actually are, and in essence enables you to hide from that question.”
Maybe that’s another reason so many Democrats can’t seem to quit Trump – they don’t want to face reality. The president is a convenient distraction that doubles as a surrogate cause, providing an opportunity for them to feign fighting for democracy while hiding from what they’ve become.
Quitting the anti-Trump strategy might make their jobs more difficult and less successful, but a fresh start with a chance to rebuild would likely be better than getting caught in the collapse.
https://www.libertynation.com/why-the-democrats-cant-quit-trump/
