Democratic party

In the Battle of the Acronyms, perhaps no contest is more ferocious than the slugfest between the DSA – that’s “D” for dumb and “S” for commie, I mean “socialist” – and ICE (always excepting TDS vs MAGA). A wacko woman steers her car into an ICE agent. He shoots her. The media calls make up and tries to turn the dead woman into the second coming of Saint George Floyd. There was a warehouse full of outrage just waiting to be paraded at prime time but somehow the entertainment fell flat. Renée Good, the woman in question, didn’t have what it takes to triumph in the victimology sweepstakes. The anti-Trump media wept for a week and then went on to other wheezes. Nevertheless the Democratic Socialists of America have kept an eye on ICE.

According to the prediction betting markets, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now favorite to be the Democratic nominee in 2028. Given that the Democrats are strongly expected to win back the presidency, that suggests the 36-year-old congresswoman from the Bronx has an extremely good chance of being America’s first female Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, she’s now also neck-and-neck with Marco Rubio in the "Presidential Election Winner" market, on 13 percent. Vice President J.D. Vance, it should be added, remains the clear leader on 23 percent. But AOC’s popularity is surging as the Democrats prepare for their big comeback moment as the midterm elections approach.

Do the Republicans have a secret weapon they can deploy in the midterms? In fact, I think they have two weapons, one sort-of-secret, the other out in the open but somehow not quite recognized.  “That’s good,” you say, if (faute de mieux) you want the Republicans to win. Midterms, we’ve been told ad nauseam, almost always favor the party out of power. I believe that the last time the incumbent party won in the midterms was in 2002 when George W. Bush, riding the tailwind of public sentiment following the September 11 attacks by our Muslim friends, picked up eight House seats. Many of the most noteworthy Democrat candidates hail from la-la land At the moment, all the polls have the Dems leading by a comfortable margin.

Somewhere in a Republican advertising agency, a young man is enjoying a cigar, ordering pizza and assembling the following TV ad. It begins with a Democratic congressman from a competitive district looking reasonable in a manly lumberjack shirt. “The Democratic party is a Big Tent,” he says. The screen goes dark. The announcer says, “A Big Tent? Big enough for what?

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin stepped into his role in early 2025. He said last year it’s the “political equivalent of being a fire hydrant. You get pissed on by everyone.” That might be partially his own fault. The committee, under his leadership, is $2 million in debt. Their physical headquarters have been put up for collateral in a last-ditch attempt to obtain a line of credit. And Martin threw his phone at a junior aide in a fit of frustration at the beginning of the month, resulting in an HR investigation. Tensions heightened at the DNC in May, when the long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 election loss was released – a typo-filled report with no solid thesis and notable absences of relevant details.

Tuesday 4 August could prove to be a turning point in American political history. If Democratic primary voters in Michigan choose Haley Stevens, a moderate, as their Senate nominee, the party establishment should stagger on, perhaps up to and beyond the presidential election of 2028. It’s more likely, however, that the Democrats will elect Dr Abdul El-Sayed, a pro-Palestine radical who supports Medicare for All and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. El-Sayed’s victory would confirm that the hard left is the coming force in national politics, and suggest that the long-anticipated socialist takeover of the oldest party in the US – the party of Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton – is finally under way.

Democrats are finally pulling the plug on Graham Platner, the failson whose juvenile addiction to schizophrenic online message boards, rad Nazi tattoo, anti-Israel rhetoric, mean drunkenness, infidelity and alleged abuse of women they believed would appeal to the white working-class men they loathe. But they’re only doing so after Politico revealed Monday that “A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.

It takes a lot to ruin a state as lovely as California, and just as much to ruin the state’s largest city, Los Angeles. But left-wing Democrats have been up to that important task, backed by voters who have willingly endorsed their own downfall. Those voters and their contemporaries in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Boston are like the fraternity pledges who bend over for a spanking during “initiation week.” The voters, like the fraternity pledges, have consistently responded: “Yes, sir! May I have another?” It hasn’t been hard to find left-wing candidates, many of them openly socialist, who are more than willing to administer the punishment. What about citizens who are tired of being whacked?

When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: 'When they go low, we go high.' – Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2016  Shut up you ugly fuck. – The Democratic party’s official Twitter handle, replying to Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, on May 27, 2026.  The most disturbing thing about that Democratic response to Stephen Miller is how unshocking it is. We’ve become inured to foul language, even from our political leaders and their social media channels. In our post-literate society, as words lose their power, swearing has become an idle form of punctuation. Donald Trump used to do most of his swearing in private.

Randi Weingarten is using mafia tactics to bully Target into denouncing immigration enforcement by ICE. As president of the American Federation of Teachers – which holds at least 7 percent of Target stock through teacher pension funds – Weingarten sent a letter to Target’s CEO explicitly threatening the company’s relationship with her union’s massive pension holdings unless it publicly opposes ICE operations in Minnesota. This move was not subtle. Weingarten made clear that the AFT viewed the retailer’s refusal to denounce federal law enforcement as a threat to “shareholder value.” She followed up with additional pressure, leading her union to pass a resolution directing its 1.8 million members to boycott Target for back-to-school shopping.

Zohran Mamdani is discovering how much more difficult seizing the means of production is than posting about seizing it on social media. To date he has delivered just one of the many radical campaign promises he algorithmized to become New York City mayor. And when he took to social media to crow about that partial win on taxing the rich, he may have inadvertently ripped a new financial blackhole in the city’s budget. Nevertheless, the Democratic party establishment, that pointedly refused to back the radical’s mayoral bid, is being seduced by his social media socialism. Barack Obama recently visited New York to be photographed with him, and Governor Kathy Hochul caved to some of his tax and spending plans. Unsurprisingly, when she gave an inch, he took a mile.

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of "gutting" the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters.  What the Supreme Court has "gutted" is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics.

It is a long haul until the midterm elections in November. Many threats and deadlines will have been issued to Iran in that time, many cycles of optimism and pessimism will have been completed. The war may be over, or Donald Trump may be bogged down in an intractable conflict which he privately wishes he had never started. Regardless, his administration must start preparing for what looks to be an increasing certainty: that the Republicans will suffer a heavy electoral reversal. That was looking likely even before Iran and its effect on oil prices. The President’s tariff wars have protected some, but the overall effect on blue- collar jobs has been negative. Moreover, at 3.3 percent, consumer inflation is back at the sort of levels which helped stop Kamala Harris from winning.

"I’m very angry about this war," said Gavin Newsom, the California Governor, on stage yesterday. Newsom has a memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, to plug, and a serious bid for the presidency in the offing. Like many other ambitious Democrats, he spies in Donald Trump’s new war an opportunity to cause grave damage to the Republicans in November’s midterms – and in the 2028 presidential election, too.  "Six Americans dead, including a young man from Sacramento," he said, beating his chest in a nauseatingly theatrical manner. "You have a President who still cannot explain the rationale. Why now, and what’s the endgame?"Operation Epic Fury, now into its sixth day, has united Democratic politicians in their condemnations of President Trump.