Democratic party

Luigi Mangione has yet another day in court. A fresh collection of glamorous perp walk photos will emerge. Sexy orange-jumpsuit clad come-hither glances are forthcoming. This will surely appeal to his many fans – his stans – who’ve been dying to get a fresh look at their alleged murderous dreamboat. Luigi’s re-emergence comes at the end of an extraordinary week where the American left embraced a rogue’s gallery of villains so ridiculous that they almost seem fictional. You have Mangione, accused of shooting a healthcare CEO in cold blood; Mahmoud Khalil, who faces deportation for his role in Columbia's radical protests; and the latest entry into the sinister sweepstakes, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

It's no mystery how Democrats plan to attack Republicans over the coming year and a half: tie them to Elon Musk like a billionaire-sized string of dynamite. They're doing it already, and intend to ramp it up to 11. Yet Republicans don't seem to have an answer for how to deal with it – and saying "Musk isn't on the ballot, I am" isn't an answer.There was a significant portion of time where Republicans struggled to figure out how to defend Donald Trump, but they've solved that problem. Trump's poll numbers and popularity are now solid as a mountain – people love him or they hate him, and moving those numbers is very difficult, especially when there are dedicated well-funded ad campaigns promoting what he's doing on a daily basis.

As the Church of England faces an exodus of parishioners, some of its more inventive clerics have rushed to embrace EDM as a new medium to draw young people back to their faith. “Our 90s-themed silent disco will be appropriate to and respectful of the cathedral,” curiously insisted the Very Reverend David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to much derision over that sacred space’s conversion into a party zone for 3,000 revelers in 2024.

Even on the placid streets of London’s Mayfair, James Carville cannot find peace. “Every five minutes I get stopped and asked about Chuck Schumer,” says the Democratic strategist when I speak to him. “I can’t even enjoy a $30 martini by myself.” Carville’s party is in dire straits. The humiliation of losing to Donald Trump had not yet worn off when the Donald stormed back to the White House with a vengeance, unleashing the chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk on the federal government, assembling a cabinet intent on carrying out even his most radical policies – and scaring the few Republican would-be dissenters in Congress into submission.

Who was the biggest loser of Tuesday night’s Wisconsin Supreme Court special election? You might think it was the defeated candidate, former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel. But the Democrats and most of the media would have you believe it was Elon Musk.  Musk dished out $20 million in the hope of helping Schimel beat Dane County judge Susan Crawford. At a rally in Green Bay last week, Musk gave out two $1 million checks to attendees and put on the state’s trademark “cheesehead” hat. Yet even with all that cheddar, Crawford handily defeated Schimel. Given the thrashing the Democrats took in November, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this victory, in the most expensive race of its kind, is serving as a much-needed boost to the party’s spirits.

The leadership of the Democratic Party is as open as it has been in generations, with Nancy Pelosi occupying emerita status, Chuck Schumer under fire from half his party – and their most prominent governors hamstrung by problems at home or the fact they’d much rather be podcasting. The field is effectively cleared for an upstart to emerge based on sheer communications talent and the ability to take advantage of a power vacuum as an avatar of leftward frustration. And if that’s the direction Democrats decide to go in 2028, there’s no one who occupies that role right now more impressively than the constantly viral phenomenon that is the congresswoman from Dallas, Texas – Jasmine Crockett.

The rapid nature of the turn against Chuck Schumer, ostensibly the most powerful Democrat in Washington as Senate Minority Leader, is a sign of a Democratic Party in utter chaos. Axios reports today that the calls from House Democrats for Schumer to step down from his post have already begun, following on outside progressive groups who deemed him unworthy as a wartime consigliere. The colossal miscalculation of standing up the possibility of fighting only to cave immediately to keep the government from shutting down has consequences. For the aging Senator who has held on so long, his spectacles perched at the edge of his nose, it seems like he is living on borrowed time.  Progressives may have a rehab program in mind, but how long can that last?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s failed fiscal gambit last week proved as obvious as it was predictable. Yet Schumer's flub has had an outsized impact in prompting open conversation among Democrats about whether they need to move on from the New York Senator. The leftist activist group Indivisible called for Schumer to step down, saying he needs to be replaced with “a Minority Leader who’s up for the fight this moment demands.” Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania went on Bill Maher Friday to criticize Schumer’s misuse of legislative leverage. And prominent party voice MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend announced she was quitting the Democratic Party live on air.

Are the Democrats on the verge of their own Tea Party? This question is dogging the Democratic Party, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer figures out how to handle an increasingly rambunctious base that declared open season on him this week. Months of frustration from the Democrats’ activists has boiled over after Schumer announced that he would vote to move forward with a bipartisan plan to avoid an imminent government shutdown. Schumer’s ultimate vote against passing the bill is of no consolation to Democrats, many of whom reportedly urged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to primary Schumer. The Democrats’ problems stemmed from their underestimation of Speaker Mike Johnson, as Schumer told the Washington Post.

We’ve been told that President Trump’s address to Congress tonight would dilate on the theme of the “Renewal of the American Dream.” And so it did. But for short hand, two ideas predominated. One was “Woke No More.” The other was “common sense.” Both were themes of Trump’s inaugural address. I have expatiated on the theme of Trump’s embrace of common sense in a talk I gave to the Connecticut outpost of Hillsdale College at the end of January. The irony is that what should be common to all has been so uncommon in an age marked by perversity and ideology. Together, the attack on wokeness and the reinstitution of common sense go a long way towards summarizing the extraordinary achievements of Donald Trump in his first forty-two days.

Why are Democrats mounting such a ferocious assault on Elon Musk? Why are mainstream media outlets so eager to go along? The simplest answers are the best. Musk is the most prominent member of the new administration aside from the president himself. He is Donald Trump’s point man for exposing malfeasance in federal bureaucracies, determining where the money is going and cutting the engorged payroll. The more Musk and Trump succeed, the worse for Democrats. They created those agencies; their supporters staff them; and those supporters funnel lots of public money to specially favored institutions and projects. When Musk attacks this partisan nexus, he is attacking a major source of Democratic power and influence. That is what’s really at stake here, beyond cutting the budget.

Losing elections is a bit like getting dumped. Often times the dumped party’s desire to overcome the heartbreak or to bounce back from the blow can result in an even messier downfall. You need a minute to get your act together, lest you make an ass of yourself in public while trying to demonstrate how well you’re doing. The Democrats are in that break-up spiral, with their latest antics exposing a lack of both direction and discretion.  Earlier this month, Representative Maxine Waters, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Al Green (combined age: 237) gathered outside the Treasury Department and bemoaned the Department of Government Efficiency and its leader Elon Musk.