Democrats

Democrats have almost lost hope. Nearly a year after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, the party is rudderless. It opposes Trump, of course, but it can’t afford to oppose Trumpism. Denouncing the President for a short war against Iran’s nuclear program or for negotiating a Gaza ceasefire wouldn’t be smart. Criticizing his tariffs is safer – yet Democrats don’t want to be branded the party of free trade. Likewise, while they’re prepared to condemn the way the President is getting immigration under control, they know it would be suicidal for them to campaign for more immigration. Even on cultural questions, Democrats are Trump’s prisoners.

When it was revealed that Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general, joked in text messages about shooting a Republican lawmaker, Democrats didn’t rush to condemn him. They scolded the comments, sure. But they didn’t demand he drop out. That hesitation tells you everything about the new Democratic mindset: they don’t see this as hypocrisy. They see it as adaptation.For years, Democrats have insisted that Donald Trump changed American politics – that he shattered the old civility and made rage fashionable. Now they’re quietly admitting that rage works. They’re not abandoning their moral high ground; they’re repaving it with something harder and sharper. In their eyes, the game changed – and if the only way to win is to play by Trump’s rules, so be it.

For nigh on two decades in Washington, the political right has envied the ability of the left to control its ranks and silence its extremists. As Republican consultants and donors groused about the irascible “jihadi wing” of their coalition through the Tea Party and MAGA eras, the Democrats exercised control over their far-left cohort using a combination of bribery and fear. The old guard of the left, the neoliberal and corporate-friendly media, has lost control Given how often the pens of Washington observers hailed the masterful ability of Nancy Pelosi to herd cats, you’d think she had aspirations of transitioning from America’s best investor to the next Andrew Lloyd Webber.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is shocked, shocked, that President Taco Bowl is using memes online to mock his comportment during the government shutdown. Jeffries calls the memes, which depict Jeffries and Chuck Schumer wearing sombreros and sporting handlebar mustaches “racist” and has tough-guyed Trump to “say it to my face.”   Cockburn enjoys a good troll-meme and suddenly finds himself in a world where Republicans are the ones with a sense of humor. House Speaker Mike Johnson told “my friend Hakeem” to “just ignore it.”   “These are sideshows. People are getting caught up in – in battles over social media memes,” Johnson said in the Hill. “This is not a game. We’ve got to keep the government open for the people.

On September 26, the Chicago Teachers Union, representing all of the teachers in America’s second largest city, posted on X upon the death of “Assata Shakur” AKA Joanne Chesimard, that “The life and legacy of a revolutionary fighter, a fierce writer, a revered elder of Black liberation, and a leader of freedom whose spirit continues to live in our struggle." That would be one way to describe Shakur. Another way to describe her would be as a woman convicted of the murder of New Jersey police officer Werner Foerster, a former FBI most wanted terrorist who was broken out of jail by armed comrades and eventually escaped to Communist Cuba, where she lived under the protection of the totalitarian Communist Castro regime for the remainder of her life.

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother? Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

When Kamala Harris sat across from Joy Behar on The View, the exchange revealed more than just political spin. Behar insisted Harris’ struggles on the campaign trail were largely about racism and sexism – that she “really lost” because of prejudice, not performance. Harris replied, “I’m not naive; race and gender do play a factor... I have never run as a woman or as a person of color. I have run because I believe I am the best to do the job.” That answer might sound polished, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Harris has built her career on identity politics. She was polling below four percent in the Democratic primaries in 2019 – a campaign so weak it collapsed before a single vote was cast.

Call it a dilemma, quandary, or Catch-22 – just pray the aging Democratic party doesn’t pull a muscle trying to argue that it is in anything other than an unenviable position. Eighty-eight-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, D.C.’s longtime representative in Congress, has repeatedly stated that she will seek yet another term in office. The only trouble is that every time she does, her staff scrambles to assure the world that isn’t actually the case. One must sympathize with their impulse. Norton has been absent from her day job even as the district dominates national headlines, and struggled through what few public appearances she’s made.

There were lots of shocked people when state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione – the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – were dismissed on Tuesday. I wasn’t one of them. As the partner of a homicide victim and an advocate for victims for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand how New York’s penal code is a disaster. It doesn’t just fail victims; it rewards predators. It protects the violent. It gives them loopholes and light slaps on the wrist. And then we all act surprised when killers like Mangione benefit. Here’s a reality check that most people don’t know: punching someone in the face is not considered assault in New York. It’s classified as “harassment” – not even aggravated harassment.

Stark was the contrast between the selfless heroism and unity of purpose on and in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the nation’s reaction to the events of September 10, 2025. In abundantly obvious respects, the two days differed. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, his wife, their two children, and the rest of his loved ones were the only immediate victims of his assassination on September 10. In contrast, Osama bin Laden’s hell-bound errand boys murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, saddled thousands more with diseases that later claimed their lives, and altered New York City’s skyline forever on September 11. America went to war afterwards.

The savage assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point rally at Utah Valley University yesterday prompts me to wonder, as I have often wondered, what is the leading characteristic of the left? There are several candidates. Intolerance is one. A rancid and anchorless do-goodism – think of Dickens’s Mrs. Jelleby and her “telescopic philanthropy” – is another.   But on balance I think that the late Australian philosopher David Stove was right: the leading characteristic of the left it is bloodthirstiness. Behind all the emollient rhetoric about brotherhood and equality, bloodthirstiness is the left’s most reliable calling card.   That is one reason that the nearly instant emission by prominent Democrats of their opposition to violence rings so hollow.

The Atlantic published the first excerpt of Kamala Harris’s expensive memoir "107 Days" this morning, leading with a lickspittle editor’s note from Jeffrey Goldberg. According to Goldberg, the Harris we read in this book is: “blunt, knowing, fervent, occasionally profane, slyly funny. As you will see in the following excerpt – and throughout this newsworthy book – she no longer seems particularly interested in holding back.” In this short excerpt we learn that Vice-President Harris repaired our supposedly broken relationship with France, mais oui, and also did a good job as “border czar.” She says so herself, and we have only her to thank.

A buzzword of the moment is “lawfare.” What is lawfare? It’s one of those portmanteau words that Lewis Carroll taught us about. A combination of “law” and “warfare,” “lawfare” is distinctly less clever an invention than “chortle” – one of Carroll’s coinages, my beamish boy, which combines the words “chuckle” and “snort.” The word “lawfare” apparently dates back to the late 1950s, though the phenomenon – using and abusing the law in order to conduct political warfare – has come into its own only in the past couple of decades. The fact that there is now an eponymous website devoted to the subject is but one patent of its currency.

At a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia – Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate – decided to pick a fight not with the nominee before him so much with the American founding itself. In a remarkable four-minute speech, clips of which went viral, Kaine challenged the very idea of natural rights – that is, the belief that human beings possess fundamental freedoms simply by virtue of being human, not because government chooses to grant them. His lecture was provoked by a seemingly uncontroversial statement.

When Representative Jerry Nadler announced his retirement this week, Democrats in New York instantly began preparing for a political drama worthy of its stage. Nadler’s district – the 12th, which covers the Upper West and Upper East Sides, Midtown, Times Square and the United Nations – is the geographic heart of Manhattan. It’s also one of the safest Democratic seats in the country. Whoever wins the primary will not only control a powerful perch in Congress, but also inherit a stage in the very center of America’s media capital.That’s the problem. In New York’s 12th, politics isn’t about solving problems. It’s about performance.For decades, Nadler played the part of Manhattan’s liberal lion.

What happens after an unspeakable tragedy? One that comes on an idyllic late August day in Minneapolis that signaled the end of a barefoot summer and the beginning of back-to-school activities, reacquainting with friends, and easing back into a school schedule? For two families, it is the end of any normal life they had known. For countless other families whose children attended Annunciation Catholic School in a peaceful, leafy-treed neighborhood of the city, it marks a new life of contradiction: of being blessed that they are reunited with their loved ones and overwhelming grief at an inhuman, violent targeting of innocent life at its most sacred – within the walls of a church while at prayer.

Mayor Muriel Bowser has found herself in the middle of a political tightrope – and it’s one that many Democrats may soon have to walk. In response to rising crime and public unease, the Washington, DC Mayor acknowledged something few in her party dare to admit: that Donald Trump’s federal “surge” of law enforcement officers actually made the city safer.“This federal surge has had a significant impact on crime in Washington, DC, and we greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser said at a press conference yesterday.That single sentence captures the dilemma of the modern Democratic party.

The President taking such decisive action to save lives this past week is bittersweet beyond words. For years, we begged and pleaded for help to stop the insanity that has spilled blood across our streets. We went to the media. We testified before Congress. We sat across from lawmakers, poured out our stories and prayed someone would care enough to act. But time and time again, our cries fell on deaf ears. Now, finally, something is being done. For those who have never stood in our shoes, it’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved unnecessarily – to hold a folded flag or a photo instead of a spouse, child, sibling, or parent. We as victims went through the worst nightmare imaginable.