Why the Democrats Are in Such a Terrible State

Ever since Donald Trump was reelected president last November, winning the Electoral College and the popular vote (the first time a Republican has done so since 2004), the Democratic Party has been battered by bad news:

-- Voter demographics Democrats have traditionally been able to rely on swung heavily Republican in 2024, including Hispanics, Blacks and men (particularly young men).

-- Polls show record-low public support for the Democrats; the Wall Street Journal reported last month that 63% of registered voters polled said the party was "out of touch" with the concerns of everyday Americans.

-- 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris' upcoming book "107 Days" is already being savaged in the press. The woman struggled to speak coherently or identify anything of substance she achieved during her four years as vice president; why should anyone care about whatever she says now?

Even the "good" news is bad. Which Democrat is getting accolades at the moment? Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat running as a socialist for mayor of New York City. Mamdani is the stereotypical collectivist: charismatic and well educated but appallingly ignorant of history, and 100% hypocritical; he wants to "defund" the police, create government-owned grocery stores and abolish private property. Meanwhile, Mamdani recently married in an extravagant ceremony on his wealthy family's posh estate in Uganda, protected by heavily armed guards.

This is apparently the Next Big Thing for the Democrats. Good luck with that.

Why are the Democrats floundering so badly? There are a number of reasons, all interrelated:

First and foremost, the Democrats have held too much power across too many industries (politics, the media, the entertainment industry, academia) for too long.

As often happens, they abused that power: manipulating the electoral process, weaponizing the justice system to go after political opponents, censoring dissenting voices in traditional and social media, poisoning education and entertainment with "woke" garbage, and lying to the public.

They also co-opted the structure and operations of countless charities and nongovernmental organizations, raking in donations and spending billions of taxpayer dollars to fund policies and programs -- at home and abroad -- that Americans would not have supported, had there been any public oversight.

They have been protected in all of this by the very people and institutions that should have been holding them accountable and exposing corruption -- the press. Our legacy media, however -- which also lean leftward -- have become so assured of their own moral superiority that they were more than willing to ignore or cheer on violations of America's most deeply held principles, as long as those violations were committed by Democrats.

Democrats became arrogant and elitist, thinking themselves untouchable.

In 2008, the Democratic Party chose Barack Obama, a man whose past was cloudy -- and in some cases, deliberately obscured -- as their presidential candidate, and they won. Twice. Fresh off those victories, Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton in 2016, confident that she could win despite a background that was known to be riddled with evidence of bribery, corruption, self-interest and deceit.

Instead of taking Trump's surprise victory in 2016 as a wakeup call, Democrats doubled down on their corrupt practices, which included lying to a federal court, illegal surveillance of Trump's campaign and administration, false accusations against Trump of collusion with Russia and a $32 million boondoggle "investigation" of those false accusations.

In fact, Democrats were so overconfident about their control of the entire political and legal processes that their 2020 presidential nominee was Joe Biden, who was already in the throes of dementia. And in 2024, they removed him just a few months before the election, and installed Harris, perhaps the most inept and vapid candidate in the history of American politics.

At the rate they were going, their 2028 candidate would be a cardboard cutout. Or a corpse.

Even as the Democratic Party became more flagrantly corrupt, they were losing some of their most visible members; people like former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, now Trump's director of national intelligence; attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's secretary of health and human services; journalists Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi; activists and authors Michael Shellenberger and Dr. Naomi Wolf; academic Bret Weinstein and many others. As a consequence, the party now finds itself dominated by unprincipled opportunists easily bought by the highest bidder, people too ignorant to have any convictions, and extremists whose outrageous positions are opposed by a majority of Americans, regardless of political persuasion.

Even now, as detailed information about rampant Democratic Party scandals is released on a daily basis, those involved are no doubt confident that they will never be indicted; if indicted, not prosecuted; if prosecuted, not convicted; if convicted, pardoned.

After all, that's the way it's worked for decades, right?

This is not to lay all the blame at the feet of Democrats. To the contrary, they have been aided and abetted by Republicans, some of whom so desperately crave press approval that they capitulate on every important issue. Others share the elitist presumptions that they should control every aspect of Americans' lives. And then there are those in the pockets of lobbyists shilling for clients who want "regime change," cheap labor provided by illegal immigrants, or trade policies that cripple American manufacturing and destroy jobs.

Trump has not only exploited the widespread dissatisfaction conservative Americans had for establishment Republicans; he has left the RINO wing of the GOP (which was, at least at the national level, most of it) politically neutered.

What has become crystal clear, post-Trump, is that Americans have not had a president -- Republican or Democrat -- who was truly looking out for American interests, for decades. At least since Ronald Reagan (who, it must be remembered, was never supposed to get the 1980 Republican nomination, and had deep-state operative and former CIA chief George H.W. Bush forced on him as vice president).

Plenty of left-leaning commentators, watching Trump's MAGA movement make mincemeat of the Republican Party establishment, warned -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that the GOP was dead. More astute observers (and they were few) recognized that the RINO stables were simply being mucked out, and that it was the Democrats who were headed toward a cliff -- which they appear to be determined to hurl themselves headlong over.

Ironically, Democrats' current predicament could have been avoided had there been any reasonable checks on their power. As it is, the Democratic Party is collapsing in a cesspool of its own creation.

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To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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