Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
What is the long-term Democratic Party’s strategy to return to power?
Americans may ask that only because so far, the Democrat agenda seems to entail polarizing and alienating as many voters as possible.
They gleefully double down on their 2024 defeat. And they seem almost to grow ecstatic at ensuring that Donald Trump and his record poll at unprecedented highs.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) rants on national TV that Trump is a d—k and promises to go to “war” against him.
Democratic representatives chant “f—k Trump” on national television.
Senator “Spartacus” Booker (D-NJ) almost daily shouts to high heaven and barks out promises of massive resistance, proving he is far crazier than his allegedly crazy Trump.
During the recent cabinet confirmations, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Tim Kaine lost their minds in impotent rage at the nominees and played the fools—furious at a few timid Democrat suggestions to tone it down.
Democrats bark that Elon Musk is even more Satanic than Trump.
They swarm and try to break into the Department of Education. They shut down the LA freeways. And in the case of illegal aliens, they wave the flag of the nation they fled from, while burning the flag of the nation in which they demand to remain.
Do they think being pro-Hamas on campuses, inviting in ostentatious transgendered to scream at elected officials, or threatening to bring “weapons” as they go “to war” cements their supposed reputation as the party of “peace” or wins over the lost middle class?
Democrat activists tip off illegal alien criminals, endangering the safety of American law enforcement officers. Blue-city mayors and Democrat elected officials go full neo-Confederate in screaming they will resist federal laws.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the self-described future of the party, sends out pointers to illegal aliens on how to break federal law. Is the point how to best commit a felony?
When fraud, scandal, and waste are exposed at USAID, the Democrats ignore the billions of dollars misspent and instead shriek that children will die if the budget of 2025 returns to the size of its 2019 counterpart, adjusted for inflation and population growth.
And yet so far, the hysterical style is not working. Instead, it is achieving the very opposite of its intention.
Trump’s popularity in the most recent Rasmussen poll soared to 55 percent approval. For the first time in twenty years, the poll found Americans, now after just three weeks of Trump in office, felt that the U.S. is finally for the first time in 20 years moving in the right direction.
Most of Trump’s signature hot-button issues—banning biological males in women’s sports, deporting violent illegal aliens, finishing the border wall, or cutting government waste—poll between 65-80 percent approval. In response, Democrats scream that after a mere 21 days in office, Trump is responsible for not ending the four-year inflation of Joe Biden, which until November 5, they claimed was insignificant and transitory.
After losing the electoral and popular votes in November 2024, the Democrats have no official legislative or executive power.
Ultimately the Supreme Court will quash their efforts to cherry-pick left-wing lower court judges to obstruct Trump’s executive orders.
They have not stopped one Trump nominee who went up for a Senate vote.
Any who broke the law during the last four years, and many did, will not issue subpoenas but fear receiving them.
Their bastions of left-wing resistance—the media, the administrative state, and the universities—are hemorrhaging, losing power, and gaining ever more unpopularity.
The more that viewers are turned off by racial chauvinism, foul language, and screaming, the more left-wing cable networks showcase maddened DEI guests—issuing threats, employing profanity, and shouting as they lose their minds.
Are new Democrat demands for racial reparations wise for some to receive borrowed billions of dollars who were never slaves from many who never owned them when we are all $37 trillion in debt?
There is no Democratic youthful generation, other than the hysterical Squad.
The leaders of the youth party are instead ossified, septuagenarian and octogenarian relics of the last decades—Joe Biden, James Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Elisabeth Warren.
The more the elite of the various left-wing black caucuses scream that Trump is a racist, traitor, dictator, and fascist, the more black males trend toward Trump. The more out-of-touch left-wing Hispanic leaders in Congress scream that Trump is a hater and xenophobic, the closer Trump comes to capturing a majority of Hispanic voters by promising to close the border and secure their communities.
The latest poll on Democrat favorability—conducted by liberal Quinnipiac—reveals historic dislike of Democrats, with only 31 percent of voters expressing a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party.
Are Democrats then pivoting or self-correcting?
Do they support legal-only immigration? Do they wish to join in finding fraud in the federal government?
Do they perhaps at least wish to reform the Pentagon, or lower the price of energy?
Nope.
So, what then is their agenda?
It is a retread of 2017, mixed in with the anti-Trump hysteria of 2021-4. By now we all recognize the weary symptoms of their five-point blueprint:
- Scream nonstop about Trump the monster (and now Elon Musk too) and his right-wing Nazi coup—without supplying any concrete details or analysis to support such ridiculous invective.
- Cherry-pick left-wing lower echelon judges to delay, block and confound Trump’s executive orders and legislative agendas.
- Raise huge amounts of money to galvanize street theater, massive sit-ins, and soon violent street demonstrations.
- Use such fury to win back the House and then impeach Trump in 2026.
- Investigate and subpoena Trump with lawfare to render him inert until 2028.
All that admittedly worked somewhat in Trump’s first term.
Remember, the left went from the Steele dossier’s “Russian collusion” lie during the 2016 campaign, to Robert Mueller’s 20-month derailing of the Trump agenda through his special counsel witch-hunt that ultimately found no “collusion.”
As designed, that legal circus side-tracked nearly two years of Trump’s governance.
When Robert Mueller shut down his “dream team” and “all- stars” in March 2019, the Democrats went right into full removal mode and so impeached Trump in the fall over one phone call.
In between, they sought to disrupt and distract by claiming Trump was crazy, and subject to 25th Amendment removal, while attacking his wife and children
Critical to the left’s strategy between 2017-21 was to outraise him with billionaire tech and Wall Street cash, enlist administrative leakers and Never Trumpers to disrupt from the inside Trump governance, organize government “experts” and retired generals to write that Trump was an existential danger, a fascist, a Nazi, a liar and a cheat, riot in the streets, burn, and loot during the summer of 2020, and change the ballot laws to ensure only 30 percent showed up on election day.
And all that worked in getting the waxen-effigy Joe Biden elected.
But will the repeat succeed again?
Probably not.
Trump is far wiser, and his team far more polished, loyal, and zealous.
He enters office not after the hopey-and changey therapeutic Barack Obama, but the disastrous term of an enfeebled Joe Biden.
Indeed, four years of anti-Trump lawfare and more—raiding his home, 91 indictments, five criminal and civil courtroom indictments and suits, 20 some states seeking to de-ballot him, and two assassination attempts not only failed to harm Trump but likely ensured his reelection.
This time all his cabinet and agency heads are determined to accelerate, not subvert his agenda. He is not reactive as sometimes in the past in the face of the left’s maelstrom of suits and character assassination that often overwhelmed his inexperienced team.
Now sadder, but wiser, Trump is proactive, preemptive, and on the offensive. It is the left, not Trump, that is overwhelmed, confused, and weakened by a tsunami of executive orders, defamation lawsuits, billionaire defections, and minority apostates.
Minority and youthful voters are trending, not bleeding, Trump. He may well outraise the midterm Democrats, both because of his popular wildfire changes and the once left-wing billionaires who defected from the unstable and unreliable Democrats.
There will likely be no more insider “anonymous” op-eds promising to subvert the administration. Retired generals are more worried about overdue enforcement of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice than finding more creative smears of Trump. The Republican House and Senate hold small margins, but they are more MAGA-oriented than the past Trump Congresses.
In sum, rejecting light for heat, the Democrats return to the same scowls and furor of the past as if we are forever in 2018, when in fact the world is a far different place in 2025.
The voters’ problem with the new Democratic Party is not just that they are old and unhinged, but that they are so wearily and predictably boring.
I have had dialogues with many people regarding Donald Trump’s political techniques that he derived from several decades in:
· The cutthroat real estate business in New York City (that often involved him interfacing with politicians, criminal Mobs, as well as Left-Wing and Right-Wing activists).
· The East and West coast media companies who sponsored (or completed with) his ‘Apprentice’ TV show
· His innumerable court cases (before, during, and after he has been president).
· His understanding of human nature, especially the political and military mindset.
In some respects, Trump’s political history is similar to that of Julius Caesar of ancient Rome. However, in other respects he reminds me of Alcibiades of ancient Greece. Both of these men ended their lives as tragic heroes.
Since at least 2016, Trump has been applying Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and their countermeasures very effectively. Trump first applied these Left-Wing tactics against the 2016 Republican Presidential candidates, some of whom were very good presidential candidates. In the process, Trump brought down the multi-decade Bush political dynasty. During that same 2016 Presidential election campaign, Trump subsequently eliminated the Clinton’s attempt to seal the future of their political dynasty in the American landscape. Although Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost, Trump and Clinton both eventually lost political ground to the unelected (i.e., bureaucratic) Deep State of the USA.
I encourage those interested to watch Alex Karp’s interview from this morning’s “Squawk Box” on CNBC. Mr. Karp schooled leftist, pencil-neck millennial Andrew Sorkin…and Joe Kernen invited Karp back for tomorrow. The world is definitely a “far different place in 2025” than it was in 2018.
The GOP needs to start the 2026 campaign now targeting Democrat seats in the House and Senate. The Dems will likely be very vulnerable if the economy is humming and they are still fuming. They have no clear, articulated alternative policies. Their rage is blinding them. Good for us!
Nobody cares about these people anymore, the whole woke crowd. Their policies don’t make sense, contrary to human nature.
Yes. They are doing what they have always done. For 2 reasons. It’s what they do best & it works. They aren’t changing tactics any time soon. Here is my cause for optimism. Previously those on the right largely viewed political differences with the left as a choice between “right and wrong” and conducted themselves accordingly. The left on the other hand saw & continue to see things as a battle between “good and evil” and conducted themselves accordingly. The change has been, at long last there is a president due to his personal experience sees the left for what they are: evil, not only wrong but first & foremost evil; and is engaging them on that basis. I fear the lunacy will escalate before it abates, I am confident that DJT will maintain the backing of the American people to do what needs to be done
Well put…. Leftists attempted mass assassination of Republican Congressmen in June 2017 , attempted assassination of Right Leaning Supreme Court Judge, 2 assassination attempts on Trump, led riots in 2020 that led to the murder of 30 people and billions in property damage and lost historical. Public physical and verbal attacks on Trump supporters and right leaning journalists. MSM led instigation and fomenting unbridaled hatred among its viewers toward anyone on the right . definitely worried about next 4 years if this transpires again and what the RIght response will be this time.. It WON’t be another January 6 IMO ( buffoonish it was as VDH says)
It seems concerning that the Dems/leftists/rinos threaten violence and lawfare against a legally elected person of the opposition party. Their vitriol is of such magnitude that they appear unable to think straight and may actually be dangerous. Dem Party lawyers months ago described how they would block Trump’s agenda by use of courts. If SCOTUS weasels out, that effort will probably grow. If the DOJ does not do something about AOC’s behavior and flaunting of lawbreaking, it will spread and grow. The national media, of course, are fully complicit to the destructive behavior. Way too many of those unaware get their news and information from alphabet media. The information on USAid’s gifting is stunning and apparently Soros is in that scene. The GOP needs to take off the gloves.
After reading my relative’s “Farken this…Farken that” rants for the second time, I decided to alienate her by sending her a bar of “Facebook Farken Mouth Soap”. I am under no delusion that it will clean up her language.
Victor’s brilliance and verbal precision is a treasure. Thank you.
You forgot to identify the fact that Democrats are corrupt, on the take, perverts, terrorists, traitors, criminals and liars.
I get a lot of enjoyment watching Victor excoriate the democrats. Whichever way you look at it, they are a thoroughly corrupt and discredited entity. The senior leadership is old, senile and bitter. It is however also wealthy. The junior ranks are radical and deranged. The craven institutions and elites that support them are also wealthy enough to exist inside their own bubble. Watch the great American middle class arise under Donald Trump.
Spot on Victor. Thank you for your great analysis. I do fear, given political history, that the Dems will retake the House in two years and immediately try to impeach Trump. Thus the fast and furious pace of his administration.
The Democrats are planning, I imagine, to “never let a crisis” go to waste, so they will hope for and capitalize on any major economic correction. The current Democrats are hoping for hard times, which will give them the rhetorical boost toward regaining power.
Perceptive, but hopefully inaccurate!
The future is not guaranteed for any political party and change is ingrained in evolution.
The Republicans need to push their agenda with alacrity lest the future history gives the Democrats a chance to get back in the game?
Doesn’t it make you nervous when the present seems to be accommodating, wait for the other foot to fall.
Help the Democrats journey to oblivion. Don’t let them back in the game.
Watching with mixed emotion as the Democrats run true to form, as they have for 120 years. I fear that rather than the discontent of the 1960’s, the nullification embraced by the wild-eyed leftist politicians across a disturbingly large number of blue states, we’ll careen toward the historical fracture of the 1860’s. The causes are far from as noble as they were in those days, but no one gives up power willingly.
The fix? We have to correct what we’ve inadvertently created as a fourth branch of government – the entrenched, unelected, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. The Constitution did not enumerate this perturbation for us. We did it to ourselves and now, must unwind the damage as quickly and painlessly as we can. In the end, millions of workers re-deployed and gainfully employed in the private sector will serve us all better.
Perhaps now is the time to weave the Fourth Branch of Government into the Constitution. The hardest part will be trying to determine what agencies belong to the Three Original Branches of Government and which should be in the Fourth.
The looming threat here is when the Left tips over into violence on a massive scale. All the screaming, imprecations, obscenities, open threats – even on Senators and SCOTUS members by fellow Senators and the former Majority Leader – and worse can only end in one of two ways. Either virtual collapse into a simmering obscurity that occasionally belches forth noxious vapors, or the patented Leftist/Marxist riots and destruction ever present in their shrinking quiver of preferences. However, we are not the same nation as 2016 or 2020. Docility and comity are in very short supply now on the part of the non-Left cohort. That the Leftist/Marxists will attempt to rebel again is almost sure. What is even more sure now is that the non-Left will respond savagely in en masse. Such paroxysms of violence once commenced will be catastrophic to the nation.
I am not so concerned about the continuing looniness of the left but concerned about whether the right/conservatives can maintain power in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate appears to be less of a problem, but the House is a narrow majority. Republicans do not flock together as do Democrats. That makes passing legislation and doing their job, as they say they want, much harder.
Thanks, Dr. Hanson for your commentary.
Very good points Lisa! We need to pray long and hard for this or it’s right back to the days of Uncle Joe and Aunt Kamala again!!
Yes; and we seem to be moving toward success more than petty revenge.
After the last 8 years I wouldn’t begrudge DJT a little revenge.
The republican phalanx has broken through and scattered the democratic line. Through determination, coordination, discipline and clever lawyering (95% of lawyers are terrible, maybe 2% are super great, imo) change is happening across the federal bureaucracy. As the battle advances during this intersection in history, it will, and has, entered the chambers of the judiciaries. Is it possible for VDH to talk about this, for surely the next slur directed at the judiciary is that they are simply just rubber stampers, just like Congress is said to be. But the ultimate law of the land is the constitution.
I find it ironic that Elon is said to be unelected and as such illegitimate. So are bureaucrats, and many, many judges are appointed. What happens if judges interpret our founding documents in a relativistic vein? What happens under various scenarios historically? I know very little about this powerful check in our system of government.
Democrats’ policies have made life more expensive for a lot of people who can afford it least, ironically the very people they purport to want to help. High housing costs, expensive college tuition, poor schools, costly fuel and electricity also make it harder for people to get ahead in life. Who wants to get ahead? Well, a lot of young people do. Who are the young these days? In California it’s a lot of Hispanics and other minorities.
If the Democrats regain power, it may be after the Pelosi, Biden, Sanders, etc., have retired or passed on. As younger people move into power will they see AOC as a role model? If so, they’ll continue to make life hard on people. Or will they want to abandon so many policies that have held them and their families back?
When the Democrats regain power, as they likely will one day, I don’t think it will be for the current Democratic dream of a brown progressive paradise led by old white hippies, but rather a party led by people who’ve largely been held down by their own party’s policies. You’d think they’d change it up a little
An economic downturn before an election will be the only way the incumbent Reps can lose. When the economy is going good, the motivation for change by the determining center minded voters won’t turn on those in power. If was the inflationary mess that cost the Dem.s power. “Are you better off than 4 years ago?” message of the Rep.s is what brought over the traditional Dem. voters.
And with the tax proposed by DJT to lower the corporate tax to 15%, which would be lowest of any industrialized nation, will bring a manufacturing boom to the US. Germany is eviscerating it’s industrial base, their electrical cost is 3x ours, and you can run a manufacturing concern profitably at the level. Why they have been in recession for going on 2 years now. Wall St. sees this knows we went from the most anti-business administration to the most pro-business in history. It will be only months before Main street sees that too. The revelation of graft in the bureaucratic swamp by DOGE is only beginning, there will be much more to come. The vast majority of Main street don’t trust the Gov’t. as they suspected as much, and now their disdain for bureaucracy is more enforced by these revelations by DOGE. The Dems pinning for this to stop is falling on deaf ears. Just as pig squealing when it is pulled away from the feed trough. And the spotlight of massive waste has shut up the Dems who have no retort, only irrelevant complaints, just as cockroaches scatter when the lights turn on.
VDH,
The Democrats are “frozen in time’ and let’s hope they stay that way.
How frozen are they?
They genuinely believe that they will take back the House in 2026 because historically the party on the outside always makes major gains in the midterms.
Let’s hope they stay frozen and keep using every point you made in your essay.
I think that will assure the Republican Party a major increase in House Seats, and a smaller but always needed increase in Senate Seats in 2026.
I’m a freedom loving capitalist that has never voted Democrat. I’m actually disturbed, not thrilled, to see an American political party completely seized by freaks and plunderers. Civilization is attracted to something cool not icky. Individual imagination to invent, not government mandates. SpaceX not NASA. Not female boxers knocked out by transgender dudes.
Thanks Victor! The vast majority of Americans are amazed at how stupid the democrats are. They seem determined to prove the quote from Albert Einstein: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
I love that quote. I also love this one from John Wayne “Life is hard. It’s harder when you are stupid.”
My concern is that stupid folks in very hard times (of their own making) may sink into violent and even more unhinged actions. However, this is all tempered by the fact that there are very intelligent and competent Government Officials now in charge.