by ratelimitsteve | 2025-08-01 16:00:59+00:00
As a fellow recovering Democrat I couldn't agree more. When the party shifted to neoliberalism in the 90s an incredible arrogance came with it. The attitude went from "How do we represent working people and get government to do what they want" to "We know how to govern better than the plebs, how do we get them to want what we're willing to do?" And their reaction to Trump has been to dismiss him as a flash in the pan and try to wait him out like bad weather, but they completely fail to reckon with the idea that whatever else he may be he's currently the guy batting .667 against them and in 2024 managed to maintain the support of open racists while gaining ground with every minority except women.

Trump isn't a disease, he's a symptom. He's an emergent property of a system that has been hilariously blatant about the fact that it doesn't value the people it needs to to continue functioning. Trump fits in a hole the government left in the hearts of the American people when it decided that its primary operating principle is "give the voters just enough to get them to put us in power give everything else to the donors and then buy stock in their companies". Doubly so because the lesson the Dems learned from Obama was that they can exploit identity politics to give the populace a symbolic victory and then govern in a way that directly transfers wealth from their voters to the donor class. Since 2008 the Democratic primary has been a game of "Who will you accept neoliberal market worship from?" An african american man (08, 12), a woman (16), your choice of an old white man, a mixed race woman or a gay man (20), the same mixed race woman from 20 who flat out told us when asked if there was anything she would do differently than the historically-unpopular old white man said "Not a thing that comes to mind" (24). They're the Pizza Party, the manager at work who has been given the impossible task of trying to buck up a completely demoralized staff while not being permitted to offer them anything of substance. The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party has been feasting on the seed corn since 1992 and can't figure out why the fields are empty and their serfs are angry.

Their response to Trump has been internally contradictory to a delightful degree as well. In 2015 HRC specifically instructed Dem-aligned media to elevate Trump's campaign with the theory that he would frighten people so badly that they'd vote for her without her having to offer anything substantial to voters. You'll remember the focus of the campaign was threefold: she's a woman and it would be neat to have a woman president, she's qualified, it's her turn. More of the same policies that pissed everyone off, very little in the way of material support that actually makes the average person's day to day life better, a lot of scolding people for not already being on the Dem side rather than figuring out what it would take to get them on the Dem side ("basket of deplorables") and generally treating voters as a resource that needs to be managed and then exploited for maximum value rather than as the people that you as an elected official serve.

To me, the defining feature of the modern Democratic party is their self-assurance that Trump is an idiot combined with a complete unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that that idiot just keeps kicking their asses. If your opponent is weak but consistently puts you on your back what does that make you?