The Democrats have chosen form over substance. The president gets things done while his opponents opt for dramatic arts.
Two Democratic leaders have spoken longer than my verbose college roommate. Corey Booker spoke in the Senate for 25 hours. Hakeem Jeffries last week added nearly another 9 hours of Democratic talking, talking, talking. That Senator Spartacus and Congressman Magic Minute could talk for a day and a half is certainly impressive.Did their rhetorical tour-de-force performances actually accomplish anything? The answer is a solid no. Nothing changed on the ground—but that was never expected. They just wanted to go through the motions. Meanwhile, Donald Trump sent out a couple of messages regarding voting for his spending bill, and all but two Republicans in the House lined up. That’s the difference between performance and action.
And this is the trajectory of the Democratic Party. When Barack Obama became president and was awarded a Nobel Prize soon thereafter, people noted that he had a very thin resume. Community organizer, local politician in Illinois and 2 years in the Senate. At the time, he reminded me of our college custom of adding every organization we ever visited to our yearbook list of activities. Think about Ike and his leadership in the battle against Nazism. Every president up until Bill Clinton had served in the armed forces. Many of them had been in politics for ages, like LBJ who was the dean of the Senate. With Barack Obama, the Democrats moved from substance to performative politics. And the country has suffered accordingly.
AOC famously cried outside of cages used for holding illegal aliens. Did her tears accomplish anything beyond headlines and clicks? Much of what we did during Covid was performative: masks, six foot separations, closings of schools. None of these activities actually reduced the spread of the human-manipulated virus. Rather, it put in the minds of the public that its health leaders “were doing something” about the virus. If they had said that the best course of action was to let the virus run through the population while protecting those at risk, people would have been indignant: Do something! But everything they did—including the vaccines—had dubious effects on the actual trajectory of the pandemic. By shutting down society, the virus simply took much longer to become one of the many background bugs we face every year. The vaccines may have played a role in some of the later mutants that seemed impervious to multiple shots of mRNA drugs.
People move to a performative state when they have nothing to offer. Think of an executive who is kept in his office but has had all of his power moved to others in the organization. He comes in every day, gives orders to his secretary, plans meetings, generates reports—but nothing he does actually has any impact on his company’s direction or success. The Democrats have willingly created a situation in which they have nothing to offer. Their major policy is to oppose Donald Trump. If the president brushes his teeth, they will stop doing the same. Every time Donald Trump chooses a popular position such as closing the border or getting guys out of women’s sports, the Democrats reflexively choose the opposite side. And as such, their policy could be described as pro-illegal alien, pro-higher taxes, pro-guys in your daughters’ sports, pro-Iran, pro-Hamas, etc. If a Democratic rep were to come to my house, I would ask him what he has to offer me. And the answer would be nothing. I want the border controlled as in every other country. I want those who entered illegally to be sent home. I want tax and economic policies that favor me over the government. I want a strong military so that America’s enemies keep to themselves. What do the Democrats have to offer Joe Citizen? Abortion until second grade? Trans surgeries for the deceased? The answer is becoming more common: nothing.
So when one has nothing to offer, he goes performative. Pro-Hamas rallies by people whom Hamas would gladly kill in a second. Anti-ICE protests so as to loot and destroy parts of major American cities. I always find it somewhat amusing when people who go to foreign countries bend over backwards to respect local laws and customs, but at home they denigrate the same. Try to enter a foreign country illegally, and you’ll sit in jail for years. But in the US: let them all in! We have to take everybody. They very conveniently blur the line between legal immigration involving a lot of time and effort and illegal immigration.
As many have pointed out, it is healthy for the United States to have two functioning political parties. A single party will not be responsive to people if there is no competition. The problem we have today is that the Democrats are quickly becoming an unserious party. Their candidate for mayor of New York has said that he wants all groceries to be city-owned, that he will tax white neighborhoods more, and that he ultimately wants to seize the “means of production”. The party of Kennedy is devolving into a communist, jihadist, anti-American collection of kooks and delusionists. Congressmen thunder that a human-trafficker must be returned to the US at once! During debate over Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, they said that deportations will be on steroids—and the normal people cheered. They want others to pay off the educational debt of their younger members. They don’t have any policies that appeal to normal Americans and simply rely on people voting for them out of habit or from the horrible image they create about Trump and his supporters. All Chuck Schumer could do with the Big Beautiful Bill was to formally change its name. What a victory!
The US benefits when there are multiple realistic options on policies. People have to think about what they want and which candidates best represent their views and aspirations. When one party checks out and simply becomes a collection of lunatics, freaks, and fringe goofballs, then there is nothing more to seek from that side. It did not have to be this way, but from the moment that Barack Obama became the head of the Democratic Party, its trajectory has been towards its most radical wing. Whereas they may have been 10-15% of the party in 2008, today they are dominant. Try running as a Democrat when you support gun rights, some limits on abortion and a closed border. They would give you the telephone number of the Republican National Committee.
The Democrats have descended into lunacy. Elon Musk is again promising his “America Party”. If he does things wrong, he will give the Democrats victories that they do not deserve. I’ll give him a pro tip. Paul Krugman, before he became unreadable, described the US government as an insurance company with an army. You cannot balance the budget without chopping a lot of entitlements. If Musk's candidates run on that platform, they had better have their affairs in order. If a third party weakens the Republicans, then the Democrats with all of their jihadi and communist tendencies will be the beneficiary. I hope that Musk keeps this reality in mind and works towards fiscal reality without joining the performative set.