At a time when Democrats sure looks to be in disarray, especially as the party is experiencing record low approval ratings, and from multiple polls throughout this year and even this week, it doesn't appear at this time that the situation is going to get any easier. That is likely due to the party's own doing, especially as radical leftist members of the party, many in races they'll easily win and likely will continue to easily win, are the ones being showcased. In response to a recent liberal column about how to "resist Trump 2.0," the first three out of six names on the list were analyzed. Here's part two, with the remaining three.
On Monday, The Washington Post published a column by Perry Bacon Jr., "These six Democrats are showing the party how to resist Trump 2.0." The first three on his alphabetical list included Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
We left off on Wednesday's VIP teasing the fourth name on the list, Gov. JB Prtizker (D-IL), as a name looking to take on President Donald Trump on immigration. He's also earned strong words from Border Czar Tom Homan and the White House, especially as the governor has spread fake news about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Illinois and Chicago have also been sued by Attorney General Pam Bondi, with one of her first actions being to go after sanctuary jurisdictions that aim to shield illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrant crime there is also wildly out of control, as Guy has covered when tracking stories to do with Chicago.
A considerable portion of the blurb on Pritzker involves Bacon Jr's distaste for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), actually:
Newsom is perhaps the biggest disappointment among the 23 Democratic governors. But many of them, particularly in the early weeks of the Trump administration, also seemed more focused on appealing to swing voters in Wisconsin in November 2028 (as the party’s presidential nominee) than contesting Trump’s actions in early 2025.
In contrast, Pritzker has rightly recognized that liberal states and institutions are in a war against an administration determined to either destroy them or force them into full compliance with its edicts. So on Jan. 20, only hours after the inauguration, the 60-year-old governor released a statement sharply criticizing the president’s initial executive orders and correctly predicting Trump would ignore the rule of law on a number of issues. The governor announced a ban on state jobs for Illinois residents who had participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection and been pardoned by Trump. He has likened the administration’s attacks on the rule of law to the Nazis, a stance that is even more significant because Pritzker is Jewish.
Like Murphy, Pritzker is likely to run for president in 2028. But as long as his campaigning pushes him toward contesting Trump and away from podcasting with Bannon, that’s fine with me.
Although immigration is not mentioned, the January 6th pardons are. In his coverage at the time, Jeff highlighted in late January how Pritzker was "petty" and brought into how Democrats are obsessed with weaponization. "Since Democrats can no longer weaponize the justice system against the J6ers, they have to find some other ways to get back at them, it seems," he wrote to conclude his piece.
Bacon Jr also references Pritzker's likening the Trump administration to the Nazis, noting it's "a stance that is even more significant because Pritzker is Jewish." Left out is how just about everything to Democrats and their supporters is likened to Nazis.
Speaking of Sanders, he's the next name on the list. His national tours are referenced, as are the differences between the Resistance 1.0 and Resistance 2.0 movement:
In many ways, the 83-year-old’s “Fighting Oligarchy” national tour is nothing new. Sanders spent 2016 to 2020 traveling the country and bashing the wealthy in his two presidential campaigns.
But the thousands of people who came to Sanders’s initial appearances in Omaha and Iowa City last month were important. Those events showed that many liberals were desperate for a high-profile, left-leaning figure to act like we are in a national emergency. Other Democratic politicians started holding similar events.
And the prominence of Musk and other billionaires in the Trump administration validates the premise of Sanders’s two presidential runs. Many Democrats who used to be less populist on economic issues, including Murphy, now mirror Sanders’s language.
Resistance 1.0 was largely about defending the rule of law and democratic norms. Resistance 2.0 is in many ways centered around the problem of Musk and other billionaires amassing too much power, making Sanders a kind of godfather of the movement.
What's conveniently left out is how these tours have featured a transgender singer who performed a particularly offensive song about God and religion, as well as encourage attendees to wear masks.
While the left--whether in political office or in the media--has loved to bash Elon Musk, and as Bacon Jr does here at the end of the blurb on Sanders, the attacks have gone far beyond that. In what's been declared acts of "domestic terrorism," with Bondi announcing there will be federal charges, people are going after Tesla dealerships. Rick Wilson, the co-founder of the Lincoln Project, was locked out of and then suspended from his X account over a Substack post he vehemently tried to defend going after Musk and Tesla.
Although Bacon Jr's column does not defend or even mention Tesla, he does conclude his piece with similar language Wilson used about Musk and Tesla, which is that "...Trump’s plans for an authoritarian second term [are] becoming even clearer..."
Last is Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), and it makes sense given that his name is at the end of the alphabet, but it's also pathetic in a way that he's considered such a figure. The disastrous running mate for then Vice President Kamala Harris who was poorly vetted, if he was vetted at all, has been making headlines for plenty of wrong reasons as he holds town halls events--conveniently outside of his state of Minnesota--to supposedly boost his national profile.
The "Minnesota nice" and "Midwest folksy" attributes for Walz were always a farce, given he was the one behind the campaign to insult now Vice President JD Vance as "weird." It may even be why he was on the ticket as opposed to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who is a popular and moderate (enough) governor of a must-win state. There's reports that Shapiro didn't want to leave Pennsylvania to become number two, and had a bad interview, but it also can't be ignored that he's Jewish, and progressive Democrats expressed outrage when it appeared Shapiro was the sure pick. Progressive groups suggested other names, among them Walz. Shapiro was mentioned on another list from The Washington Post back in late January of who the Democrats can run in 2028. He was number one on that list, but is nowhere to be found here. Those attributes are even more ridiculous, given that he's now going after Musk and Tesla.
As Bacon Jr writes in part about Walz:
But I’ve included the Minnesota governor on this list for two reasons. First, he is a very important figure in the party making the case for a more aggressive resistance to Trump. I know Sanders had two strong presidential campaigns. But Walz, as the 2024 vice-presidential nominee, was a true national standard-bearer for the Democrats. His early visibility and clear-eyed attacks on Trump’s radicalism are important, particularly since Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris have said almost nothing since Trump was elected. Their silence gives the implicit message that the country’s most prominent Democrats don’t think anything too significant has occurred in the past two months.
“The road to authoritarianism is littered with people saying, ‘You’re overreacting,’” he told the crowd in Des Moines.
Secondly, Walz is actually taking responsibility for the Democrats’ losses in 2024. I am still, four months after the podcast aired, furious that Harris’s top aides spent more than an hour on “Pod Save America” and did not admit a single mistake. The Democratic Party will not become more effective until its leaders show humility and really study their losses.
The column also concludes by urging readers to ..."keep an eye on these six," as he promotes the party's most leftist members even further. "They were some of the earliest to speak up and break with the Jeffries-Schumer nonaggression posture. They are likely to be actually leading the party over the next few years, even if none of them are formally senior Democratic leaders," Bacon Jr says to end his piece.
