One day, I will stop criticizing the Democrats. That day will be when they stop disappointing me.
Let’s get this assassination attempt in perspective.
There are very good reasons why Trump’s popularity relative to Biden hasn’t really changed since the shooting.
First off, people are trying to kill Trump all the time.
- June 18, 2016: A British man at a Trump rally attempted to take a cop’s gun for the purpose of shooting Trump.
- September 6, 2017: A guy tried to kill Trump with a forklift.
- October 1, 2018: A US Navy veteran sent Trump ricin on a letter.
- September 20, 2020: A Canadian had a ricin-laced letter intended for Trump.
- October 2020: The people who wanted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer also wanted to hang Trump.
- July 13, 2024: A young Republican tried to shoot Trump with an AR-15.
For some reason, the rest of these assassination attempts were fine, but this latest one has Democrats cowering in a posture of surrender. Why?
Second, who created this hazardous conditions that led to the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life?
According to both Republicans and Democrats, the issue is the “heated rhetoric” on both sides. To be clear, what this means is that Democrats have decided that they can no longer state the facts about Trump and Trumpism. I was going to list those facts out, but the essence of it is that Trump would create a fascist dystopia. To be fair, if you’re a fascist, it might be exactly what you want, so a fascist utopia in that case. If a factual recounting of your intentions and behaviors makes people want to kill you, is that the fault of the facts? Wasn’t it the Republicans who said, “Facts don’t care about your feelings”?
Third, when shootings happen, what is it that Republicans say?
After a school shooting in January of this year, Trump told supporters, “We have to get over it.” That’s been a common refrain among Republicans for a very long time regarding gun violence. Their other favorite thing to say is that no amount of bloodshed would justify doing anything about the regulation of firearms — in particular, the AR-15. You see, from time to time, the Tree of Liberty must be fed with the blood of elementary school children.
Fourth, Republicans — and Trump in particular — are constantly encouraging political violence.
Here is a handy list of times Trump called for violence from 2022.
Fifth: When political violence happens, what is it that Republicans say?
When one of their people attacks a Democrat (e.g., when Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by crazed Trumper with a hammer), they simultaneously laugh about it and claim they did nothing wrong. They point to the attacker and say he was crazy. Their violent rhetoric could not have possibly contributed to the attack, they say.
Sixth: Republicans are always talking about killing pedophiles.
Why should we be shocked if a Republican actually tried to kill a well-known pedophile? Now, I do realize that most Republicans don’t actually care about pedophiles and that “killing pedophiles” is a dog whistle for killing LGTBQ people, but should we be surprised that a Republican didn’t get the dog whistle and instead took it literally?
Seventh: Republicans are in favor of bullying.
The entire Republican ethos is a toxic fixation on achieving dominance, and the essence of fascism is just bullying writ large. According to people interviewed by the press, the shooter was an outcast who was bullied all the time, and we know that bullying contributes to mental illness and can contribute to an individual choosing violent action. Because the Republicans contribute to a culture of bullying, they are also contributing to the blow-back from bullying. They like to talk about how violence is the result of a toxic culture, and they’re right — they just don’t understand that they’re talking about their own culture.
Eighth: People clearly do not appreciate the scale of the horrific violence perpetuated by the US political system.
On the same day Trump’s ear was tragically pierced by a 22 caliber bullet, hundreds of Palestinians living in Gaza were massacred by the Zionist genocide machine using US munitions provided by the Biden administration. Within the USA, roughly 120 people are shot every day; nearly all of those shootings would have been prevented by more rational policies that valued the well-being of human beings above increasing the wealth of a few people who are already stinking rich. Similarly, about 135 Americans commit suicide every day, and the same kinds of policies that would reduce shootings would reduce suicides as well because fewer people would wish to be dead.
Ninth: Ear piercing is very common in the US.
83% of American women have their ears pierced, and many American men do as well. Yes, it is always a good idea to have a professional piercer provide this service rather than going to a novice with a piercing gun or a maniac wielding an AR-15, but, come on, it was just an ear. Trump himself described the feeling of the injury as “the world’s largest mosquito“. If we start obsessing over every time someone almost got killed in this country, that would take up all our time.
Tenth: What do you call 9 people sitting with a Nazi?
Well, that’s 10 Nazis. They are not “innocent people”. If something happens to those Nazis who are all sitting together, is that really a tragedy, or is it just something that happened? We are now 8 years into this bullshit. Everyone knows what Trump represents. There are no longer any excuses for supporting him in any way. Yes, I realize they are (willfully) ignorant and might have brain damage from lead exposure, COVID-19, and other things, but those excuses only go so far — and at some point, you have to accept that an individual’s brain damage is an inseparable part of them.
Eleventh: It’s looking more and more like the shooter was a Republican.
How can anyone on the left or center-right be held responsible for an act committed by a conservative? Instead of cowering and essentially surrendering, the Biden campaign should be preparing a statement indicating that Trump is so unpopular with conservatives that one tried to kill him. What a loser. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he just quit?
What are the Democrats up to?
A few days before the latest assassination attempt, someone on Twitter wrote this:
The Democratic Party is willing to lose to avoid confrontation. They are tragically deferential to institutional power/norms, despite their base pleading with them to do more and to understand these are unprecedented times. They prefer a permanent defensive cowering posture. Their base is begging them to Do Something about abortion, they do nothing. People are begging them to Do Something about Supreme Court overreach, they do nothing. They don’t offer offense of any kind, they hold, then dangle the idea of fixing the problem after the next election. The way they’ve handled the sinking of their presidential nominee in realtime is no different—instead of bold, decisive action, instead of courage, they’ve simply told voters, its out of their hands, there’s nothing they can do, all they can do is leak their dissenting opinions. If Democrats refuse to fight for their own political survival, why should we trust that they’d ever fight for ours.
Lindsay Ballant
When Lindsay says, “their base,” she means loyal voters, not the people who the party considers their base — loyal donors — but her point still stands. Then here is what the Biden campaign says about how their strategy will change after the assassination attempt:
Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president’s history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the “disorder” created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict, campaign officials said on condition of anonymity.
Reuters (as quoted here)
Yes, the response of the Democrats is to “both sides” it and attempt to equate protests against a genocide to the attempted assassination. According to The Nation, this is an act of clever marketing rather than a psychotic, immoral betrayal. It could potentially make some sense if they were equating the genocide to the attempted assassination, but no, this is the protests against the genocide that they don’t like.
Some of Biden’s political allies were so demoralized they seem to have preemptively surrendered. On Sunday, Axios quoted a “senior House Democrat” as saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”
“Biden Condemns Political Violence Without Whitewashing Trump” The Nation (July 14, 2024)
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez — one of the few voices from the Democratic party that usually makes sense — demanded the resignation of any senior Democrats that have resigned themselves to a second Trump presidency. I doubt any of them will comply.
If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism. This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
It’s time to end the Democratic party.
While it isn’t clear whether the Democratic party is sincerely incompetent and pathetic or whether they just keep intentionally losing over and over again, it is extremely clear that no one should support them anymore. The only reason you might support the Democratic party is if you are somehow OK with their failures and are fine with the US slipping into authoritarianism as long as it happens slowly.
There’s a lot to complain about, but here are 3 big ones:
- The Democratic party consistently chooses terrible candidates in an effort to appeal to conservatives. Ultimately, this does not work because the Republicans are always one step to the right of the Democrats and will always accuse the Democrat of being a communist no matter how right wing the Democrat is. The higher the office, the worse the candidates they choose.
- The Democratic party will not fight for you. When things get rough, the Democrats curl up in a ball on the floor.
- The Democrats consistently choose to take conservative actions — even when they have control of all three branches of government. For example, the fiasco of the Affordable Care Act was based on a Heritage Foundation proposal — yes, the same Heritage Foundation that hatched Project 2025.
Essentially, the Democrats are always on the verge of surrendering. If the Republicans can be characterized by Narcissistic Personality Disorder (and I think they can), Democrats seem to be co-dependent people-pleasers that are desperate for conservative voters to like them. Another explanation would be that the Democrats are always putting the wishes of the donor class (who are much more wealthy and elderly than the average American) above those of their common constituents — and the donor class is always more afraid of the left than it is of the far right. Maybe the Democrats are just cowards — but it is important to recognize that human death and suffering isn’t what they are afraid of. Rather, they are afraid of disorder, and especially disorder that might affect their standard of living. They don’t mind people suffering and dying as long as that death and suffering benefits them (typically, because it enforces stability).
Perhaps all three of these factors are at play.
How to end the anti-democratic Democrats
The dominance over electoral politics of the Democratic party comes down to 2 things: 1) cultural inertia, and 2) funding. We can address the first by addressing the second.
Instead of donating to the Democratic party, we need to be donating to left-leaning organizations that can distribute funds directly to political campaigns or even sidestep those campaigns and directly provide marketing for those left-leaning candidates. (Sidestepping might be necessary to keep the DNC from getting a cut.) At the very least, a single, clearly leftist donation source would force candidates to treat popular positions as valid. In contrast, an individual making a $5 per month donation does not have enough financial significance to the Democratic party or any individual candidate to warrant serious consideration of their political desires. If there were enough people going along with this strategy, multiple left-wing orgs would be able to successfully participate.
While it seems like Democratic Socialists of America might be the correct organization to take on that role, it’s a complicated situation; there’s also Our Revolution, PSL, and probably many others to consider. The correct org would usually (but not always) be donating to Democratic party candidates, but would never donate to a right-wing Democrat (e.g., Manchin).
The combination of the two-party system and the legality of buying off politicians makes it impossible to democratize the electoral system, but we can get a little closer by starving the Democratic party of direct access to revenue from individuals who are not wealthy. The overall purpose of this strategy is to take party direction away from the people who run the DNC; they’ll say this causes “chaotic messaging” but they really should have thought about that before they decided to work against democracy. The left’s rejection of electoral politics is based on the fact that electoral politics are controlled by the very wealthy; that’s a valid criticism, but it also means that the left has not explored workarounds that might reduce the influence of the wealthy on the electoral system. Such intervention is certainly a lot more important than merely voting.