What were the Democrats thinking last night?
Something like this:
What they were thinking was if Trump is for it they’re against it – even if it’s supporting the aspirations of a kid with cancer or even if it’s trying to end a stalemated war.
They apparently conferred ahead of time on how to approach protesting Trump’s speech, but mostly what they did was sit stonefaced, hold up little signs, or – in the case of Al Green – yell and get themselves removed. They mostly looked childish and petulant. And they opened themselves up to ridicule even from leftists like Stephen Colbert:
Stephen Colbert also mocked the protests in a segment on his CBS’ “The Late Show,” sarcastically noting how the “Democrats are getting ready to fight back with their little paddles.”
“That is how you save democracy: by quietly dissenting,” Colbert added. “Or bidding on an antique tea set. It was hard to tell what was going on.”
It also gave Trump a golden opportunity to call them on it:
These people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it no matter what. Five times I’ve been up here, it’s very sad. And it just shouldn’t be this way.
I wondered, though, about Fetterman. It turns out that he wrote this:
“A sad cavalcade of self owns and unhinged petulance,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday on social platform X. “It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained.”
“We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to — and it may not be the winning message,” he added.
I can’t find anything that answers my question about whether Fetterman stood up for anything Trump said during his speech, however.
After Al Green was escorted out due to his disruptive behavior, he talked to the press and said this:
@RepAlGreen after being removed from Joint Session of Congress: “I’ll accept the punishment. It’s worth it to let people know that there’s some of us who are going to stand up to against this president’s desire to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
Perhaps he’s talking about one of those 150-year-olds on the Social Security rolls – because Trump and other Republicans have said they have no intention of cutting those entitlements; only eliminating fraud and costly errors and inefficiencies to save taxpayer money.
However, the idea that Social Security, etc. will be eliminated or severely cut at the hands of Republicans has been a Democrat talking point for quite a while. I know at least one person who is terrified that Trump is going to do just that – cut or even end Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I probably know plenty more people who believe it, but only one has explicitly mentioned it.
Democrats have lost their way. Or rather, the way they have chose from Obama on isn’t working for them these days. That way is: identity politics, fear-mongering, lawfare, and “anything Republicans and Trump are for we’re against.” However, the fear-mongering actually works for the Democrats with a lot of people. But it’s not working with enough people right now, and that’s why Trump was elected.
Last night in his speech, Trump trolled them about the lawfare – “How did that work out? Not too good.”:
Democrats don’t think. They ’emote’.
It’s very clear from a very famous face.
https://x.com/NewsNow4USA/status/1897122013313163404
‘Let him stew in his own juice,’ Pelosi advises ahead of Trump’s speech
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/01/nancy-pelosi-trump-democrats-congress/
https://x.com/sav_says_/status/1897115957866455230
I wonder if there’s a bit or level of disappointment when a predicted catastrophe–of the kind the republicans were going to cause–doesn’t happen. I suppose the time it takes to get a catastrophe up and running allows for the dems to prevent it. Win-win.
I wonder if there’s a bit or level of disappointment when a predicted catastrophe–of the kind the republicans were going to cause–doesn’t happen.
Richard Aubrey:
That’s the plan, or lack thereof:
________________________
“Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support,” the strategist continued. “It’s a wiser approach than we pursued in the first Trump Administration, when Democrats tried and failed at the art of resistance politics.”
–“James Carville Tells Dems the Best Way to Beat Trump is ‘Roll Over and Play Dead’”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-carville-says-the-democrats-should-play-dead-to-beat-trump/
________________________
Good luck with that, Jimmy boy!
The sad thing is that Carville is about as sensible as Dems get these days.
It was a great speech and Democrats were stalemated.
Respond as reasonable, open-hearted Americans and they are checkmated by their activist left and their repeated accusations of Trump as “literally Hitler.”
Respond as 60s-style New Left activists, as their hearts might wish, and they just get escorted out of the building like Al Green, and they look stupid in the video footage on YouTube.
They don’t have the cards.
As someone said to someone.
They have only themselves to blame.
“Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support,” the strategist continued.
It’s reminiscent of Karl Marx: Capitalism is fatally doomed. We just have to wait for it to collapse.
Polls were good for Trump. However, if you see the number of Dems that actually watched it, you find few did. So the petulance of the Dem Congressional Critters was not seen by very many Dem voters. They then watch CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and learned that Trump was mean and gave the most divisive speech ever. Their thinking won’t change
I laughed till my throat hurt when Trump spoke about the 300 year old person on Social Security.
What were the Democrats thinking last night?
I don’t know, but if you have friends who are Democrats, please encourage them to keep doing exactly what they’re doing.
My D friends today have changed their tune from he’s Hitler to he’s literally the same as PUTIN !! WUWT total obsession with Russia? Funny, not a single one has mentioned the speech. Maybe they’ve seen the snap polls from their own CNN and CBS which had viewers approval of the speech at 66% and 71% respectively.
Oh, and I’ve seen many of these people say that SS, Medicare and Medicaid all are going to end April 1. Fear mongering works on these poor people. I guess they haven’t caught on to the date.
Wow.
What would happen if Trump came out strongly against banging your head against the wall?
*J*F*M* : Not banging your head against the wall is LITERALLY RACISM
The Left have reached the ideological end.
Democrats certainly beclowned themselves and I’m sure it didn’t play well with the swing voters who saw it (although that’s not likely a large number). Like physicsguy, my liberal and leftist friends/colleagues have made no mention of the speech (or the Democrats antics) today. That suggests that deep down they realize the optics were quite unfavorable to them.
But of course few if any will remember all of this in a week. The ones who will are the committed ideologues who burst with rage at the mere thought of Trump. And that was who the Democrat theatricals were playing to last night: their unhinged, but well off and well connected deep base.
Sennacherib,
The left reached its ideological end a while ago. ‘Wokeism’ was the final repackaging of ‘class consciousness’. They truly are out of new ideas. Instead, they relied in cultural hegemony: dominating most institutions in our civil society. That is now being aggressively challenged and dismantled by Trump, which is why so many on the left are completely unhinged.
The Democrats should have all stood up and sung this song by Groucho many many years ago but still valid after their behavior last night. Anybody remember this little skit? https://youtu.be/xHash5takWU
cultural hegemony
Nice phrase, and spot on. So I guess pithy is the word I’m looking for.
chazzand:
Did you notice the institution was Huxley!
Not Freedonia!
What’s up with that?
In all situations, the overriding (and often only) impulse of the 2025 Democratic Party is to lie. The Republicans are certainly not distinguished by any firm objection to lying, but they lack the Democrats’ unwavering commitment to it as a matter of principle. No Democrat politician in the past 50 years has actually believed that the Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare, but they’ve all consistently told voters that for that long and longer. They haven’t done this in spite of the fact that it’s untrue, but because it’s untrue. Any voter who votes Democrat based on his or her fear that the Republicans are going to take his or her Social Security or Medicare away is an utter moron undeserving of the franchise. And anyone who believes that today’s Democratic Party – dedicated as it is to “mendacity first” – is suited, or has even the least desire, to participate in the type of republican (small “r”) self government envisioned by the U.S. Constitution is kidding himself or herself.
While poor, old Sisyphus was condemned to eternally push that rock uphill only to have it roll back down again, the contemporary democrat party is condemned to continually push granny-in-her-wheelchair off the fiscal cliff, only to watch her roll right back up. Yet they never tire of doing so in hopes that some day, maybe, just maybe, she’ll hit the bottom and stay there. What is the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So, may I suggest that the democrats, including the politicians running under that banner as well as the insufferably stupid people who vote for them, are… insane? Yes, I think that is accurate. It is also a sad comment on the party that can thinnk of nothing to campaign on other than wishing the destruction and demise of The American Experiment so that they can replace it with their shiny, new socialist utopia.
@ om > “Did you notice the institution was Huxley! Not Freedonia! What’s up with that?”
Wikipedia is still reliable for some things. The name is a joke in and of itself.
“The film [Horse Feathers, 1932] revolves around college football and a game between the fictional Darwin and Huxley Colleges.”
Freedonia doesn’t show up until a later film, “Duck Soup” [1933] — of which we know a distinguished alumnus.
“Groucho’s character—originally named “Rufus T. Firestone”—eventually became Rufus T. Firefly.”
Typically of the Brothers,
The comments on the musical number in the clip, “I’m Against It,” generally agree that politics hasn’t changed in 90 years, but blame different parties..
@ Steve > “so that they can replace it with their shiny, new socialist utopia.”
In keeping with the Groucho Marx clip, I recently saw a comment about Democrats referencing the “Other Brother”:
“On your Marx, get set, go!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers
Barry dropped a link in the European Conservatives thread which has relevance to this one, so I’m porting it over for the benefit of late readers (usually me).
This is excerpted from an email written to Mark Halperin, and it’s worth reading the entire thing, because this is how people become Changers.
https://markhalperin.substack.com/p/you-need-to-read-this-email