Democrats Are The Normies, And That's Why They Lose

The Tea Party gained prominence after the financial crisis of 2008, though the seeds had been sewn earlier. The Occupy Wallstreet movement, a pushback against the bankers and Wall Street bigshots who had crashed the stock market by betting on sub-prime mortgages, had shown that Progressives were angry with the status quo. Their retirement savings tanked, and they knew exactly who to blame.

The Tea Party took up some of the same mantras but focused the fire at debauchery more generally. Our society, they claimed, was breaking apart because of abortion, pornography, or whatever other vice you could name. Financial hardship was a symptom, not a cause.

NPR wrote a story about how the two had pockets of alignment in 2011, based upon mutual distrust of corporate meddling in politics.

They positioned themselves as counter-culture revolutionaries pushing back against wealthy elites, especially those around Obama during his years as President.

It was easy because people like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich had been harping on these same issues since the ‘90s, with AIDS, Dungeons and Dragons, Mortal Kombat, or whatever other piece of popular culture they could wag a finger at. Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman even joined in on occasion.

This environment of counter-culture, pro-Conservatism created the perfect petri dish for the rise of Donald Trump as a counter-balance to President Obama.

MAGA has all of those same threads. They see themselves as counter-culture to an elitist mindset that sought to change every aspect of American life. For them, Democrats aligned with tech companies to punish Conservatives for their speech online, ANTIFA burned down whole cities because a cop inadvertently killed Gorge Floyd and because Breonna Taylor was accidentally caught up in a perfectly valid drug raid, teachers are seeking to turn every child gay or trans because they are all secretly pedophiles, and Democrats give immigrants Social Security and Medicare so they’ll vote for them.

None of those things are true, of course, or they wildly misinterpret the truth, but they are the dark underbelly MAGA believes they are fighting against. It’s a sick, twisted, warped view of reality.

However, this is why they truly envision themselves as saving their nation from Progressivism and Liberalism.

It is also why the current GOP works so well as an opposition party. When everything that happens is the product of elites working with cabals of pedophiles, it’s easy to fight and rail against it. They could be offered free school lunches, Universal Healthcare, Medicaid expansion, more jobs, higher wages, or literally anything else. If those damn, dirty, elitist liberals like it then it must be bad or dangerous.

If the libs don’t like something? Then it must be great!

It’s why the heroes of MAGA can engage in alleged child sex trafficking, openly be high on drugs, give their date a handy during a Beetlejuice play, grift supporters out of every last dime with crypto scams, or even be convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records without losing one vote.

MAGA only cares that their counter-revolution against the dark forces is winning. It’s about the cohesive whole, not the individual.

This is also why Democrats have such an awful time of messaging and fighting back.

The Dems, on the whole, like regulations that force corporations to spew less pollution in the air and water. They applaud large public works projects like landing on the Moon, rural electrification, or building a trans-continental railroad. Expand Medicaid so that people are, on average, healthier and able to work more productively and contribute to a more robust economy that lifts up everyone? That sounds great to me!

MAGA also has a bigotry problem. They need an “other” to blame, and those others are usually darker-skinned or have a gender that doesn’t align with their birth sex. Those things don’t fundamentally matter. Your skin color has nothing to do with anything. Your gender is a personal choice, and no one else should ever care.

But those things matter SO VERY MUCH to MAGA, because casual acceptance, or God forbid, celebration of differences is how society became so debauched. It’s why there are litter boxes in classrooms for the furry kids to use the bathroom (this has been completely debunked) and why kindergartners are learning CRT (they aren’t) so they will grow up to support the liberal elitists!

That’s why Elon and Steve Bannon can throw up Nazi salutes like it’s no big deal. Because it isn’t for MAGA. It’s their way of being counter-culture. Instead, MAGA cheers as the Nazis promise to do Nazi things.

The libs hate it when the Nazis do that so it must be good.

The anti-DEI push today is a further extension of this same idea: Progressivism and Liberalism are inherently dangerous.

That brings us to today, when Chuck Schumer and several other Senate Democrats pointlessly voted in favor of the Republican CR with this explanation:

The Democrats have to learn what being an opposition party is. It means filibustering at every turn (remember Tommy Tuberville’s Tantrum?), it means disrupting when necessary, and it means you don’t vote for the CR come hell or high water.

House and Senate Republicans are in charge. Let them own and handle their own mess.

Those currently in charge of making decisions about appropriations aren’t in Congress. That power has been handed over to the federal government by a House majority that will never vote to impeach Trump. There is zero reason for any Senate Democrat to vote in favor of anything Republicans want to do.

Instead, Democrats need to be shouting from the rooftops why they are opposing, why they are fighting, and why they are never giving in to anything.

Is it exhausting? Definitely. Will some people tune out? Sure, that makes sense.

However, giving them even one inch is the same as giving them a mile.

MAGA’s counter-culture revolution is just fascism in a red hat instead of an armband.

Let them make their mess without the assistance of anyone else and worry more about shouldering the blame onto them when Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other vital services are culled to pay for billionaire tax cuts.