I wish

The Bernie/AOC tour is encouraging but I fear our hopes are false

© 2025 Gage Skidmore, used under a Creative Commons license

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet has been touring the state doing town halls. At one of these he got some static, and some protestors were thrown out. Old-timers may remember Democrats getting yelled at during what I called at the time the “Town Brawl” phenomenon of 2009, but these were events instigated by Republicans to make liberal policies like Obamacare look unpopular; per the Golden (Colo.) Transcript, the hecklers at Bennet’s town hall yelled at him for “approving Trump cabinet picks and ongoing violence against Palestinians.”

You are slightly more likely to have heard that, around the same time, Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — neither or whom people are likely to accuse of failing to oppose Trump hard enough — had a couple of very successful public appearances in Colorado: 10,000 attendees in Greeley, and 30,000 in Denver. They do not appear to have been heckled. (The New Englander and the New Yorker raised crowds in Las Vegas, Tempe, and Tucson, Arizona, too.)

There have also been a number of “empty chair” town halls across the country at which Democatic and liberal groups have stood in, so to speak, for Republicans who have declined to hold their own public meetings, such as Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, twitted in his absence at an event held in Indianapolis by the local branch of Indivisible, at which 450 citizens turned out. (And if you suspect these were hippies or other lefty usual suspects, go to the WRTV story and get a look at them.)

After Chuck Schumer screwed the pooch in the budget bill cloture vote last week, this is refreshing. But Schumer not only continues to defend his decision but also insists he’s not giving up the leadership.

At the same time polls show a massive drop in Democratic support. While a few nervous moderate Dem electeds are defending Schumer, not even his nearest and dearest are doing so with any conviction and some, like House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and former speaker Nancy Pelosi, are leaking discouraging comments.

If you are paying attention, this will seem unsustainable, and you may be encouraged by it, especially if, like me, you are sick of the Democrats farting around. But, having been a member of this stupid party for some time, I will make bold to predict that while some Democrats will make bold statements, the Democratic Party as such will not do anything meaningful anytime soon.

First, of course, the leadership is sclerotic and useless and clings to power like a koala to a gum tree. It only gets shaken loose when something clear-and-present is on the line, like when they had to unpeel Joe Biden in 2024.

And you may remember that happened waaaay late. In fact, the leadership is disinclined to budge not just until the last minute, but rather until it is too late. Insofar as I can tell they shove off timely only when events accelerate so quickly and unavoidably — like when the economy collapsed in 2008 or COVID killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2020 — that even a senior Democrat can’t ignore the opportunity these disasters present.

Right now what you, me, and the rest of the tiny minority that can tell time and make change perceive as an actual crisis is mostly invisible to voters. The Prestige Press is as usual hopeless and continues to portray Tubby’s Constitutional crime spree as Opinions Vary, and the struggle for control of the Democratic Party as Dems In Disarray.

For a relevant example, you hardly need to read beyond the headline of the New York Times’ March 21 “Trump Voters Love Him More Than Before. Four Conservative Columnists Pinpoint Why,” but here are a couple of quotes: David Brooks, “Progressives really have spent the last few decades excluding conservative and working-class voices from a lot of institutions”; and Ross Douthat, “I would emphasize that many Americans experienced the recent period of liberal power, especially under Covidian conditions, as much more authoritarian and lawless-feeling in its everyday impact… than anything they experienced under Trump.”

Believe me, context does not redeem these. And any time some rogue Democrat challenges the status quo, you can expect more of the same, just as any time someone makes a powerful public statement against the Gaza genocide you can expect another Times thumbsucker on antisemitism.

In this miasma voters are unlikely to get excited. Joe Brewpub (Son of Joe Sixpack) may hear about the current liberal roadshow if it rolls through his state, and he may be intrigued by the attendance numbers. But both these public figures have drawn big crowds before. The upshot is always that while the branded equities “Bernie” and “ACO” exist and evince some sizzle, compared to the rest of the mush in what counts as Joe’s news diet they are just a little too fashion-forward for him, and he will stick for the moment with his present murky Under Armour indifference. If it’s good enough for John Fetterman it’s good enough for him!

You and I might like to enlighten Joe, but we are signaling with weak lamps in a dense fog of disinformation. When Trump goons like the 1940s crime movie villain Tom Homan go on news shows and lie their asses off about the guys they yanked off the street and sent to slave labor camps, the news show hosts do not offer any challenge, but rather poke gently at them with pillows, and the geriatric Democratic leaders go harrumph harrumph and check their Seikos to see how close it is to nap time.

I really hate to say it, but Tubby and his thugs are going to imprison and murder a lot of people without the loyal opposition doing shit. Now, if under Plague Carrier RFK measles or bird flu makes a fast leap beyond the current hellhole states into places where voters find dead children a negative result, or if Big Balls and the Boys fuck up Social Security so bad that no one gets their checks, then even at their usual slow rate of response the Democrats may get in sync with the resulting public outrage. But that is not likely this year — and, depending on how fast the fascist apparatus is assembled, may never be.