You know something is wrong with the messaging, if not soul, of the Democratic Party when lawmakers attending President Trump’s State of the Union used the occasion to display disinterest in ordinary Americans with compelling life stories.
Why not stand and applaud a young boy who beat cancer and now has a Secret Service badge to show for it? The same goes for an honor student, the son of a slain police officer, learning in the Rotunda that he was accepted to West Point. And a wildlife sanctuary renamed in memory of a 12-year-old girl brutally murdered by two illegal immigrant gang members.
For most Democrats, whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth is trash. No matter what he says, it’s never a moment to cheer or about a worthy achievement.
Such are the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome 2.0. It manifested itself instantly after the inauguration. All Executive Orders were declared bad and dangerously un-American: designating Mexican cartels as terrorists; stemming the flow of illicit drugs across the southern and northern borders; sealing the southern border from violent criminals and terrorists and deporting those already in the homeland; eliminating governmental waste; stripping Ivy League universities of federal funds for tolerating pro-Hamas rallies, which prevented Jewish students from participating in campus life.
Is it possible that Democrats believe that fentanyl traffickers, murderous gang members and anti-Western Islamists are fine people, and that tens of billions of misspent American tax dollars are of no public concern?
As for allowances for antisemitic campus upheavals, if students and faculty were chanting, “Lynch Blacks!” they would be instantly tossed from the university, never to return, and that would be the correct result. “Globalize the Intifada!” and “From the river to the sea . . .!” do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas and represent “true threats” under Supreme Court precedent. Calling for the death of Jews is neither protected First Amendment activity nor a debatable matter of public opinion.
When not showcasing their scowling, begrudging dispositions, Democrats are producing inane TikTok videos where congresswomen enter the frame putting up their dukes like video game duchesses.
No wonder the Democratic Party has only a 20 percent approval rating. Eighty percent of the American public believe that transgirls and transwomen (i.e., boys and men) should be banned from competing against girls and women in organized sports. Such a measure was voted down by every Senate Democrat.
What Democrats have is a rudderless, utterly stalled movement. Completely out of ideas. Forget original ideas: any ideas at all.
What Democrats have is a rudderless, utterly stalled movement. Completely out of ideas. Forget original ideas: any ideas at all.
Hating Donald Trump is not an idea—it’s an obsession that nowadays comes with its own DSM code. Employees and students actually demanded exemptions from showing up for work and school following the election—both terms! Such is the state of partisan trauma. Within a decade I fear we will come to learn that cancer rates among Democrats spiked from all those tumors metastasizing from Trump’s occupancy of the Oval Office.
This is more than merely being out of touch. Democrats have no interest aligning with the zeitgeist of the American public at all. Hello: MSNBC is going out of business! The elitist scorn for red-state America has been duly noted. Democrats have a political story about the rise of American fascism, and they are sticking with it.
It’s as if they are new to politics. I realize Republicans are the Grand Old Party, but Democrats are behaving like a Marxist version of the Know-Nothings of the 1850s—they truly seem to know nothing other than directing hate against Donald Trump. They forgot the first rule of politics: likeability matters. Polls shouldn’t be disregarded because the answers are judged to be all wrong.
Democrats are behaving like a Marxist version of the Know-Nothings of the 1850s—they truly seem to know nothing other than directing hate against Donald Trump.
So much of the hard left has been polarizing, reactionary and inflexible. For nearly a decade they have been demanding a complete overhaul of American priorities and beliefs, forsaking common sense: the police must be defunded; our Founding Fathers are irredeemable; sex is not determined at birth; parents cannot interfere with teachers, who have a better grasp on their child’s identity; nuclear families, hard work and calculus are all racist endeavors.
The Democrats are fated to never win another national election. They have refashioned their party to appear anti-American, anti-white, and antisemitic. Not a politically appealing look. Perhaps that’s not how most Democrats actually feel (I left the party in May of last year), but that’s not the agenda that is coming across.
As for Jewish Democrats, the situation is more dire. Not only are they unable to keep their eyes on the ball; most don’t know where the ball is or what it looks like. This I can say without hesitation: it’s not Donald Trump or Elon Musk; and it’s not abortion, DOGE, the price of eggs or the sanctity of Social Security.
Get a clue! Your house has been on fire at least since October 7, 2023, and you haven’t paid your water bill. Jews throughout Europe are being murdered, harassed and hunted by Islamists and their progressive enablers. Thousands are fleeing the continent and making aliyah to Israel. Israel’s entirely justified war in Gaza has led to an open global invitation to torment Jews—regardless of whether they are Zionists.
Israeli flags are being burned everywhere while Palestinian flags replace the Red, White and Blue. Hamas propaganda is aplenty. Students in Western universities are being fed total fabrications about how a critical mass of Jews came to live in Israel and the political status of Arabs before they arrived.
The majority of Jews can’t see that their homes are on fire because they belong to a political party that mostly refuses to admit that antisemitism exists in the United States. Or if it does, it is of no concern because hating Jews mainly disadvantages privileged white people.
Making matters worse, most American Jews are ignorant of Jewish history and know even less about Israel. (Most have never visited, and yet somehow harbor strongly negative views about the only nation on the planet that would welcome them should an exit strategy become necessary.)
For most of American Jewry, October 7, 2023, was just an ordinary day. Which leaves us with two kinds of Jewish Americans: those with children, especially girls and infants, who can’t sleep at night; and those that continually gnash their teeth and place themselves on the pathway to cancer, all on account of Donald Trump.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
