Two Democrats in a Canoe

The Democratic Party today is like a canoe with two people in it, one paddling one way and the other paddling in the opposite direction.

It should be no surprise then that the canoe is barely moving.

The profound shock for Democrats on November 5, 2024 — with the decisive rout of their Harris-Walz ticket, loss of control of the U.S. Senate, defeat again in the U.S. House, and further losses in many statewide races, has lingered well into 2025.

The Democrats’ previously ascendant progressive radical wing has somehow interpreted the 2024 election as an error of not going left far enough, a bizarre and ludicrous political interpretation, but not entirely unexpected considering how much power the left thought they had accumulated during the Biden interregnum of 2021-24.

The Democrats’ disarray has not only been aggravated by the trauma of unexpected defeat, but also by a historically massive disruption of the executive branch and its many large bureaucratic components through which the left had infiltrated and corrupted the bloated and immobile administration of so much of the federal government.

Duped by a corrupted establishment media, woke slogans, manipulative code words, and incessant peer-prompted waves of political propaganda, the majority of Democrats have been left numb and angry at the electoral turn of events.

Meanwhile, the GOP 2024 victors went immediately to the task of undoing Biden-Harris actions and finishing the transformation and reduction of the federal establishment begun in 2017. Much of this has been undertaken by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its head, Elon Musk, but each cabinet secretary is also promulgating reforms.

Using federal district judges, most of whom were appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden, Democrats have tried to block as many of Trump’s executive orders as possible. Their political error was not in being in opposition, but in trying to defend extremely unpopular issues addressed in many Trump orders.

The curious case of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom illustrates the party’s current predicament. Although he has been responsible for some of the most destructive failures of woke and radical policy as governor of California, his future presidential ambitions have apparently provoked him to realize how out of touch his party has become, and how unwilling most of its leaders have been to try to understand the policy and political mistakes they have made that led to their 2024 defeat. For this belated political wake-up, Newsom is being attacked as a party traitor.

Similarly, long-time party strategists such as James Carville, as well as veteran Democratic pollsters, some of whom sounded an alarm before last November, are criticized or ignored when they now express realistic assessments of how the Biden administration and radical Democratic leaders went wrong and ignored voters’ concerns leading up to the 2024 election.

The consequence of this chaos and dissension within the Democratic Party is that it is unable to express a coherent or effective critique of the massive and intentionally disruptive policy changes now set into motion by President Trump and his administration.

Because the sudden changes do require some short-term costs, uncertainties, and hardships to realize long-term goals, this is the critical period when an opposition might be most effective. Once the reduction of unnecessary or improper expenditures and wasteful government bureaucratic jobs and institutions is completed, the huge economic benefits from this effort can be realized — and political criticism will obviously fail.

The radical progressive Democrats advocate further centralizing public policies in Washington, D.C., and expanding the federal bureaucracy. They also intend to enlarge arbitrary regulatory control over business and the education and health industries — and to increase punitive taxation on every aspect of private and public commerce.

The liberal progressive wing of the Democratic Party is now coming to understand that this direction of more centralized government, more federal regulations, and higher taxes has significantly diminished voter support. But its leaders have so far failed to offer an alternative liberal program.

While the Democrat canoe thus remains stuck at the political pier, the Republican motorboat, fueled by DOGE and other overdue reforms, is well underway on its journey to 2026, 2028, and beyond.

Polls that show New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) ahead for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2028 are not only woefully premature, they also display the impression that Democrats are seriously divided as well as unaware of the concerns of most American voters. Elderly radical voices such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren only reinforce this self-delusion and drown out any efforts from a new and younger generation of party candidates and leaders who are more pragmatic.

The spectacle of the sudden decline in support for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer puts this dilemma on full display. Although Republicans and conservatives consider Schumer a relentlessly hostile partisan, he has been, most of the time, a successfully pragmatic opponent. When he failed, however, to oppose a recent GOP budget plan — for realistic reasons — he was quickly and loudly attacked by voices in his own party, and his popularity in heavily Democratic New York state has nose-dived, putting his personal re-election next year in doubt. (Some say AOC would now defeat him in a Democratic primary.)

With the noisy radical left wing dominating the discussion, how are potentially popular figures such as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, or former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo going to emerge in time for the next presidential election?

Stuck in a political canoe that goes nowhere makes the prospects for Democrats now seem dimmer than ever.

Barry Casselman is a writer for AMAC Newsline.