The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 12
Mar. 24, 2025
This week:
- Mutiny on the Titanic
- Democrats flood town halls to rage at their own
- “Right track” average hits highest point since mid-2009
Democrats
Democrats, having lost an election, their dominance of the media, and the sources of much of their funding, had planned to go back to basics. They were to stage a concerted effort to heckle Republican lawmakers at their own town hall meetings and then make fools of them — the exact same playbook Democrats used to great effect when they last hit rock bottom in early 2017.
But this time, the Democrats’ townhall-packing strategy is backfiring. The angry liberal mobs are showing up…but for Democrats’ town halls. And they are showing up with ridiculously unrealistic expectations about what their party can accomplish in the second Trump era.
In short, the Democrats are experiencing their own chaotic Tea Party moment.
Take, for example, the experience of Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), whose town hall police had to cut short. Pro-Palestinian hecklers shouted him down and even rushed the stage as the entire event turned to bedlam. Casten was called a “soulless piece of crap” by one attendee and treated with great disrespect. It was reminiscent of what many Republican members of Congress dealt with from the same leftist protesters in 2017.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) was likewise shouted down by unruly protesters in his Prince George County district. They were so shrill that at times their message wasn’t even clear. Some of them were clear, however, that they believed he and other Democrats in Congress were not fighting enough, although it is difficult to imagine what they could do. In a subsequent interview, Ivey tried to play this off as people just being upset about Trump, but they were definitely shouting at and blaming him, because they believe — falsely — that Democratic House members can do anything substantive about Trump from the minority.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) faced a similarly fiery town hall in Golden, Colo. Several attendees had to be escorted out. Some attacked Bennet for being too supportive of Israel and for voting to confirm some of Trump nominees.
Entitlement: Why do the Democrats rage? As we noted last week, ideological extremism is part of it, but their deeper problem as a party is their voters’ overwhelming sense of entitlement. They are accustomed to controlling everything — whether through elections or through the bureaucracy. Now, all of their privileges are under threat, and they don’t know how to handle it.
Their government NGO funding and their control of the bureaucracy are under a massive and unexpected attack by Elon Musk and DOGE. This issue is key to their survival, and that is why it has rapidly superseded all other issues that Democrats normally profess to care about most, such as immigration, health care — you name it. (More on this below.)
If there is one reason for all of the lashing out by the least stable among them — everything from keyings of Teslas to firebombing of Tesla dealerships to swattings of conservative media influencers — this is it.
Democrats’ future: Democrats may yet have a future. But first, they need to find a political posture that will sit well with something close to half of voters. They seem quite far from that at this moment.
One possible sign of hope for them is the large crowds of progressives that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) are attracting in various liberal cities such as Denver as they rail against “oligarchy.”
And indeed, many on the Left are in open mutiny against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for voting to pass the recent bill that prevented a government shutdown. Several senators have hinted that his job is at risk, and he was berated last week on “The View” for his troubles.
For the record, Schumer probably did the best thing for Democratic political interests by avoiding a shutdown that would have empowered Trump to move even faster through the government. But try convincing the far Left that this is the case. Indeed, Democrats are unlikely to benefit if they do ditch Schumer.
And indeed, many Democrats believe that their party’s far Left is its main problem. After all, the far Left is holding the party back from the realm of reality. It is, many will argue, responsible for ceding most “normie” thinking and behavior to the Right by condemning it as fascistic or bigoted, leaving Democrats on the wrong end of lopsided issues. To illustrate: If only bigots believe in biological sex, and only fascists believe in cutting government waste, then somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of Americans are bigots or fascists or both — or so say Democrats — and therefore a large majority won’t feel at home voting for Democrats.
Which is to say, the far Left is arguably preventing Democrats from finding a comfortable position from which they can form a viable political coalition and win in the future.
Old ways die hard: A recent podcast interview of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) helped illustrate this problem. Newsom, slick and savvy despite his left-wing record in office, seems to understand the need to do more about right-wingers than just condemn and cancel them. He has even recently interviewed conservative influencers Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk, in both cases making news, and speaks about “meet[ing] people where they are.”
Walz, on the other hand, attacked Kirk and Bannon as “bad guys” and said, “How do we push those guys back under a rock… You don’t think it’s racism and misogyny?”
As “Part of the Problem’s” Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein pointed out, the Walz playbook is the old Democratic playbook that just doesn’t work anymore in 2025. One cannot simply banish everyone who contradicts you as “bad dudes” and cancel them anymore — in large part because the “racist” and “sexist” labels have been abused to the point that they just don’t work anymore and people have stopped consuming media that lazily perpetuate them. Rather, conservatives’ arguments must now be dealt with substantively.
Newsom’s idea of addressing the substance that emanates from people like Kirk and Bannon is far more promising for Democrats’ future, even if his record in California is not an asset.
Trump administration
As presidential administrations go, Trump 2.0 is off to a very strong start. Here are a few observations on how it’s going.
Polls: We have previously noted that net “right track” numbers for the country were at a multi-decadal high in one poll, a huge shift upward from November. As it turns out, nearly every poll recently asking this question reflects this shift.
The RealClear polling average shows satisfaction with the nation’s direction, at 43.1 percent, at its highest point since June 2009 and well up from its 26.8 percent reading on Oct. 30, 2024, just before the election. The “wrong track” number, whose average was as high as 67 percent last year, now stands at just 50.6 percent. Something has clearly changed. For the moment at least, Americans feel optimistic about the Trump administration and more satisfied than usual with what it is doing.
Courts: With all of their talking points (egg prices, gas prices, inflation) falling to the wayside one after another, the Democrats’ only useful weapon against Trump so far has proven to be the courts. Federal district courts have currently imposed 15 nationwide temporary injunctions or restraining orders holding up various presidential orders by Trump, affecting everything from transgender military service to gang members’ deportations to the dismantling of USAID. This number, in two months, is about the same as the number levied against Obama during his entire eight years in office.
Despite Trump’s and Elon Musk’s brash talk and attempts by some Republicans in the House, the prospect of these judges being removed is roughly zero. This has prompted some of Trump’s supporters to point out that the Supreme Court only takes so many cases every year on appeal, and that therefore it might take years to sort out all the issues at stake and implement Trump’s agenda.
However, these cases will not need a full ruling on the merits by the Supreme Court in order to get some resolution. The justices very frequently issue procedural rulings on relatively short notice — for example, reversing temporary orders or injunctions by lower court judges. Trump is likely to win most of these cases (and perhaps he’ll also lose a few), so he is probably not in danger of having his entire second-term agenda thwarted by such dilatory tactics and judge-shopping.
In other words, although Trump and Musk are both using it as a rallying point, this issue is probably not as big a problem for Trump as some are making it out to be. And given how badly it polls for Trump to begin defying court orders, he is wise not to do so openly, and instead to appeal patiently. (There is currently one case where his administration is accused of defying an order, but it denies doing so — in other words, this still hasn’t escalated to open defiance.)
Media: You probably expected the second Trump administration to be dominated by media sob stories about migrants being (perhaps even wrongfully) deported. It is very telling that this isn’t happening for the most part — not to say no one is being wrongfully detained or deported, but rather to say we aren’t hearing much about it. Although these stories do exist, they are very much in the background, taking a back seat to Elon Musk, DOGE, Tesla, non-profits losing their funding, and government workers being laid off.
That’s because the institutional Left, if it does at all care about immigrants, cares much more about its own taxpayer-funded meal ticket vanishing. So it is only natural that the existential threat to the American Left should become the main focus of coverage by its media apparatus, rather than tales of poor unfortunate souls caught up in the immigration dragnet.
There is some irony here, since immigrants wrongfully expelled would be vastly more sympathetic figures than bureaucrats bought out or laid off and forced to find new jobs — something that happens to private-sector workers all the time.
Senate 2026
New Hampshire: In yet another dispiriting development for Democrats, a new poll suggests that former Gov. Chris Sununu (R) would start off leading Rep. Chris Pappas (D) by nine points, were the two to face off for the state’s open Senate seat next year.
Pappas, reportedly interested in the race, is probably the Democrats’ best hope, yet here is another indicator that Sununu will win if he runs. This would add a new seat to the Republican column and make Democrats’ quest to win back the Senate nearly impossible in the 2026 cycle or even the 2028 cycle.
House 2026
Wisconsin: The April 1 state Supreme Court election may well decide control of the U.S. House after 2026, since liberals on the court have vowed to redistrict the state in Democrats’ favor if they win. The conservative candidate in the race is Brad Schimel, the liberal is Susan Crawford. Recent polls show the race somewhere between a straight-up tie and a five-point lead for Crawford, down from 13 points two weeks ago. Based on early vote turnout in the counties, this one is probably going to be about as close as they come.
