Oftentimes in American politics, one party's struggles can offer a lot of lessons that the other party should take note of for future reference. Right now, the Democratic establishment is dealing with something that it took the Republicans years to figure out: voters are more motivated by positive messaging than negative messaging.
For the last decade, "We hate Donald Trump" has been the only message that the Democrats have had to offer the electorate. They've tried to sprinkle in a few other things, but it always comes back to that. Last week, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was heckled during a speech by an anti-Israel idiot, he was whining about Trump. With all that is going on in the world, the highest ranking elected Democrat in the country used his time in front of the National Press Club to whinge about President Trump making money. Schumer probably wakes up several times a night with bed sweats and crying out, "But TRUMP!"
If you pay attention to the majority of the Democrats' midterm election strategy, it seems as if they believe President Trump is on the ballot. Absent any policy ideas for the betterment of the country or the world, the establishment Democrats have been very open about their plans to associate Republican candidates with Trump. They repeat "MAGA" like parrots that have only learned one word and won't shut up.
Rage is adequate fuel for one, maybe two, election cycles. The Republicans once had a good run with the Karl Rove-inspired SCARY ATTACK ADS, but employed them for far too long. After a while, they were like a poorly scripted horror movie that relied on predictable jump scares.
In most cases, voters greatly prefer something that they can vote for rather than against. Every so often, a trainwreck candidate like Kamala Harris will come along and make a lot of people realize that she's not a viable option for anything other than therapy. The opposition can get away with a campaign message of "maybe let's not do that" in those rare instances. More on the former Madame Veep in a moment.
I deliberately waited to get this far into the column to say this just so I could easily identify commenters who only read the headline. The younger Democratic upstarts still hate President Trump and Republicans, but they lead with what they have to offer in addition to rabid loathing. This is from a Morning Briefing in the middle of July:
Zohran Mamdani is vehemently opposed to ICE, but if you look at his public proclamations and interviews, you'll notice that he doesn't spend a lot of time specifically whining about President Trump. He's got too many fake free things to offer the kids.
Sure, we all know that the promises that the insurgency radical loons are making are gargantuan piles of horse manure, but their intended audience does not. Zohran Mamdani may have had some success if he'd done nothing but bark "MAGA!" throughout his campaign, but not the kind he had by promising cheap rent, groceries, and free bus rides. Why be the village curmudgeon for a bunch of people who still believe in Santa Claus?
Ho-ho-ho, off to communism we go!
Democrats don't see individuals in the electorate; they see voting blocs that they can keep reliable with promises that remain largely unfulfilled. The leading source of sleeplessness at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is a recurring nightmare in which minority voters finally realize that the Dems have been stringing them along for decades.
The youth vote is one bloc that the Dems have relied on, even though it never turns out in the numbers they hope. Still, twenty-somethings are impressionable. The problem for the Democrats these days is that the young Gen Z voters aren't comfortable identifying with either party. (My good friend and partner in thought crime Stephen Green wrote about this a couple of months ago, but something weird is going on with the archive of his columns and I can't link to it.)
Unlike its moribund establishment, the Commie Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party is aware that young voters have zero interest in the DNC's status quo. And nobody laps up the socialist blather like young people who have yet to experience more than a few seconds in the real world. Kids who just became old enough to vote last year were in the 4th grade when the Dem establishment launched its "Hate Trump" strategy. Their gullibility regarding the socialist message doesn't preclude them from figuring out that whatever "the Olds" have been doing isn't working.
Giving the voters something positive to focus on doesn't mean that a candidate has to pass out rose-colored glasses at every campaign event. When then-candidate Donald Trump first came down that golden escalator in 2015, he very clearly laid out the problems that were facing the country, especially regarding open borders. However, the enduring genius of the campaign was its slogan, Make America Great Again. It was brilliant in its simplicity, acknowledging that we had problems to deal with, but that we could do something spectacular about them.
"MAGA" was even more apropos in the 2024 campaign after the damage that Joe Biden's puppet masters did to the United States. Trump didn't even have to mention Kamala Harris that much; she was her own worst enemy. Yeah, he'd get his digs in, but his campaign speeches (I got to see one live) were full of humor, optimism, and dancing to The Village People. All of that was in addition to some very detailed policy proposals.
Good stuff to vote for.
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Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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