What ails the Democrat Party? Oh, let's not always see the same hands ...
We have certainly posed that question a number of times this year. Poll after poll shows that Democrats have hit rock bottom in trust and approval, and seem at times intent on still digging. They have managed to maneuver themselves on the 20% position on many of the top issues of concern to voters, most notably on immigration, which is Freddie de Boer's concern at the Free Press as well.
Rather than absorb this feedback and adjust policy to compete, de Boer notes, Democrats have rejected policy altogether, especially on immigration. Instead, they have become an embodiment of a Monty Python sketch, standing for nothing but the automatic gainsay of whatever Republicans support without even a hint of an alternative. Don't get too caught up in de Boer's support for an open-borders policy, but in his accurate diagnosis of The Argument Clinic Party:
To be clear, they do have slogans. They have talking points. They have hashtags and symbolic gestures and sternly worded denunciations. But they do not have a plan, not one that anyone can point to, explain, or run on. After a first term defined as much by incompetence and instability as by its accomplishments, second-term Trump quickly rounded into form with ICE raids, mass deportations, and a grim machinery of border enforcement both far more expansive and more effective than that of his first term.
And what’s the response from the opposition party? The accurate contention that this was all inhumane, and probably economically ruinous, and certainly not in keeping with America’s immigrant past, but not much else. Policy specifics—who we should be letting in, how many of them, via what mechanism, with what form of enforcement or oversight—have been and remain very scarce.
This isn’t just a tactical blunder. It’s not merely a matter of bad strategy or poor messaging. It’s the culmination of a deeper rot among the Democrats, a party that has ceased to be a party of governance and become, instead, a kind of anti-party: a coalition of elites whose only unifying impulse is opposition to the right.
They run on vibes, outrage, and cultural identification. They organize around preventing Republicans from doing things, sure, but it frequently seems that they no longer bother with the hard work of articulating what they themselves would do instead. With Trump as an all-encompassing target to rally against—and, crucially, to fundraise on—it’s too easy for the party to be only what it is not, for it to play into precisely its modern reputation for incoherence. On immigration more than anything else, that vacuum has become undeniable.
For those who do not recall, the Monty Python Argument Clinic sketch is a classic from their Flying Circus television era. A man goes into a 'clinic' to have an argument, only to experience nothing more than the constant and "automatic gainsaying" of whatever he says. I'll post the video of the sketch at the end, but here's an excerpt of the transcript that gets to the heart of what ails Democrats:
Man: Oh, but this is futile!
Mr. Vibrating: No, it isn’t.
Man: I came here for a good argument.
Mr. Vibrating: No, you didn’t; you came here for an argument.
Man: An argument is not the same as contradiction.
Mr. Vibrating: Can be.
Man: No, it can’t. An argument’s a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.
Mr. Vibrating: No, it isn’t.
Man: Yes, it is! It isn’t just contradiction.
Mr. Vibrating: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
Man: But it isn’t just saying ‘No it isn’t.’
Mr. Vibrating: Yes, it is!
Man: No, it isn’t! Argument’s an intellectual process. Contradiction’s just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
[Short pause]
Mr. Vibrating: No, it isn’t.
Regardless of how de Boer sees this issue, he's right in his diagnosis -- as far as it goes. There are actually two main problems with the Democrats now, one of which is that they won't actually discuss their preferred policies. The Biden Regency wasn't a disaster because they had no policy; it was that they implemented policies that were either terrible, unpopular, or both. The media and the cognoscenti never pressed for deeper debate on any of them, even after their catastrophic consequences became immediately apparent, whether that was the massive inflationary spike in 2021 or the border-crisis catastrophe that lasted for four years.
Democrats aren't actually a post-policy party. They are a post-debating-policy party. That's why Democrats in Texas have fled the legislature rather than make a case through the democratic process on redistricting. Their policies are terrible and unpopular, and largely indefensible in this political environment -- and they know it.
And that is one reason for their other major problem, which is the presumption of guaranteed leadership regardless of election results. Democrats talk a lot about election denialism, but they have structured their entire party toward that end. They spent the last two years attempting to disqualify a Republican presidential nominee, refused to address the issues on which he ran, and explicitly ran on the argument that their nominee didn't need an argument.
They ran as the Argument Clinic Party. All they offered was the automatic gainsaying of Republicans. And that's not just true on immigration, as de Boer notes, but on everything:
You can’t govern through opposition alone. You can’t beat something with nothing. This is, of course, my broader complaint with the Democrats: that they fail because they stand for nothing, and on many issues default to aping the Republicans while being more sweaty and anxious about it. The Republicans, as awful as their basic ethos always has been—and as fractious as they have become over foreign policy and entitlements—are a coherent party. The Democrats are an anti-party. They exist to oppose, not to propose. They govern only when compelled, never when inspired. They rely on institutions they no longer control and moral language they have never earned. And when confronted with a real crisis, like the complete dysfunction of U.S. immigration, they freeze.
Even this is a symptom. The true diagnosis is entitlement. Democrats and their progressive-elite leaders and funders believe they have a claim to control almost as a divine right. It is the culmination of Woodrow Wilson's contempt for direct self-governance; his party now considers themselves the Expert Class Whose Authority Cannot Be Challenged. They have created a leviathan bureaucratic class that resists any election outcomes and refuse to accept any opposition, even from their own voters, to their Received Wisdom. Voters are beneath their concern even to the point of putting together a coherent policy program based on the needs and wishes of the electorate.
When challenged, therefore, all they do is gainsay the challenge. Their nominees are inarticulate because Democrats don't value articulation. They don't feel the need to provide any arguments for their candidates or their agenda, because in their arrogance, they see themselves as the only legitimate class for leadership. It is enough for them to merely argue the other side's disqualification, and then act stunned when the electorate decides that's not enough for them and that their 'expertise' is in fact incompetence with good PR.
And thus, Democrats have transformed themselves into Mr. Vibrating, with a side of constant 1984-esque "two minute hate" sessions on their Emmanuel Goldstein of the moment. That's been Donald Trump for the past ten years, but make no mistake -- that will become J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio in 2028 just as surely as it was Mitt Romney in 2012, John McCain in 2008, and so on. Satire in this case precedes real life, so enjoy the satire while we still can.
