Since the 2016 election, the Democratic party has failed to coalesce around a coherent message that galvanizes democratic voters who are increasingly incensed at the failure of Democrats to fight back, rhetorically or otherwise, at the Republican Party. Four months until the 2018 election cycle, there are few advertisements by Democrats or their organizations about voting in the midterms, or prosecuting immigration policies in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, Republicans, always on message, are rolling out digital advertisements about Brett Kavanaugh, encouraging red state Democratic leaders to confirm him.

The inability of Democratic leadership to come up with a coherent message to engage and battle Trumpism and the Republican party is unconscionable: Trump’s daily chaos and his policy upheaval should frame every utterance from the Democratic Party. There is, after all, so much from which to choose, from immigrant children kept in cages to the judiciary being stacked for the next 50 years. While Sen. Schumer has said that he will fight Kavanaugh’s appointment, no clear unified message has come from Senate Democrats on how, exactly, they plan to either push back against the nomination or lay his decisions directly at the White House’s door. And when activists take matters into their own hands, the timidity that characterized so much of the Democratic response to Trump in 2016 is on full display: Don’t irk the vast center, they seem to say, no matter how much it fires up the left.