It is both perplexing and expected — such is the eternal paradox of the Democratic Party. Their DNC Chairman, Ken Martin, just avoided the opportunity to condemn intolerance and hate within his party and instead seemed to welcome those viewpoints. Nick Arama covered how Martin appeared on “The PBS News Hour,” and when presented with the issue of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refusing to condemn the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” he actually followed suit.
We see Martin playing the role of a squish, avoiding the chance to condemn both the phrase and Mamdani’s apparent support of it. Then he goes on to declare the Democrats are about “bringing people into that coalition,” as he refuses to be critical of a call to actually eliminate people. This becomes the latest example of a party that appears intent on making itself as inconsequential as possible.
What has been in play, pretty much since the election in November, is the Democrats (and shackled alongside them, the press) taking stands opposing President Trump by rote, regardless of the pragmatism or the political fallout in play. We saw this take place when Mamdani secured the party nomination in New York. At first, there was some hesitancy and moves made in upper levels of New York politics to battle his rise. But after President Trump declared bluntly that the winner is a “communist lunatic,” those on the left coalesced behind him.
Democrats came forward with support, and many news outlets strove to “prove” that Mamdani was not truly a communist. (You just need to ignore him quoting “Das Kapital”, and his call to create government-run communes. Yes, seriously.) And now the head of the DNC cannot condemn Mamdani’s divisive rhetoric as he welcomes an avowed socialist/communist into their tent.
Maneuvering the Dems into this support would appear like a brilliant move by President Trump, given the emotional knee-jerk opposition the Democrats have been incapable of stopping themselves from proclaiming. It has become almost Pavlovian the way Trump can say something or enact a policy, and the Democrats and the press instantly drool with inflamed opposition. This has driven them into some rather barren social prairies.
Look at the way they have been loudly calling for hardened immigrant criminals to remain in the country. Abrego Garcia is heralded as a “Maryland father” despite multiple domestic violence charges and human smuggling on his resume. They call for due process involving those already sporting lengthy rap sheets. They have been forced to make the farcical argument that it is cruel for those who have been in this country for over a quarter of a century to lose their “temporary” protected status.
It is but a start of what the party has supported in the first half of this year, as the Dems have consistently taken the downside of many 80/20 issues and have reaped that actual result. Some polls have the party's favorability hovering near a dismal 20 percent.
This imbalanced mindset has been on display since at least the inauguration. From the start, there has been a wailing heard about the cuts proposed to government programs and agencies. The Left was actually taking the position that they were in favor of wasteful government spending, all because of who was finally taking a machete to the federal budget. After screeching was heard over tariffs being applied, the promised fiscal disaster has not materialized, and so there have been many instances of the media telling us that positive economic results are actually bad news.
CNN: "Trump's Tariffs are bad news, as they will raise the price on cars!"
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) May 12, 2025
(car prices remain down)
CNN: "Car prices did not spike, so THIS is bad news!" pic.twitter.com/SS21XmwVqB
Stemming from the DOGE impact, Elon Musk was under fire. This resulted in unhinged individuals seeing it as a rational reaction to hurl Molotov cocktails at Tesla dealerships. No rational people would support this criminality, but after President Trump stated people caught doing so would be charged as domestic terrorists, Chuck Schumer refused to condemn the violence, and there were those in the press declaring this would be an infringement of free expression and the right to protest.
Even on mundane and innocuous issues, there is seen reflexive ignorance. The proposal to remove the taxation of gratuities for servers has been met with pushback. The most revealing has been from former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She used to lobby for MW-15 to apply to service employees, but this proposal cannot stand — all because it was a good idea from a bad man. Imagine how this must play with those working for tips and seeing the gal who was slinging hooch at Flats Fix now yanking up the ladder on them.
The worn punchline is that Donald Trump could come up with the cure for cancer, and the headlines the next day would be “Trump Puts Thousands of Oncologists Out of Work!” Based on the hysterical coverage we have witnessed so far this year, it is a fair bet that such a story has already been pre-written – and lacking all irony or comedic subtext.
