As much as I hate to say it, James Carville is right about this:
We are not even two weeks from the government shutdown, and the public conversation on the matter has fled the building. This shows, no matter what you believe, there’s a simple truth. The shutdown will have zero lasting consequence for next year’s midterms. The only thing that will persevere is economic pain. And that’s exactly why Democrats won on Nov. 4.
Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill — even down-ballot Georgia Democrats — all won with soaring margins because the people are pissed. And the people always point their anger at the party in charge. Rent is out of control. Young people can’t afford homes or pay student debt. We’re living through the greatest economic inequality since the Roaring Twenties.
President Trump has done nothing to curb the cost of what it requires to take even a breath in America today, the centerpiece promise of his 2024 campaign. The people are revolting, and they have been for some time.
This offers Democrats the greatest gift you can have in American politics: a second chance. I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.x
It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss.
He goes on to rail against “woke” which is like freaking out about men with long hair and women going braless — it feels like it’s from another era. The culture war battles change very quickly these days. His age is showing and it’s annoying.
But he says that Democrats have to embrace their rage which I think it probably right. As much as I’d like to see these rural Trump voters wake up and start marching in No Kings protests and understand that our democracy is under siege from their Dear Leader, it’s just not realistic. In fact, it’s not realistic to think that less than 40% of voters will ever abandon the GOP. Even Herbert Hoover got almost that many in the depth of the Great Depression. But economic populism could bring over 5-10% of those who are watching Trump hob-nobbing with billionaires and festooning the White House gold filigree and beginning to realize that his economic promises are nothing but hot air.
If the Dems can unapologetically articulate their rage and give them reason to believe they are ready to tackle the problems without restraint, it’s possible that they can lure at least some away from the unabashed plutocrat party to which they have inexplicably hooked their wagons. It’s certainly worth a try.