They Only Respect Power
There’s no aisle to reach across anymore. The modern right isn’t a governing party; it’s a collection of fanatics, con artists, and cowards, completely uninterested in policy, entirely committed to culture war nonsense and minority rule. They don’t respect compromise. They don’t respect good faith. They only respect power.
And yet, here come the Democentrists, once again convinced that the real problem is that they haven’t been accommodating enough. If they just tweak the messaging a little and show a little more deference to conservative anxieties, they’ll unlock some hidden reservoir of support. It’s the same delusional thinking that gave us a decade of failed centrist candidates, the same pathetic impulse that tells liberals to self-police while the right plays for keeps.
They don’t get it. The people voting for Trumpism aren’t doing it because they crave reasonable Democrats. They’re doing it because they want blood. They want revenge. They want someone to punish the people they’ve been told to hate, and they don’t care if it comes at their own expense.
No Democrat is winning them over by going soft. No Democrat is winning them over by pandering to their grievances.
They’re not looking for a compromise. They want a rumble. And that’s what Democrats should be giving them. Not because the left should sink to their level but because leadership means standing for something. It means knowing where you draw the line and refusing to budge. It means taking the fight to the people who have been lying to the working class for decades, the people who have convinced millions of Americans to cheer for their own exploitation.