The American Crisis: Can Democrats Save Us?
April 13, 2025
My wife and I were invited to a day-long (8 AM to 9 PM) April 8 New York City conference run by James Carville’s “Democracy Matters” organization. Including three meals, plus snacks, and a cocktail hour. The programs, full of big names, were intensive and hard-hitting, dissecting today’s political landscape.
I didn’t hear a single word of bullshit. All fact, data, and reality based. Contrasting with the monstrously dishonest, destructive, corrupt Republican administration.
Much discussion concerned voting groups abandoning Democrats: those feeling economic anxiety, especially the less educated, and younger people not expecting opportunities like previous generations had. Who’d seen society’s institutions as working for them; today’s, not so much. Part of an overall erosion of social trust writ large.
Related here is the “masculinity crisis,” with voters attracted to the idea of a “strong man.” Trump certainly benefited by exuding a vibe of strength (even if strength in wrongness).
Democrats recognize their brand is suffering, looking weak and obsessed with catering to small minorities. One presenter, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, noted that the National Committee has set trans representation quotas — but how about rural people, or those without college degrees?
So another repeated theme was the need to listen more to those and make them feel seen. While opening the politically correct boxes Democrats have shut themselves into. Bullock urged affording a degree of “grace” to people not wholly with their program. This was stressed too by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who spoke of his state’s recent Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, shunned by the national party for his pro-life and pro-gun stances. But Edwards expanded health care access.
Landrieu is someone I greatly admire. I’d told him so at an event a year earlier and he greeted me by name; had a lovely conversation here with me and my wife.
Many voters did move away from Democrats for explicable reasons; yet whatever those reasons, they chose a senseless route for pursuing them. The idea that Trump and Republicans speak for them is a con job.
This was also clear in Carville’s comments. He said Trump doesn’t actually like America, or anything about it — its culture, its laws and constitution, its world role, its people. I too have written that the America his cult loves is a fantasy one, not the one that actually exists, and certainly not the principles and ideals that made it great.
So we’re in deep trouble, Carville said. He was especially scathing toward all those institutions like major universities and law firms caving to Trump and becoming his collaborators. Universities in particular, he said, don’t need to kiss Trump’s ring, insulated by their huge endowments which they should use in defense of America.
Much discussion concerned the media landscape. In 2024 Harris spent billions on “legacy media” ads but probably didn’t gain a vote she wouldn’t have gotten anyway. Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta said legacy media is rotting internally, losing its audience, and become largely irrelevant.
It was noted that Harris won among people who pay attention to the news; lost among “low information” voters. It’s said most people now get news from Tiktok, but actually such alternative platforms don’t even give news, but rather “content,” “stuff.” And of course now facts don’t matter at all on Facebook.
Acosta opined the news media landscape is a lost cause unless “the Fox problem” can be solved. But consider: Fox’s audience is only around 3 million prime time viewers. Less than 1% of our population. Dwarfed (collectively) by online media platforms. In exploiting those, Republicans have been way ahead of Democrats. And 82% of those media entities skew right. Many moved in that direction because their audience did.
Democrats were faulted for being too risk-averse, “coloring only inside the lines.” I connected that with a striking point by Chris Hayes: During 2024 younger voters in particular were transfixed by horrific images from Gaza. And on that issue, Democrats were on the wrong side. I had really wished Harris would denounce Israel’s actions. That would have been coloring outside the lines. But she would have been right. And, maybe, president today.
Dinner had top Democratic campaign guru Paul Begala in conversation with a true American hero — Liz Cheney. Her critique of Trump and his administration was scorching. Aligning America no longer with the free world but with the tyrants. Regarding Trump’s actions hurting the very people loyal to him, she opined that he “doesn’t give a shit.”
Cheney thought that once he openly defies the courts, that should send us into the streets — despite Trump itching to have troops shoot protesters. And she echoed Carville in saying he hates America, not even understanding what it’s all about.
Discussing Democrats, Cheney often used the word “we.” So when questions were invited, my hand shot up. “Speaking as someone who was myself a Republican for 53 years — are you now a Democrat?”
Her answer: “We are all Democrats now!”