President Donald Trump speaking about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1. AP Bruce Springsteen, 76 years young, last week kicked off his new tour with a now-old ritual: histrionically denouncing President Donald Trump — the one thing all right-thinking people can agree on, right?
“We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration’s and this president’s legacy,” lectured The Boss.
Yet the Baby Boomer’s bluster brings up a crucial question for the entire left, from establishment Democrats to the wokest socialists: After Trump, what?
For now, the prez is their entire raison d’etre.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s every media appearance centers on painting Trump as a would-be dictator — because he wants to expel illegal migrants, because he favors voter ID, because he wants to pay TSA agents.
Having an agenda Dems dislike is so, so authoritarian.
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, for now the frontrunner in the ’28 Dem primaries, endlessly preens from his pulpit about Orange Man Bad — even as he mounts a (deeply embarrassing) social-media strategy premised on imitating Trump’s voice and tone.
That same focus persists down the line: Every real White House contender, every major Democrat in Congress, every high-visibility prog politico acts as if Trump will be with us forever.
Because on every front that matters, Dems have nothing else.
They faced a massive repudiation in Trump’s 2024 victory: on immigration, on the economy, on extremism on gender and race — yet the wider party hasn’t dropped any of its unpopular positions, but only (mostly) stopped talking about them.
Democrats in Congress defunded DHS, creating weeks of chaos to symbolically punish ICE.
Dems’ “populist” Senate hopeful in Maine, Graham Platner, calls any skepticism about radical gender ideology an “invented culture-war scare.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu argues that “every single human has the legal right to come to the United States and seek asylum or shelter and those policies have been in place for a long time.”
Yes, the coalition that ushered Trump into office in 2024 is far from stable.
His approval on key issues — above all the economy — has gone soft.
Recent data from the left-leaning Center for Working-Class Politics suggests that the less-white working-class blocs who trended toward Trump in the last election are trending away.
But not, the same data show, back to the Democrats — and small wonder.
The party has no economic plan beyond “tax the billionaires,” plus permanently open borders to welcome a flood of illegal labor that depresses low-skill wages.
That’s why Trump, who’ll never run again, remains the defining issue of the midterms for Democrats.
And if it works in November, they’ll dig in deeper afterward: Rally ’round a third pointless impeachment, them maybe a fourth
So Trump will define their 2028 efforts — with the GOP nominee surely painted as purely a puppet of the Mar-a-Lago Menace in deranged conspiracizing throughout 2027.
Serious MAGA definition creep will be incoming as well. Everyone who doesn’t stand to the left of Hakeem Jeffries will get the label, from neocons to independent-thinking Democrats like Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman.
Get ready for Vance is even worse! or Rubio’s the real radical! and They make Trump look moderate! too.
Yes, the GOP will face its own challenges building a post-Trump coalition, but at least its factions will be rallying around what the party should stand for.
Democrats will still be rushing to tell you what they’re against, because the only thing they’re all for is vacuous Trump-hate.
