by Victor Davis Hanson
Democrats’ obsessive Trump hatred blinds them to their own unpopularity, making his counter-revolution seem inevitable—and even normal.
Former Clinton strategist James Carville has reinvented himself at age 80 as a sage Democrat podcaster. His predictions—remember, a victorious Kamala Harris?—are usually wrong. He enjoys engaging in public duels with celebrities to gain online clicks and media appearances.
Yet sometimes he appears judicious in his effort to return his party to the Clinton glory days of 1992-2000, before the takeover of the party by the lunatic left. That said, he too has become part of the new left nihilism he supposedly despises.
Most recently, Dr. Carville diagnosed Donald Trump as suffering from tertiary syphilis. Carville’s “proof” was his identification of a bruise on Trump’s much-used shaking hand, along with his supposed brain dementia. As confirmation, Carville described Trump as a “fat f—ing slob” with a “beached whale body.” So, a once top Democratic strategist has gone from his 1992 iconic campaign reminder, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to smearing Trump as a fat slob with syphilis. Carville’s descent sums up his entire party.
Meanwhile, the congressional Democratic opposition finds itself loudly and proudly standing with only 20-30 percent of the American people on matters from biological males competing in female sports to an open border. For years, Democrats claimed the lack of “comprehensive immigration reform” prevented them from securing the border and stopping a 10-12 million influx of illegal aliens. And then they went quiet when Trump, without any new legislation, simply enforced existing immigration statutes and nearly eliminated all illegal entries.
Defeated candidate Kamala Harris is still trying to reassure donors that she did not know how she blew millions of dollars in last-minute 2024 campaign gifts by paying off the likes of Oprah, Al Sharpton, and Cardi B for interviews and endorsements while flying young staffers around the country on rented private jets.
The Democratic Congress under Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries demonstrates their opposition to Trump by cutting videos in which party luminaries promise to stop the “sh-t.” Fellow Democratic congresswomen rivaled them with a worse ad in which they dressed in macho kickboxing attire and clumsily gyrated as if they were punching out their conservative opponents.
At Trump’s first congressional address, most Democrats did not stand when a young survivor of a brain tumor was honored by receiving an honorary Secret Service membership. Instead, many of them displayed hand-held, bingo-like-placards attacking Elon Musk as a thief. Democratic Women’s Caucus members wore pink uniforms, while septuagenarian Rep. Al Green shook his cane, screaming like a lunatic at Trump at the dais. He had to be forcibly escorted out of the joint session of Congress, which otherwise was already frequently interrupted by Democratic heckling and jeering.
What is going on?
Like a drug user who knows his addiction is killing him but cannot quit, the Democratic Party privately understands that the majority of the American people do not buy into their transgender, open border/illegal alien, reckless spending, fanatical green advocacies, and diversity/equity/inclusion racial essentialism.
Yet, they continue their destructive fixations in fear of their own hardcore base. And who are these radicals that run the party?
Some are the students who hit the streets and disrupt campuses to protest for the terrorists of Hamas, or the edgier and even crazier who approve of violent acts, such as youth between 18-29 who poll in favor of Luigi Mangione’s recent assassination of a United Health executive.
And then there are the various racial caucuses who no longer make much attempt to hide their overt racial obsessions and separatism. There is also a growing overt anti-Semitism among many of the DEI crowd who seem to think their own minority status shields them from repercussions. The various public sector and teacher unions are babied. Both can rally money and protests, but otherwise cannot improve dismal schools or incompetent bureaucracies.
So, the current Democratic Party is completely unaware of the irony that to stop Trump, they must become far more unpopular than Trump. We are witnessing the most radical counter-revolution in the last 100 years, as the Trump administration attempts to slash government spending and the federal bureaucracies. It insists on reciprocal tariffs with friendly, neutral, and hostile nations alike. It will vastly expand energy production, end once and for all illegal immigration, fire the DEI industry and its overt racism, reboot public health policies, redirect the Pentagon, and, in general, reexamine almost every entrenched left-wing government institution and policy of the last 50 years.
Normally no party would even attempt such needed but radical changes in a country that in the last three elections split nearly 50/50. To conduct such a rare counterrevolution, a president by nature would have to become controversial and make enemies as he battled opposition in Congress, the courts, the media, and the street. And Trump does all that. Yet in less than 60 days, he has done more to reverse the radical left-wing agenda than even Ronald Reagan did in eight years. And so far, he is continuing on course.
How and why? Part of his audacity is found in the unique personage of Trump, who enjoys controversy. He is a private sector builder who hates delay and obfuscation. He sees his political modus operandi as no different than building a Manhattan high-rise, whose success is predicated on cutting deals, bulldozing obdurate opponents, and delivering a superior product that eventually the public appreciates despite the controversies surrounding its construction and implementation.
But part of Trump’s success is also the gift of the new Democrat Party. It is so foul-mouthed, so embarrassingly infantile and exhibitionist, and so out of touch with the wishes of the American people that at least for now it makes Trump’s counter-revolution seem normal and long overdue—especially after the four-year catastrophe of the nihilist Biden administration.
Rather than agree on anything with Trump, the Democrats will automatically oppose everything he does, even if that means pushing issues that 70 percent of the people don’t want, or play-acting like 1960s spoiled college protestors, or shielding violent illegal aliens, or mouthing now-tired Trump-is-Hitler-Mussolini-Stalin boilerplate.
In a sane world, the Democrat opposition would do two things.
One, for each of Trump’s initiatives that it opposes, it would publish a comprehensive counter agenda, hoping to side with the majority of the people. And when it rarely more or less agreed with Trump, or felt he was on the right side of public opinion, sane Democrats would then offer bipartisan support in hopes of helping the nation, as well as stealing Trump’s thunder by taking credit for popular reforms.
Instead, it is doing neither. Like a spoiled teenager who sticks out his tongue when his allowance is cut, the Democratic Party and its appendages in the media are now screaming profanities, now crying and whining in despair, and now coming up with all sorts of bizarre conspiracies that Musk is a felonious thief, that Trump is a syphilitic, and that the only way to get their way is to destroy all prior protocols of congressional civility.
Again, the irony is that by doing all that and more, they are gifting to Trump a despised alternative to almost everything he is doing. The more their polls fall, the more Democrats believe that they did not act quite juvenilely, obnoxiously, and foully enough.
In sum, if Trump succeeds with his historic counter-revolution, his new anti-New Deal, it will be due in no small part to those who hate him and thereby reveal themselves to be innately hateful.
And Democrats almost daily apparently want the American people to witness their venom—and thereby to be revolted by them.
Victor Davis Hanson
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/10/trumps-democratic-allies/
