I live in a +26 GOP Congressional District where the primary is pretty much the general election and Democrat frustration is just something we deal with because they can’t see a lane where they can elect ANYONE. So when recently a group called “Indivisible*” started up here and had 180 people show up to a meeting, they were thinking, “We’re back!” There have also been a couple of anti-DOGE protests that have drawn a few people and a couple of immigration related protests that happened and then disappeared.
On DOGE, the overall cuts have only been about $160B—which is a rounding error on a $7.4T budget and the bigger payoff with DOGE will be the ongoing structural changes to funding and again, that will be in the Congress’ court. On immigration, in our community, we have always cooperated with ICE and we have a well established and involved immigrant to citizen community that didn’t spread the fear and lies so things settled down quickly.
Bottom line—the only people who are being deported already have deportation orders and are the real problems and the average person agrees with removal in those cases. On DOGE, it hasn’t been as aggressive as I would like, but again, Congress has to do their job. That brings me to my point. There are legitimate issues Democrats could be talking about. Concern about tariffs and the economy are a couple. They are, however, choosing to talk about the things that only 20% of people agree with them on. Here’s why.
After the 2020 election, the GOP was listening to the loudest voices and not necessarily the ones that represent most GOP voters. They controlled the narrative and because of that, we thought we were going to have a “Red Wave.” Remember that? And we should have, because there were legitimate issues like the debacle in Afghanistan, inflation and unchecked illegal immigration. Instead, the Trump machine and GOP decision makers backed a bunch of “stop the steal” candidates and the average GOP, independent and right leaning Democrat couldn’t relate and they didn’t vote for us and there was no “Red Wave.”
Clearly, the Democrats are making the same mistake and I say go for it!
Around the country, including my home state of Georgia, activist Democrats are shouting down their own elected officials like Sen. Jon Ossoff—demanding he listen to them and getting him to act markedly different in campaign events than he does on the dias. He’s so afraid of being primaried from the left, that he’s abandoning his one strength—working with both sides. For a man who chooses his words more carefully than anyone I know, it’s got to be disconcerting to him.
Think about it. People who are attending events or demanding events right now are activists that might represent 10% of your party. You need these people for volunteers, donors, grassroots—but they are not how you win and if you cater to their views, you will lose. I don’t care if you do it on the Republican side or the Democrat side.
But I say, don’t learn the lesson. Do what the GOP did in 2022 and what might have been a win for you, will end up the same way. Keep doing what you’re doing and we will sit back and watch. We learned from our mistakes and won in 2024. I think we can keep it up and win in 2026.
Presdient Donald Trump is measured in his responses and I’m told he’s going to let the primary process play out before he puts his finger on the scale. A lesson he learned from 2022 while Democrats who think they will run for president in 2028 scream and demand no safe harbor for Republicans—they demand thwarting them at every turn. To my Democrat friends I ask, “In your world of TDS, when President Donald Trump is the reasonable voice in the room compared to your strident, go get the pitchfork voices, how do you square that?”
*Not to be confused with my book from 2006, “Indivisible, Uniting Values for a Divided America.” You should read it.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2025/5/1290945/democrat-disarray-learning-from-mistakes