There is no question that, as each day passes, it becomes more challenging to see the wood for the trees as the administration further attacks the hard-fought-for foundations on which America was built. Amidst the chaos and tsunami of lies and disinformation, each day it becomes more an more difficult to see the light guiding us to the end of what seems a perpetual nightmare.
As a commentator on this turbulent journey, it would be easy to spend my days screaming about injustice and the persecution of the vulnerable, but that would be to miss the mission to deliver a daily assessment of where we are in a particular moment. Filtering out the deluge of detritus pumped into the media space from a finely tuned propaganda machine designed to have us all live in a state of perpetual anxiety.
I’m here to provide a breadcrumb trail through the lies and deceit, keeping everyday Americans focused on the key issues they need to be aware of at a time when nobody knows who to trust. I take my responsibility seriously to provide you with fact-checked, detailed analysis with an unapologetic disregard for balance. The one thing I have learned from doing what I do is that those who do wrong rely on the obsession with ‘balance’ to provide oxygen for their wrongdoing. I’m not that guy.
There is no balance for premeditated malign intent; it is just wrong, and that is the baseline from which I share my thoughts. There are enough apologists for misogyny, racism and homophobia out there without me giving them the ‘benefit of the doubt’. I don’t care if you’re a Marxist, a liberal, a conservative or a fascist. I am a slave to no political position. I simply tell it as I see it, and we can either agree or disagree. That’s how it should work.
Writing about US politics in this moment is a unique challenge. It would be easy to follow the populist reporting route of reinforcing the loathing that is out there for what this administration is doing to America. I’m sure there are plenty of paid subscriptions to be harvested from ringing the populist liberal bell. However, the truth is that, hard though it might be to admit, Democrats are equally part of the problem. Of course, they are not like Trump, and their position supports NOTHING of what this administration is trying to achieve, but that is sadly where the good news ends.
There has never been a better time in modern American history when an opportunity has presented itself to deliver transformational change. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Democratic Party has never had a better chance to present a more compelling vision for America's future. Tragically, they are unable to deliver it because they are on the same dark money leash the Republicans are tied to. Democrats face a structural disconnect from the interests of everyday families and small businesses in America.
Risk aversion has paralysed a Party which has sadly lost its way at the very moment in which the American people need it most. A real prime example is Pete Buttigieg. Those who know my work know I am a huge fan of Pete as a politician. I have sung his praises over and over again because he’s a phenomenal communicator who is willing to speak to voters where they are, be that on Fox News or any other right-wing spaces.
I have, since the election, paid particular attention to his precise positioning to run in 2028, and there is no question that he has decided to sacrifice what should be hard-wired values for political expediency. That, for me, is deeply disappointing. As a man of faith, I am astounded by his position on Gaza, which amounts to nothing short of an incomprehensible word salad from a man who is regarded as a gold standard communicator. This is an alleged man of faith so fearful of AIPAC that he feels unable to advocate for the tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children murdered by Israel. I expected much better than for him than to be muted by fear of upsetting the Jewish lobby. My trust is shaken further by his stance on healthcare as a right. I’m not saying that salvation is beyond reach, but for me, it’s a long road back to the empathetic values that brought him credibility in my eyes.
He, along with too many other Democrats, including those in leadership roles, seems to have decided that America is now a right-wing protectorate and that you can only win by diluting rampant market capitalism to a lower acceptable level of exploitation. This represents a failure to recognise that this is not where I believe the majority of the American people are anymore. The Trump narrative is distorting politics to the point where the Democratic establishment has no sense of vision or ambition; they have fallen into the trap that all they need to do is offer the American people Republican Lite. It's an insult to American voters who sent them a clear message in November that the days of the same old same old Democratic policies are gone.
Few politicians give voters the credit they deserve for the decisions they make at elections. Democrats handed working-class voters to Trump on a silver platter with their obsession over the middle class, because that’s where they thought victory could be gained. Not only that, they took both black and Hispanic voters for granted, and that backfired, too. So here we are again, with more of the same old same old party paralysed by risk aversion and lack of vision, as special interests dictate the limits of any truly socially transformative agenda, to put people first. Because let’s face it, elections are no longer about the people.
There is not one Republican lawmaker who can hold a town hall in their constituency for fear of being booed off the stage. The American people are angrier than ever before, and just a small handful of Democrats are tapping into what is turning into hatred on the ground from Trump’s supporters for what he is doing. I am left speechless by the Democrats’ inability to tap into this simmering internal rebellion across the country.
In 2018, Barack Obama began a revolution. He lit a fire under people-driven elections by pioneering the internet-driven small-dollar donation revolution. Instead of leaning into it during his first term, the Democratic establishment chose to abandon that revolution and seek corporate funding. It was a catastrophic mistake that helped lead us to where we are today, and to add the cherry to the top of the cake, Trump seized Obama’s funding model and ran with it, leaving Democrats to become slaves to corporate interests once again. I know it’s not what people want to hear, but the truth hurts sometimes.
Despite the lies, Trump did NOT win in a landslide in November. In a piece by Ted Siraki from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, he notes:
In 2024, Trump won 312 of 538 electoral votes and the plurality of the popular vote (49.9 per cent), a margin of about 2.3 million votes, down from a more flattering margin of 5 million in the days immediately following the election. As several others have noted, his popular vote share is among the lowest ever
Be in no doubt, this does not paint the whole picture because as the piece goes on to note:
Trump made historic gains among certain demographics this year. He won the highest share of black voters (16 per cent) of any recent Republican candidate, which does not sound impressive until we consider that the last Republican to come close was Ronald Reagan in 1980 (14 per cent). Only Richard Nixon, all the way back in 1960 – four years before the Civil Rights Act was passed – had a more impressive share at 32 per cent.
The disaggregated numbers are even more revealing: Trump doubled his share of black males since 2020 from 12 per cent to 24 per cent.
Trump may have won the greatest share of Latino voters of any Republican candidate ever. His share increased from 29 per cent in 2016 to 46 per cent in 2024, with up to 54 per cent of Hispanic men casting their ballots for Trump.
While it was not a landslide, the numbers should have raised huge flags in the Democratic Party about the shift in the demographics. The final picture was complex to say the least, but I can say without fear of contradiction that Democrats seem deaf to these demographic shifts even in this moment of tyranny.
Regardless of all of the above, the encouraging news is that the American people are more than unhappy with Trump on many policy fronts, and this is only going to get worse as the economy starts to take a hit in the coming months. We are back to the same conclusion: Democrats aren’t going to win; instead, Trump is going to lose (assuming elections take place). There is a big difference between winning an election and inheriting a lost election, even though the outcome is the same.
There is a good reason that Corporate America is not too concerned about who wins a US election, because they own both parties, and that is where, for me, Democrats have a big problem. They can’t get the full endorsement of the electorate if voters believe they are simply voting to support a different set of corporate interests. Sadly, the Democratic Party is just as infected by corporately owned legislators as the Republican Party. They can try and say ‘Yes, but ours are less dangerous corporate interests’. That’s the definition of a party out of touch with the electorate, who have become delusional.
If Trump is confident about his ‘landslide victory’, why is he having to rely on circumventing legislation to implement his agenda? Why did it take threats to the safety of Republican lawmakers and their families and the casting vote of the House Speaker to pass his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’? Why is he hellbent on fixing the midterm elections by redrawing maps and trying to force a new census? Because he knows he’s a busted flush and will be defeated at the ballot box. The only way he can win is to choose his voters, rather than the time-honoured method of voters picking their representatives.
This is the best opportunity in modern history to deliver a proposition to the American people that puts them first and not the rich. It’s time to say that healthcare, affordable housing, childcare, paid family leave, and a living wage should all be rights. It’s time to be bold and share a vision of hope, not simply promote a return to ‘barely surviving’. There is not one average American who would say that each of the above is not what they want.
What they will say, because they’ve had decades of Republican indoctrination, is ‘How will we pay for it? FACT - figures indicate that around $1 trillion is lost to tax evasion alone. To put this into perspective, it would cost around $100 billion a year to eradicate child poverty. It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness. That would leave around $880 billion, which would restore the stolen healthcare to 17 million Americans. It’s time to stop believing the lies and to aspire to create a better tomorrow in which no child goes to bed hungry and no family is left behind.
Given that any incoming administration would benefit from the lowest levels of illegal immigration, it provides an opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration legislation that fixes the long broken system—matching immigration applications to job vacancies and putting in place an asylum system that is fit for purpose.
To create transformative change, you need a transformative leadership team that is not driven by politics for personal gain or trading stocks based on insider knowledge. Leadership prepared to put people before everything else. Until the Democratic Party can prove to the average voter that the days of same old same old self-preservation and self-enrichment are a thing of the past, all that will happen is that Democrats will inherit a Trump loss, not a Democratic victory. The tragedy is, I suspect that the current Democratic establishment is happy to settle for inheriting a Trump loss, not rocking the boat and selling the voters short as usual. Call me an old cynic if you like, but I’ve seen this movie before and didn’t enjoy the ending. Elections are close because voters struggle to distinguish which party will do them the most harm, not who will bring them hope, security and prosperity for the future.
The truth is that power corrupts, and there are very few good guys in American politics these days. Is the opportunity there for change? It is, and there is some phenomenal political talent on the Democratic bench. There is an opportunity for a political revolution, but not under the current Democratic leadership, I’m afraid. I’m all ears if anyone would like to provide a counterargument, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know I’m likely not mistaken. Change is required, and until it arrives, America is destined to flounder and lose its relevance on the global stage. The decline has already started.
Tomorrow, we’ll dive into some more detail on how to build a compelling proposition to win over the support of an exhausted electorate.
I think you have pretty much nailed it. Once Big Money Dark Money took over, it pretty much guaranteed this outcome. It might take generational change before things shift. By then, so much needless suffering…
Bernie Sanders has understood this for decades and proved that millions of Americans want something different.
It seems to me that Bernie Sanders and AOC have been pushing those topics and getting great responses, but little media coverage. If the other Democrats were smart, they would join forces with them! I know Bernie is too old now to run, but he still has a following because he has the right message.