Cliff’s Note: I did a Special Live—in addition to Amped Up this week w/ Joe Walsh—with former GOP strategist turned populist Dem (at least in policy), Reed Galen. Watch/read how it went down!
The Broken System
What we’re watching isn’t politics-as-usual, it’s a demolition derby of democracy. The car’s on fire, the driver’s drunk, and somehow half the crowd is still cheering.
Reed Galen and I traced how the hell we got here.
And why Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, keep tripping over their own di…shoelaces, yes, shoelaces, that’s what I was gonna say—at the very moment history demands some serious combat boots.
Reed and I come from different teams: he once wore the GOP jersey, I have worn a Democratic one. But even from opposing sidelines we saw the same thing: the empty husk of a system increasingly failing most Americans.
Institutions that once worked for middle-class families? Gone.
Gutted, or sold to the highest bidder. Rent control, unions, actual government investment in regular people replaced by Uber jobs and GoFundMe health care.
So now you’ve got families making six figures who still can’t afford daycare or college for their kids. Working people counting pennies at the grocery story, and feeling that any time now…tonight they’re gonna party like it’s1929.
Meanwhile the D.C. crowd treats this like terrible weather—an unfortunate natural occurrence, but hey, what can you do?
Oh and don’t forget to pass that multi-zeroed campaign check from the Lambda Lambda Lambada founding member over there dressed in incel chic, Zuckerberg.
The Anger That Fueled Trump
Leave people to rot long enough, and shockingly they’ll get kinda pissed and vote for the guy with a blowtorch and a bullhorn even if he is hte world’s biggest asshole.
That’s Trump. Not a genius, nor a savior—I’m not even convinced, necessarily, a homo sapien. But a helluva rage vessel.
Trump didn’t build anything; he channeled the fury build up by decades of economic policies that legalized and promoted predatory, self-enriching, job-destroying, end-stage capitalism.
Decades of status-quo politicians had to bulldoze towns, emptying them of people faster than Stephen Miller’s five-head emptied itself of hair. They, quite purposely, shipped jobs that sustained our working and middle classes—the strongest the world had ever seen from the 1930s-80s—overseas.
Working-class Americans were left to pick up the pieces of broken careers, broken families and broken dreams. As they stared into the abyss and alcoholism, opioids, and other self destructive behaviors.
Don’t get me wrong, they had and have agency, they’re not free of blame. Think of what Native Americans and Black Americans have been put through in this country.
But my point is no American should ever be abandoned at the altar of some already-rich asshole. Or so that locust farm known as Walmart could ooze into town-after-town suffocating every small business, entrepreneur and market in its path.
As Reed said: if you’ve got nothing left to lose, you’ll take the angry guy. Even if the angry guy’s an orange, semi-coherent con artist who can’t spell “constitutional” without a Sharpie.
Democrats Need A Message!
This is where my blood pressure spikes.
Democrats have the most obvious villains in human history. Absolute f*king weirdos Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Two right-wing, wealth-snorting wankers building rocket ships that crash—with our money—and a huge digital panopticon to spy on all humans in America.
All while working with and/or closely advising Trump to cut SNAP benefits and tear up your health care—which will kill 50,000 more Americans each year.
Yes, you read that right: kill. Backstabbing billionaire bigots hoarding yachts the size of Silicon Valley with the funds ripped from Americans now needing to skip insulin doses.
This is what we call, in the business: building a contrast. It should be easy.
These are comic-book supervillains who quite literally have supported and worked closely with President increasingly crazier Gary Busey to take money out of our pockets. Endlessly greedy droogs who, to quote Vishnu from The Bhagavad Gita, can rightly be described as “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”
And what do Democratic congressional leaders do?
They mumble about “protecting subsidies.” No villains. No heroes. No explanation of how this hurts you, who’s doing it, why it’s happening and who is gonna stop them no matter what it takes (with the exception of one great ad by Bernie Sanders and AOC).
Just oatmeal. Pure oatmeal. And oatmeal doesn’t win knife fights.
The Stakes: Fascism or Reform
Reed asked the big one: Is Trump just a buffoon, or an actual existential threat? Here’s the answer: YES. Mussolini, Idi Amin, Pol Pot—all considered buffoons during their rise…until it was no longer funny.
Trump threatening generals to pledge loyalty to him instead of the Constitution? That’s fascism. That’s the playbook.
And Democratic Leaders respond by clutching “institutional norms” like a toddler hugging a broken toy while the house burns down.
What We Need
We’ve been here before. FDR in the 1930s looked at a system in ruins and rebuilt it from scratch. He made government matter again, by reforming institutions that could be reformed and creating whole new institutions that hadn’t existed to protect people. That built an enduring coalition that lasted for a half century.
That’s the kind of boldness Democrats need right now. Tie economic justice to saving democracy, it’s not difficult, Trump and his billionaires are trying to destroy both.
Stop chasing every dumb Republican culture-war shiny object. Lead with wages, jobs, health care, housing.
Sherrod Brown gets it. Mallory McMorrow gets it. Hallie Shoffner gets it. Graham Platner gets it. And Democratic Leadership needs to get out of the way.
The Bottom Line
The templates are there. History is screaming our name. The villains are gift-wrapped — creepy tech bros with too much money, weird obsessions, draped in Trumpism and with zero conscience.
All that’s missing is the courage to fight and to message the match. Without it, Democrats won’t just lose another election. We may lose the whole damn republic.
So here’s the deal: Democrats must be presured every minute of every day to support the best candidates, the ones with vision and charisma, not the ones with whom the champagne-flute crowd feels most comfortable in a room.
If you’re as sick of waiting for them to grow a spine as I am, then join us, amplify the message, and help force their hand. Subscribe to Blue Amp—because raising hell is the only way we win.
—Cliff
