Once upon a time in America, the Republican Party devolved into a rightwing authoritarian regime that promoted white supremacist conspiracies, systematically dismantled democratic norms, and adulated a criminal vulgarian who once partied with a notorious pedophile.
Rather than acting as a robust opposition movement, the Democratic establishment, led by feckless somnambulists beholden to corporate money, decided to behave like Vichy collaborators. For more than a decade, they chose civility and assumed playing possum—a suggestion given by crypt keeper James Carville—would be the best course of action. The leadership opted for prevent defense, despite losing both the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, and warned the country that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy.
As the Democratic Party’s favorability plummeted and their own voters derided them as spineless and ineffective, party leaders clung to restoration and moderation over transformation and progressivism. After spending millions in search of the “liberal Joe Rogan,” they were gifted a once-in-a-lifetime candidate, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won the New York City mayoral race by championing affordability, challenging billionaires, and embracing wokeness and diversity.
So what did Vichy Democrats do?
They endorsed the disgraced politician Andrew Cuomo instead and played footsie with shameless Islamophobic attacks against the first Muslim mayor of New York City. In their desperation to destroy Mamdani and his populist message, they even unleashed former President Bill Clinton, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City, to try and take him down.
They failed.
After Mamdani’s victory last November, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, offered only muted praise, preferring the company (and hugs) of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—an alleged war criminal—Silicon Valley donors, and MAGA reek Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State.
Meanwhile, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, continued to support AIPAC, despite revelations that the pro-Israel lobbying group funded by rightwing billionaires spent $2.3 million against Tom Malinowski, a pro-Israel moderate Democrat, in a primary race in New Jersey’s Eleventh Congressional District.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin chose to withhold the audit of the failed 2024 presidential election, despite promising his base that the results would be released. An Axios report revealed that the Biden Administration’s full-throated support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza was a major reason that Democratic voters stayed home.
It also bears remembering that former Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris didn’t break away from President Joe Biden’s failed foreign policy and instead supported a politically suicidal decision to ban Palestinians from speaking at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Even as Trump unleashed armed and masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to act as his personal Gestapo and terrorize American cities, many Democrats refused to embrace the call to “Abolish ICE.”
After witnessing the brutal murders of Renée Good and Alex at the hands of ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, respectively, a majority of Americans soured on ICE, an agency that had become notorious for recruiting unqualified extremists from the fringes of society. For the first time, a plurality of Americans embraced “Abolish ICE” and questioned why their taxpayer dollars were funding a rogue entity that harassed, tortured, and kidnapped citizens and immigrants with impunity.
However, “moderate” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, whom the Party chose to respond to Trump’s unhinged 2025 address to Congress, refused to embrace “Abolish ICE,” stating, “You need law enforcement.” That same “law enforcement” agency then announced plans to spend $38 billion to convert warehouses across the country into concentration camps, like the one that already exists in Dilley, Texas, where media and protesters recorded the wails and cries of children kept in squalid, inhumane conditions.
Nonetheless, Democratic leadership persisted in being weak possums, instead opting for “Rein in ICE,” without articulating a robust, progressive vision for immigration reform.
When it came to fighting the oligarchy, Democratic centrists like Slotkin argued that the slogan was too vague for average Americans. Progressive leaders Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, decided to test that message by touring the country, including the Rust Belt, which is populated with the magical, white, centrist voters that the Democratic establishment so desperately coveted. These white voters, including Republicans and independents, enthusiastically embraced taxing billionaires, reflecting a growing rage against the elite Epstein class who grew wealthier at the expense and suffering of the majority.
The Democratic establishment continued to sideline rising progressive candidates in favor of corporate candidates, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, who refused to embrace a wealth tax and insisted that his “big tent” included billionaires. Unfortunately, Newsom’s tent wasn’t large enough to include transgender people, whom he threw under the bus during one of his numerous “civil” conversations with rightwing extremists like the late Charlie Kirk and the ghoul Steve Bannon.
In a CNN interview, Newsom argued that Democrats should be more “culturally normal” and stop focusing on pronouns. Apparently, that could include partying with pedophile billionaires, disavowing climate change, and praising Adolf Hitler. Newsom did find time to agree with paid rightwing propagandist Ben Shapiro that Israel was not committing genocide, putting himself at odds with many Democratic voters and a majority of Americans.
The Democratic establishment’s “big tent” did, however, expand to include “pro-growth” organizations like Next American Era, funded by Silicon Valley broligarchs advancing artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and anti-regulation policies. Nothing says helping the average Rust Belt American than promoting the talking points and policies of billionaires Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Alex Karp, who are openly committed to replacing democracy with a techno-fascist “utopia.”
With Vichy Democrats like these, who needs MAGA?
Fortunately, a majority of Americans decided they were tired of being permanently hijacked by a Democratic Party that refused to evolve and respond to the challenges of the moment. Harnessing their numbers and grassroots momentum, they championed progressive, populist policies, organized boycotts against complicit corporations, and challenged entrenched Democrats in primary races.
Whether these efforts will result in meaningful progress toward justice, equality, and freedom or be stymied by corporate Democrats in bed with billionaires and a rightwing authoritarian regime remains to be seen.