U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) holds a protest sign with fellow Democrats as U.S. President Donald Trump address a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4.Win McNamee/Reuters
Most Americans had already gone to bed by the time Michigan Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin delivered her party’s formal response to Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress. The long-winded President, who knows more about effective television and social media than any of his predecessors, likely planned it that way.
So, instead of Ms. Slotkin’s even-keeled reply to the perpetually off-kilter Mr. Trump, most Americans who tuned in for his speech or watched blurbs of it on their social media feeds saw only images of 77-year-old Democratic Representative Al Green waving his cane defiantly at the President while his colleagues, dressed in hot-pink suits, held up paddles bearing messages such as “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid.” Really mature.
Or they saw images of Representative Rashida Tlaib, wearing a keffiyeh-motif blouse, repeatedly scrawling barbs at Mr. Trump on a mini-whiteboard, including “No king!” and “That’s a lie!” Really mature.
Most Democrats also remained seated and sulked when Mr. Trump introduced the mother and sister of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student killed in early 2024 by a Venezuelan migrant with a long rap sheet, and other invited presidential guests whose moving personal stories merited unanimous respect and recognition. Really mature.
The pink outfits were supposed to represent feminist resistance to Mr. Trump’s backward policies – kind of in the same way the 2023 movie Barbie was supposed to be a fierce depiction of female empowerment, back when DEI was still a big thing, but just ended up doing more for sales of the iconic Mattel doll than gender equality.
“We decided to use a strong colour because what’s happening now is more extreme than ever,” Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, head of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said. More people were probably struck by Melania Trump’s US$5,500 grey Dior blazer than the women dressed in pink, as if they were literally headed to see Barbie after the speech.
Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who is fast becoming so much of a maverick within his own party that he may soon have to add a MAGA hat to his usual wardrobe of oversized hoodies and floppy shorts, was disgusted by the spectacle his own colleagues put on. “A sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance,” he wrote on X. “It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained. We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to – and it may not be the winning message.”
This is what has become of the Democratic Party in the wake of Kamala Harris’s snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory performance in the 2024 election – a party unsure of anything but its own moral superiority. It has no solutions to offer American voters sucked in by Mr. Trump’s snake-oil sales pitch. It writhes with Pavlovian predictability at each attempt by the President to seize on wedge issues to distract from his own obvious weaknesses.
Last month, a group of worried centrist Democrats met to commiserate over their party’s current obsession with “ideological purity tests” and “over-prioritization of social issues.” They produced a scathing document that deplored the party’s “faculty lounge” mentality and its lack of a clear economic vision.
“Democrats are often viewed as judgmental, out-of-touch, and dismissive of those without elite education or progressive views. This makes the party seem disconnected from everyday people,” according to a document summarizing the meeting’s conclusions and obtained by Politico. “Activist groups and progressive staffers push unpopular cultural positions, making it seem like Democrats are more extreme than they actually are.”
Ms. Slotkin’s reply to Mr. Trump’s speech offered some hope to centrist Democrats that their party may not be too far gone. As a moderate elected to the Senate in November in a swing state that Mr. Trump won in both 2016 and 2024, she represents the kind of solutions-based politics that Democrats need to embrace to win back the House of Representatives in 2026.
“We need to bring down the price of things we spend the most money on: Groceries. Housing. Health care. Your car,” she insisted, before launching into a level-headed critique of Elon Musk’s current DOGE rampage. “We need more efficient government. You want to cut waste, I’ll help you do it. But change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.”
Ms. Slotkin is a whip-smart former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who speaks fluent Arabic. Yet, she remains an outlier in a party that increasingly resembles a campus protest movement.
Veteran Democratic operative James Carville thinks the party just needs to wait out Mr. Trump’s current hyperactive phase and let the train wreck unfold. At this point in his mandate, Democrats just need to “roll over and play dead.”
Maybe. If they keep up their current antics, the party may well end up plain dead.