Is The Democratic "Strategy" Now ... Just To Become Republican?

We have a few examples of this of late.

It is literally amazing to me how much time and energy is consumed on “culture war” topics, given that most rational people realize it’s a scam and a distraction from what really matters in life, but we’re also emotional creatures who want to belong to specific tribes, so I get it in that sense. There were different flashpoints in 2024, with most people thinking or saying the election was about “the economy,” but most speeches and ads seemed to be about issues like transgender sports participation, and then guys like Elon and Vance and Stephen Miller seemed to view “the mandate” as about dismantling the federal government.

Although Trump’s popular margin (1.4%) was small historically, it all seemed like a mandate because he won all the swing states we kept discussing for months — and in that way, it seems (“optics”) that the Democrats got destroyed. That created a big post-mortem discussion about what to do and where to go. A lot of it seems to be a flop so far, notably Hakeem Jeffries saying “I don’t know what we can do,” and some of the reactions to the Congressional address, I.e. not cheering for a kid with cancer.

I think we all kinda sorta knew we were headed to this place, but now it seems like the Democratic strategy is to basically be like a softer version of what Republicans are under Trump. A few examples in recent days include:

(After the paywall on this, we’ll talk about the HR Lady problem, the cringe problem, the man problem, Andrew Cuomo, “Tampon” Tim Walz, and a bunch of other things. Feel free to part with $3.30 to $5 a month and come along.)