What do you do when there’s no one left to hate?
Over the span of four years, the Democrats constructed one of the greatest cultural monuments to hate in this nation’s history. It is difficult to measure the sheer number of hours that CNN and MSNBC dedicated to Trump conspiracy theories, the gigs of podcasts, the millions of ad dollars, and the total extent to which their entire narrative circulated around hating one single man.
This cult of anti-personality unified the party, enabling its radicals to adopt policies that were as insane as they were incomprehensible, from police defunding to critical race theory to lockdowns, and the elevation of two politicians, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who are short on palatable personalities, riding on the coattails of a program to militarize the capital, federalize elections, pack the Supreme Court, add two states, and usher in a virtual dictatorship.
There was only one problem with their plan: President Trump was no longer in the White House.
The systemic shock from that reality is still setting in. Gallup reports a swing from a heavy nine point Democrat party preference to a “rare five-point Republican edge “. The swing, “among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter”, parallels the massive collapse of Biden’s approval ratings, the 90% drop in CNN’s ratings, and similar declines among the media.
They’re all interrelated. The Democrats and their media are waking up from a Trump Derangement Syndrome overdose. After years of getting high on hate, they’re crashing down to earth.
Democrats killed the goose that had laid all their golden eggs. They built everything around hating Trump, much as they did around hating Nixon, and ended up with a Carter rerun.
Who could have predicted that one?
Their only hope now is the return of Trump or a hate object that may prove equally compelling, whether it’s Ron DeSantis or that guy at the gas station who refuses to wear a mask. But to utilize that hate object, to turn it into the focus of an anti-personality cult, they have to lose first.
Hatred of the kind that their movements are built on can only be justified when it’s wielded by those who claim to be out of power. And such claims, despite their best efforts, are only marginally plausible when they’re not actually sitting in the halls of power. All the rhetoric about threats to democracy don’t amount to much when coming from the people with all the power.
To be reborn in the fires of hate, the Democrats and their leftist flank need to lose. And after losing, they will rise again, animated by hatred, asserting that they are the advocates for the wretched of the earth, denouncing the criminal tyranny of those who beat them at the ballot box, organizing marches, protests, and rallies that promise to hate their way to power once again.