Donald Trump has wasted no time making his mark in his first week back in office, signing executive orders, delivering speeches and outlining his plans. Meanwhile, the Democrats are still absorbing their election loss in November and trying to chart a path forward. But despite the prevailing view that they are in trouble, their situation may not be as dire as it seems.
I will be shocked if the Democrats learn anything from the last election. I fully expect the next election (assuming we even have one) that they’ll be running on the exact same right of center platform that they’ve been using for the last few decades. The only way they win elections at this point is if Trump fucks up the economy enough that a significant chunk of his previous supports make protest votes against him. Odds of that happening are not great.
They certainly did learn something. Something very, very important… to them. They learned that by moving far enough right they could rake in huge piles of money from the donor class that wants to keep progressives under heel. That’s what they learned.
Let’s be honest, they learned that in 2016.
We’ll have a pretty good indicator in a couple days when the party elects its chair.