— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) April 16, 2025 at 11:34 AM
All that delusion was destroyed yesterday by Sen. Van Hollen. He did it. On one flight he demonstrated more love and admiration for true American principles than the litany of braindead Democrats who think it’s bad politics to say ‘Trump is defying a 9-0 Supreme Court order’ ever have. NBC News is out today with a report on the latest rift in the Democratic Party, the biggest one that has ever divided who is actually an ally to the fight for American values, and who just wants to find the right words to lie to the American people to make them think they are.
California governor and Charlie Kirk fanboy Gavin Newsom called what a very conservative Reagan appointee on the 4th circuit wrote was shocking “to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear” a “distraction of the day.” Newsom even seemed complementary of Trump’s demand he be given King-like powers over Garcia by calling it “the art of distraction.” Given Newsom’s full-blown implosion since the 2028 Democratic presidential primary very much began, it seems like he is running to be the president of Vichy France. If the Democrats choose this craven and cynical hairpiece as their leader in 2028, this country will truly be beyond repair.
Other Vichy politicians like the classic brave anonymous Democrat told NBC News that “I think it’s a mistake to focus Democratic opposition on border and immigration because that’s playing on Trump’s turf and on an issue where people continue to support how he’s handling.”
This coward who is too afraid to put their name to their words is an idiot no person in their life should take seriously. As I wrote this week, Trump’s immigration policies are not popular. The pollster G. Elliott Morris proved that he is a better pollster than most of the Vichy Democrats rely on, detailing how across twelve immigration policies, Trump has lost ground on ten of them where they now sit at net negative approval relative to the start of his administration. NBC News cites their new poll suggesting that “majorities of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the southern border with Mexico (53%) and ‘deporting illegal immigrants’ (52%)” but the moment you scratch the surface and include phrases like “if it separates families” in those questions, those majorities fall apart.
This has long been true and anyone who still doesn’t understand this extremely basic and very common polling dynamic is proving themselves too incompetent to be in politics. If anything, the main reason for the disconnect between the topline figures and the detailed questions underneath the hood is because the Democrats refuse to touch an issue they clearly have room to push back on. Why wouldn’t some people think Trump is doing a good job on immigration when the Vichy Democrats themselves endorsed his policy on the floor of Congress?
Not to mention that Trump’s deportation plan is about the economy, stupid, as he himself has acknowledged that if he pulled it off to its most depraved degree, the missing estimated 42 percent of U.S. crop workers who are undocumented would collapse the farm economy. Trump giving farmers a break on deportations is proof that he understands the economic angle he could be attacked on better than the Vichy Dems constitutionally afraid of this or any fight do.
Vichy Dems whining anonymously to reporters are declaring they still fail to learn the lesson that Karl Rove taught them earlier this century about the immense value of turning a politicians’ strength into a weakness. If you are a Democrat who believes that attacking Trump on his lawless immigration policy is bad politics, all you are doing is declaring to the entire world “I wet my pants at the mere thought of conflict.” The Vichy Democrats only want to win political fights that are tailor-made for their very narrow conception of reality, which is why their preference is to wait around for Republicans to destroy the economy and then pick up the pieces and declare themselves geniuses.
Vichy Democrats do not understand politics and they never have. The last non-incumbent Democrat to win a presidential election that did not take place in the midst of a recession was Jimmy Carter elected in the wake of Richard Nixon’s impeachment in 1972 thanks to about 10,000 votes in Ohio. There is zero proof that the post-LBJ generation of Democrats has any idea what good political strategy actually is, other than the eternal maxim that it’s the economy stupid, and they think they invented a concept proven throughout history because of an election where they got 43 percent of the vote.
Chris Van Hollen did something genuinely courageous and intensely American yesterday. Polling be damned, he did the right thing for a man he has been entrusted to represent in defiance of a genuine King-like power grab being condemned by the courts. The core problem of the Democratic Party is that the Vichy Dems have rightfully convinced everyone that the party clearly does not believe in anything and will shift in whatever direction their babybrains think their interests lie. Even the MAGAchuds swallowing Trump’s propaganda whole don’t doubt where Van Hollen’s priorities stand, and there is something to say for a political party defining itself through clear moral acts. This was a core ethos of the Civil Rights Era and what former Rep. John Lewis went through that the Vichy Dems pretend to respect while betraying everything he worked for.
The last time the Democratic Party forcefully advocated for liberal and progressive principles and put them into action, they ruled for (mostly) thirty years and established huge majorities in Congress that lasted through the Reagan era. This generation of Vichy Dems threw all that away for their narrow K-street-driven conception of reality, and with any hope, Chris Van Hollen has begun to shatter the lies they tell themselves and everyone else. It’s time to pick sides in the Democratic Party, and anyone not on Van Hollen’s side is now by definition, on Trump’s.
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