Are Democrats Learning a Lesson?

Axios, a Democratic Party outlet, reports on the turmoil now roiling the party:

Congressional Democrats’ internal divisions over how to combat President Trump surfaced with a fury Wednesday after the president was repeatedly heckled and disrupted during his speech to Congress.

“How to combat President Trump,” not whether Democrats should sometimes cooperate with Trump, or why Trump could be right on some issues.

Why it matters: The party is in a rut, stumbling on finding the most effective counterattack to Trump’s full-bore assault on the federal bureaucracy. That struggle played out on primetime television Tuesday night.

Is Trump engaged in a “full-bore assault on the federal bureaucracy”? Sort of: He definitely wants to shrink it. But mostly, he wants to bring it to heel, so that it is serving him, not trying to undermine him and his policies. That is his constitutional duty.

Democrats have been bombarded by grassroots activists demanding they scrap norms and traditions in favor of bare-knuckle political brawling.

The Democrats’ grassroots activists are bitter, unhappy people who have taken up far-left politics to bring meaning in their lives. To follow their lead would be suicidal. Also, the activists’ assumption that they would come out on top in a world of “bare-knuckle political brawling” is touching.

A senior House Democrat told Axios that some moderates are angry at progressives for their outbursts, but added that “people are pissed at leadership too. … Everyone is mad at everyone.”

Among those angry at the far leftists is John Fetterman:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), in a post on X, lamented what he called a “sad cavalcade of self owns and unhinged petulance” and told Axios: “I don’t think that’s the way forward.”

But that attitude isn’t universal, and it seems to be more a function of political insecurity rather than ideology:

Several House Democrats noted that most of the disruptors were mostly progressives from safe districts — arguing that swing-district voters were turned off by their outbursts.

Congressional Democrats are nearly all on the far left, the difference is whether they conceal the extent of their leftism to be electable in moderate districts. Swing-district Democrats are angry at safe-district Democrats for blowing their cover.

There is more at the link, which is publicly accessible. For me, the takeaway is that the conflict in the Democratic Party is over optics and political strategy. Some Democrats think it is a bad look to refuse to clap for, say, Laken Riley’s family. But evidently there are no Democrats who think their party has actually been wrong on the issue of illegal immigration, or, to take another instance, advocating for men in women’s sports. Until the Democrats get serious about issues, not just image, they will continue to wander in the wilderness.