Divided they stand

 New York

As the malevolence and incoherence of the Trump administration continue to amaze, Democrats are taking heart from the popular revulsion against the Mad Hatter of Mar-a-Lago. The media class is chattering excitedly about anti-Trump momentum after special Congress elections in conservative Kansas and Georgia resulted in a narrow Republican victory in the former and a run-off in the latter. Last week, Paul Kane of the Washington Post cited this as proof ‘that Democrats have galvanised the anti-Trump activism of the past three months into votes at the ballot box’. Last Monday, the New York Times went even further by publishing a piece on the already crowded field of Democratic presidential challengers for the 2020 election, a group of politicians the paper said were ‘uniformly emboldened by Trump’s perceived vulnerability’.

I’m as horrified by Trump as the next liberal, but I think the establishment media have got it wrong again, just like last November when they said Hillary Clinton couldn’t lose. What they can’t see is that the Democrats, far from presenting a unified opposition, are more divided than ever, and this intra-party divisiveness augurs ominously in favour of a second Trump administration. Evidence is everywhere that the Democrats in opposition are already proving to be a failure. Much has been written about the non-accomplishments and confusion of Trump’s first 100 days in office, but little is said about the utter blurriness of the rival position — the lack of a clear platform to reclaim blue-collar voters with white skin who, in just enough numbers, lifted Trump to victory in the crucial states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. What do the Democrats agree on? Only the hope that Trump will collapse of his own ignorance, absurdity and corruption, which is not really a winning proposition, since his eccentricities and ill-gotten billions seemed to work well during the election.