Democrats Keep Trying To Offer An ‘Alternative’ To Trump. That’s Their Problem

The  Federalist 

Two recent articles have a couple quotes from prominent Democrat strategists that inadvertently capture the filthy rut the party continues to wallow in. They even use the same word.

In The Hill on Monday, campaign strategists Doug Schoen and Carly Cooperman declared that “the heart of Democrats’ dilemma is an inability to articulate their own path forward” and a failure at “communicating their own credible and attractive alternative” to President Trump’s agenda. Over in The New York Times one day before, pollster Celinda Lake almost identically said, “The biggest thing the Democrats need to do is not the negative but the positive. We have to offer an alternative.”

Sounds like a plan! So what’s the “alternative” to securing the southern border, cracking down on inner-city crime, and promoting affordable energy production? What’s the alternative to using real U.S. muscle to force a peace deal in the Middle East? What’s the alternative to insisting foreign leaders open their markets to American-made products, lest they pay penalties? (And in the meantime, they certainly are paying.) What’s the alternative to a military that prioritizes fighting capability over “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion”?

We’ve seen what the alternative to all of that looks like. It was called the Biden years. Or, if you made less than $250,000 per year, you might have more commonly known it as “Is this hell?”

Here’s an idea for Democrats though: Not everything needs an alternative. A lot of problems, maybe most of them, have one practical solution. To pretend otherwise is to play with real people’s money, their safety, and that of their families. It turns out it’s not very popular to do that.

It’s also not popular to pretend that problems aren’t problems. Recall all of 2024 when Democrat leaders, plus their very helpful friends in the dying media, swore that crime, prices, and illegal border crossings were “down.” That was a lie or, if we feel like being generous, it was misleading. Whatever you want to call it, it didn’t work for Democrats. They lost, and the party remains historically unpopular. Yes, even after calling every attempt by the president to fix those very problems “fascist.”

Democrats can keep spinning their wheels, trying to concoct an “alternative” solution to a problem that only has one. Or they could not and just be pro-American for a change.

Dems Finally Get Their Own Nazi...and Their Reactions Have Been a Mess

Townhall 

What a nightmare for Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who got hurled into the furnace this week after it was revealed he has Nazi-themed tattoos. These aren’t allegations; he admitted to it. He claims that he got them on a night of drunkenness while he served in the US Marine Corps in Eastern Europe. When you’re go-to line is ‘I’m not a secret Nazi,’ a Chernobyl-like public relations meltdown is on the horizon. The tattoo is located on his chest (via Axios):

Platner drew the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an anti-establishment outsider, but his campaign is already trying to clean up recently resurfaced Reddit posts where he espoused offensive views about Black people and sexual assault victims. 

Platner's campaign shared video with Pod Save America of him singing shirtless that exposed a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the "Totenkopf," a symbol used by Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS). 

The move was intended to get ahead of opposition research, and the GOP's Senate campaign arm seized on the images, accusing Platner of having a "Nazi tattoo."

Driving the news: Platner said in an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America that was released on Monday that the video was from his brother's wedding, where he lip-synced Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball." 

"I am not a secret Nazi," Platner told Vietor, adding that he got the tattoo in Croatia while deployed and was "very inebriated." Platner said he and his fellow Marines chose "a terrifying looking skull and crossbones." 

Oh, it gets better—he had it removed:

My Lord, drop out, man.  

The reactions have been both hilarious and disturbing. There have been elite memes mocking this man, but also a slew of Democrats and liberal hosts who have defended the Nazi tattoos. It’s almost as if they’re frustrated; they got owned after trying to cast Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a Nazi for his Celtic cross tattoos. It is also a bit predictable that liberals wouldn’t know a real Nazi since they’re so historically illiterate. If Platner were a Republican, you bet this would be more of a story, but he got caught, he’s confessed, and now there’s only one thing for these people to do: defend this stuff. 

Ex-MSNBC host Krystal Ball tweeted, “For me personally I’ll take a candidate with a regrettable tattoo over one who has steadfastly supported a genocide.” 

Yeah, peak idiocy, and she got wrecked over it. The “regrettable tattoo” only has its links to the most infamous genocide, but whatever. 

Congressional Dems' Announcement About What They Plan to Do to Demonize ICE Raids Is Plain Evil

RedState 

I truly think Democrats have lost their minds. 

Everything they do is funneled through the lens of how much they hate President Donald Trump and how they want power back. They don't seem to care about who they hurt in the process with their actions, or how the American public may view them for their embrace of radical positions and illegal aliens. 

But what Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) announced on Wednesday, with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass standing next to him, was vile, even for them. 

"Over the course of the next couple of weeks, the Oversight Committee will be launching on their website a master ICE-tracker," Garcia said. "We're going to essentially be tracking every single instance that we can verify that the community will send us information on." Garcia is the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. 

This is insane, incredibly wrong, and is obstructing law enforcement. 

This demonization of ICE has already resulted in many attacks on ICE agents. Among the attacks were the attack on the Dallas ICE facility and a planned ambush of ICE agents at a facility in Alvarado, Texas. And it isn't just agents who are in danger. Three detainees were shot, and two died at the Dallas ICE facility, during a shooting; a Texas police officer was injured in the Alvarado case. 

As Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote on his X account, there are only a couple of reasons one would do what Democrats are doing. 

White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson reminded everyone that the shooter in Dallas used an ICE tracking app, and asked, "What are the Democrats trying to do here?" 

Attorney General Pam Bondi condemned them for putting agents at risk and said anyone would be prosecuted for attacks on agents. 

@TheJusticeDept has ZERO tolerance for violence against law enforcement — we will prosecute any person who physically assaults our agents.

But this is how off the rails Democrats are now. There is no excuse they can offer for this; they are fully embracing illegality and fighting law enforcement. They're making it easier for cartels that put bounties on ICE agents. 

This needs to be shut down and condemned. Failing that, people need to flood it with fake information to make it worthless. This needs to be investigated and people held accountable. 

This is what Democrats are focusing on: interfering in law enforcement to help illegal aliens. Not rebuilding the homes that burned down in the California fires. Not opening the government, and not doing anything to help the American people. 

How can anyone vote for people who act this crazy? 

This Portland Police Response to Anti-ICE Incident Shows Exactly Why the National Guard Is Being Sent in

RedState 

Journalist Nick Sortor caught on video one of the big reasons that there is such an ongoing problem with Antifa and the anti-ICE crew in Portland: the local law enforcement/government has not taken the situation in hand. 

He reported that some of the group were "beaming spotlights" into the eyes of DHS agents at the Portland ICE facility. First, they were hiding behind a sign. You can see those people running behind the row of Portland Police who are standing there for cover. Then, one of the agents comes out to talk with the Portland Police officers. 

Warning for graphic language and gestures: 

A DHS agent then came out and CONFRONTED Portland Police, calling them out for allowing terrorists to hide behind them.

The agent tells the police the woman was running behind them, and one officer replies that they don't know why she's running. Really? Do they want us to think they are that clueless? They've failed to address the situation for months. Sortor said the people ended up just walking away. 

This is a golden example that explains why they need the National Guard, as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon observed in response to Sortor's video about the Portland Police: "This is exactly why the 9th Circuit just said POTUS can send in the National Guard! Incredible FAIL!"

My colleague Susie Moore did a great breakdown of the big win in the 9th Circuit decision, and as my colleague Eli Shepherd observed, now the radical crew in Portland is about to enter the "find out" stage, big time. 

The police inaction is a big reason things have been in chaos there since June. The federal agents have had to go through this frequently.

Warning for graphic language: 

Over the past 3 weeks, troops were trained specifically for this deployment in use of force, crowd control, and more at Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center in Warrenton, OR.

A resident even sued the city to try to get some action because they were not stopping this. Dhillon has also launched a civil rights investigation into the Portland Police Bureau's policies and practices. 

Hopefully, now that they can put the Guard in, that will help alleviate a lot of the chaos that has been going on there, help the federal agents who have faced so much harassment, and bring a level of calm to the neighborhood, the residents, and journalists who have had to endure so much in dealing with this situation. 

Portland has been a cesspool for a while, and some of the most radical crew are there. That's a challenge. But we saw the troops bring good results when deployed in Washington, D.C. The Portland extremist crew is not going to be happy campers when they have to face the Guard. 

Neocons FAIL AGAIN! - Their Scheme to Cancel Tucker Carlson Backfires Big Timw

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

Welcome to the W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

Post whatever you got in the comments section below.

This feature will post every day at 6:30am Mountain time. 

 

The Left Isn’t Just Marching Through Our Institutions, It’s Imploding Them

When the long march through the institutions gives destructive and ridiculous people control of the institutions, the institutions become destructive and ridiculous, and then they become destroyed and ridiculous.

The  Federalist 

The law professor Glenn Reynolds has talked for years about the premise, in public policy, that people can be brought into the middle class if you give them the markers of middle-class status. Having a college degree is middle class, so make it easier to get a college degree. Owning a house is middle class, so lower the barriers to homeownership. 1.) Make it all much easier. 2.) Give people way more free stuff. 3.) Larger middle class!

“But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class,” he writes. “Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

Mistaking the markers for the substance, for the things that cause the creation of the desired thing, gives us this:

The idea behind the “long march through the institutions” is that the capture of the symbols of cultural authority is the same thing as the capture of cultural authority. The markers are the substance. See, people listen to their ministers and their professors, so if we get jobs as ministers and professors, people will listen to us. The job title is the authority. “As your minister, I advise you to embrace socialism and get a lot of abortions, and I direct you to notice that I am wearing a clerical collar, so.”

This language is ubiquitous in 21st-century America. It’s status markers all the way down. Experts say. Officials say. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dismantling the CDC, and that’s very dangerous, because our health authorities are the experts. A lot of very important professors are telling you to do [insert thing here]. You can’t advise your child against gender transition — you don’t even have the right credentials.

Antonio Gramsci, and the New Left activists who followed him, looked at institutions like churches and universities and concluded that they had authority because they were churches and universities. They looked like authority, they performed the symbols of authority, they made authority noises, and so people followed. The reasoning is roughly this:

The hegemony theorists were unable to penetrate the markers to get to the substance. They were unable to see the ways that the institutions had authority because they worked — as, for example, religious faith gave people a sense of comfort and purpose, and religious instruction offered a set of rules that enabled people to live in ways that produced order and satisfaction. They authored a shortcut. First we get the clerical collars, then we get the culture, then we get the abortions. When we’re pastors, people have to do what we say, ’cause that’s all like respectable and sh-t.

When the long march through the institutions gives destructive and ridiculous people control of the institutions, the institutions become destructive and ridiculous, and then they become destroyed and ridiculous. The captured institutions become a wasteland.

So any form of we’re losing, because the left controls the universities misses the point. So what?

Imagine how much cultural authority this very important professor has. Imagine how much power she has to direct the course of society through the hegemonic instrument of her institutional status. She is one of the world’s leading experts on how lesbians feel about Gilmore Girls. How important.

Look again at the picture of the minister in Planned Parenthood vestments. She has the cultural authority of the pulpit, and she’s telling you, as a religious authority, that opposition to abortion is ungodly. God wants you to abort your children. Do you submit? She’s wearing a clerical collar, so you agree? “Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

That’s how important the long march through the institutions has turned out to be.