‘So limp, so exhausted’: Photo proves exactly why America has really lost it
In just six weeks, the United States has been plunged into chaos – and a telling photo reveals why the country could be done for.
OPINION
In the US, Scouts are taught that when an angry, claws-out bear is stalking towards them, they should play dead. Really get down there on the ground, lie flat, and hope the danger passes.
Who else thinks the Democratic Party might be getting their current strategy from a yellowed 1976 copy of Scouting Today?
Now, 78 years after Benito Mussolini hung up his black shirt for the last time, President Donald Trump is doing his darnedest to bring despotism back into vogue like it’s the bumster jeans of politics.
MORE:‘Hate’: Ivanka lifts lid on leaving Donald Trump
One moment this week perfectly crystallised just how up a certain creek the US is right now. Mr Trump might rule the Republican roost like a preening cockerel, but the Democratic Party has officially lost it, and decided to go as limp and supine as a Scout troop abandoned in a deep wood halfway to the Canadian border.
In the face of Mr Trump, the Dems are reacting with all the urgency and momentum of people who’ve bought packed lunches to stage a sit-in at the Nuremberg rallies.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump addressed a joint session of Congress where he railed against woke mountain names and ranted about everything from Ukraine to transgender mice to immigrants.
(Won’t anyone think of the dogs?)
MORE:Trump’s ex eyes $22m payout after shock split
So, at such a profound moment of existential crisis in the United States, how did the Dems meet this moment? How did they let their collective voices ring out with pluck and moxie and righteous, righteous anger?
Some of the female members of the party sat in the audience wearing pink.
What is happening in Washington right now is what historians call a crucible moment – and the Dems are accessorising their way to Armageddon.
It really brings to mind that famous Martin Niemoller quote, “First they came for the Communists, so I wore a nice blush blazer”.
The party’s other stunner of a protest on Tuesday was bringing polite black paddles with words like “False” and “Musk steals” carefully spelled out in nice handwriting.
Well, bugger me.
Photos of this pathetic attempt at resisting make the Dems look more like a bussed-in garden club from Connecticut demurely bidding on Meissen porcelain, not a forceful political movement.
Overall, the Dems’ showing this week was the equivalent of them bringing a badminton racket to the Battle of the Bulge and wondering why them occasionally swatting at the advancing German army didn’t do much.
The only hint of something verging on real opposition during Mr Trump’s rant came from a 77-year-old congressman from Texas named Al Green who, during the President’s speech, heckled him by shouting “no mandate” before being removed from the chamber.
Consider just how stuffed this is.
At a sliding doors moment in America’s history, at a time of sweeping, genuine fear when more than 30,000 federal workers have been fired, when social security and Medicare seem all but destined to be gutted, when Vladimir Putin is rubbing his hands with glee and with the post-1945 world order teetering on the brink – the only real instance of resistance came from a septuagenarian shaking his cane.
One person. Out of the 262 Democrats from both houses in attendance.
It is now six weeks since Mr Trump and his faithful buddy Elon Musk hit Washington and they have spent every minute of every day callously and systematically dismantling the US government and bulldozing norms like developers mowing down old growth forests to build medium density high rises, fittings not included.
The president is a threat to world peace, democracy and a daily affront to anyone who can grasp the basic application of foundation. (Blend man, blend).
And the Democrats? They are, quite simply, failing America.
They are dismally and shamefully failing the 262 million Americans who did not vote for Mr Trump.
Just imagine if, during World War Two, the resistance had tried to fight fascism with some fuchsia or they had tried to counter the Vichy government using colour-coordinated contempo business looks. Well, that’d really have had Mussolini quaking in his shiny jack boots.
The Democrats have no leader, no strategy, no cohesion, and no one in their party who does not remember where they were when Ross kissed Rachel. They look tired, in disarray, lost and old as they politely try to find a quorum on how to even begin to try and find a hose while Rome burns, burns, burns.
The President’s official re-election was called by the major networks at 5am on November 6, 2024. Why, at 5.01am, didn’t the Dems start planning? Plotting, strategising and organising with mighty force and unity and vision?
They and we knew Mr Trump’s tactics, his go-to, playing-to-the-base scheming, his intent on “flooding the zone”.
None of what Mr Trump has set in motion since returning to office is any surprise. He told us. Project 2025 told us. Hell, they put out a PDF of it all.
And yet four months on, the Dems still seem so stumped, so limp, so exhausted, and rudderless. They have been stumbling around in the dark bumping into each other like lemmings trapped in a blackout.
It is Mr Trump who is dismembering America, but the Dems? They are all but co-signing on it with their complete absence of anything like defiance or a concerted pushback.
The only instances of leadership have been isolated and sad moments like when 75-year-old Senator Elizabeth Warren and 86-year-old Congresswoman Maxine Waters led a protest at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over Muskian cuts
This supposed opposition party, right now, seems fundamentally winded in the face of the realisation that 2017’s Trump One administration was not an aberration, that it was not a terrible fluke but that it was a symptom, like a pustulant bulbous, of extreme, nationwide anger and disillusionment with status quo politics.
The Dems, during last year’s campaign, not only failed to appreciate and respond to the incredible depth and tide of anger in America but they are compounding that failure to the power of infinity now by completely and utterly failing to mount any real challenge to Mr Trump.
Reporting out of Washington claims the party’s current working plan, according to Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, is to neatly get all their ducks in a row to really have a nice, concerted go at the 2026 midterm elections.
While America is being vivisected, the Washington Post says, Dems are planning on “listening and channelling the concerns of voters across the country”.
I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but at the rate that conventions and government agencies are being trammelled, who even says there will be midterms?
Famed Democratic strategist James Carville published an op-ed in the New York Times urging his party “to embark on the most daring political manoeuvre in the history of our party” and to keep doing a whole lot of nothing. His argument is that Mr Trump’s base will ultimately turn on him as cost of living continues to soar, despite his repeated promises to bring prices down.
All those Trump voters, supposedly, will get sick of all this annexing-Canada baloney and when the realities of the tariffs on Chinese, Canadian and Mexican goods hit home, the tide will turn and they will punish Mr Trump at the ballot box in 2026.
That the Dems are acting with an absolute dearth of urgency only further proves how disconnected from their base, how dithering, how totally and utterly lost they are when faced with an opponent who won’t play nicely by the long-established rules.
Is now the minute to demurely sit on your hands and to worry about causing a fuss? To wait for the price of eggs and milk and bread and ammo to skyrocket to such a degree that regular everyday Joes will turn on their leader?
To paraphrase the French Revolution’s Georges Danton, fuss, fuss again, fuss greatly.
Or as the saying goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Or to turn up wearing pink.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Join the conversation
‘Confused’: Trump’s Canada move panned
A nasty trade war is brewing between two former allies, with Canada accusing Trump of setting it up for economic failure so it can be annexed.
Read more
Trump rocked by truly wild rumour
US President Donald Trump has been dogged by a shocking piece of gossip for years now – and it’s just reared its ugly head yet again.
Read more
‘Nobody’: Elon erupts in fiery Trump meeting
Elon Musk reportedly clashed with senior Trump officials at an explosive cabinet room meeting on Thursday, as the President moved to rein in DOGE’s power.
Read more