‘Are You Prepared for Violence?’

By Noah Rothman

Monday, March 24, 2025

 

Democratic political professionals seemed to have a handle on what they had to do to repair their party’s damaged brand in the wake of last November’s losses:

 

Demote the activist groups who were detached from and unrepresentative of the constituents they claimed to represent. Abandon the boutique fixations, quixotic crusades, and linguistic codes that transformed the party from a national political enterprise into an exclusive club. Focus on pocketbook issues, like inflation, immigration, and crime — and start in America’s cities, where the failures of Democratic governance are most visible. In the meantime, don’t make any sudden movements. Let Donald Trump govern in anticipation of the exploitable mistakes he and his party will invariably make soon enough.

 

It was a sound prescription that took no account of the party’s voters. The activist class will not go quietly, and it still controls the feedback mechanisms on which America’s political professionals rely. Over the weekend, Axios related how one unnamed House Democratic lawmaker responded to the pressure from angry Democratic voters: “The senior House Democrat told Axios that a colleague called them after a town hall crying and said: ‘They hate us. They hate us.’”

 

This elected official was reportedly bombarded with demands that cut against nearly all the prescriptions for renewed relevance provided by Democratic grey beards. The angry town hall attendees called on Democrats to defenestrate their own congressional leaders. They were thrilled by the unbecoming theatrics in which Democrats who disrupted Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress engaged, and town hall attendees said their allies had “no right rebuking” them for their passion. “Another thing I got was: ‘Democrats are too nice,’” the unnamed Democrat confessed. “‘Nice and civility doesn’t work. Are you prepared for violence?’”

 

That’s an ominous warning, though it’s unclear how violence attributable to progressive activists would revive the Democratic Party’s appeal among the voters who soured on it. But as I’ve written previously, the most politically engaged Democrats aren’t in the market for sensible strategy. They want to see their anxiety reflected in their elected representatives, “And the most authentic expression of panic is irrationality.”

 

It seems, though, that the hair-on-fire set is winning the internal fight over the direction in which the party will evolve over Trump’s second term. Over the weekend, a consistent dissenter from the Democratic activist class’s antics, Senator John Fetterman (Penn.), was subjected to some trite rebukes, not from his party’s progressives but its exposed and nervous moderates.

 

Fetterman invited the struggle session to which he was consigned by having the gall to criticize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s demand to see a Democratic Party that “fights harder.” How? By, for example, causing a government shutdown that would have probably only further empowered Republicans. Fetterman denounced AOC’s demand as “a stunt that would have harmed millions and plunged us into chaos.” And he made no apologies for voting to keep the government open — an approach that was in line with the notion that Democrats should not rescue the GOP from the consequences of its own policy preferences. Fetterman was soon subjected to a drubbing by his fellow centrist Democrats.

 

“Dems got nothing for their votes,” onetime Ohio congressman Tim Ryan said. “Not even a change in the narrative or our brand,” he added, calling Democrats’ capitulation “political malpractice.” Ryan concluded: “Leave AOC alone.”

 

Ryan was joined by former Pennsylvania Representative Conor Lamb, whose rebuke of Fetterman was far sharper.

 

What are we to make of these denunciations from figures who aspire to political relevance in states and districts with moderate political cultures? Can their abrupt about-face be separated from the threat of “violence” that some of their colleagues have encountered?

 

Irrespective of the moderates’ motives, it is clear now that Democratic voters will not tolerate James Carville’s “play possum” strategy. Even lawmakers whose constituencies are most likely to reward tactical creativity know that their viability in national Democratic politics depends on their willingness to indulge the activists’ id.

 

The progressives who have convinced themselves that this is what the GOP’s Tea Party moment was about — threats, harassment, intimidation, and irrational pique — may also believe that futile and impertinent gestures will put them on a glide path back to power. If it doesn’t work out that way next November, Democrats can thank the activist class for once again muscling their party into internalizing a delusion.