‘Radical Chic’ Is a Losing Strategy for Democrats

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, June 19, 2025

 

Democrats apparently have decided that the way to push back against Trump administration border policies is to get themselves arrested. Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome is not only the proverbial definition of insanity—it is also the definition of political malpractice.

 

Somebody somewhere must think that is clever. As the godfather of right-wing populism once asked: How’s that working out for you?

 

I get it: There is a certain kind of voter who really gets his 1776 buttons pushed by images of federals in masks and fatigues handcuffing disheveled guys in suits trying to make a political point—they call us “libertarians,” there are about seven of us, and the Democrats are 142 percent hosed if they’re relying on us to save their political bacon at this late date. Republicans used to talk a good fight about “jackbooted thugs” when the subject was gun rights, but in Anno Domini 2025, this isn’t a wedge issue: You think Donald Trump’s voters are going to be upset by this goon-squad stuff? Hell, no—they adore it. That’ll end up being half of Republicans’ midterm get-out-the-vote program.

 

If it seems like this is not something that has been subjected to intelligent political calculation on the Democrats’ part, that’s probably because Democrats—forever on the verge of prying the “Stupid Party” label out of Republicans’ sweaty little short-fingered hands—are not doing a lot of calculation these days.

 

The histrionic arrest theater is familiar enough stuff: Democrats are addicted to 1960s protest culture. They are like Civil War reenactors for the civil rights and Vietnam era. Nothing new there.

 

But this is part of a larger “radical chic” moment the Democrats are enduring. In Iowa, they’re pretending they have a shot in hell of unseating Joni Ernst by offering up a guy who calls himself a “Lina Khan Democrat,” because if there’s anybody who will speak to the median voter out there in Ionia or Quasqueton, it’s some Columbia Law School professor they’ve never heard of whose life’s work has been hating on the place they buy their socks: Amazon. In Texas, the new Democratic finance grandee is the self-described pansexual (“they/he”) co-founder of the Socialist Caucus of the Texas Young Democrats, a callow youth who looks like somebody fed the words “insufferable Austin hipster vegan” into an AI image generator.

 

Still, Democrats hear at every turn from their donors and their media allies that they have not been radical enough.

 

Do these guys even remember how politics is supposed to work?

 

Republicans, of course, engage in all sorts of idiotic rhetoric and irresponsible radicalism—but mainly on issues where the public is largely already on their side. Republicans may indulge in daft rhetoric and boneheaded policy overreach on immigration, but that’s extremism on an issue where they command solid majority support regarding the fundamental issue. Democrats, in contrast, are irresponsible radicals on issues where they get their clocks cleaned on behalf of vanishingly small minority constituencies: trans extremism, crime, and being riot apologists. It is not as though Democrats do not have any experience in being on the other side of this: They had a pretty good run there for a bit watching Republicans get carried away with radical minority positions on abortion.

 

But now Democrats are getting their unisex dresses over their heads on illegal immigration, where Gallup finds Americans stacked up solidly against them and against liberal immigration policies per se: A majority of Americans (55 percent) want overall immigration levels decreased; 63 percent say illegal immigration is a problem they worry about a great deal or a fair amount (as opposed to only 15 percent in the “not at all” camp);  those dissatisfied with recent immigration policy outnumber the satisfied 2 to 1; among the dissatisfied, those who want less immigration outnumber those who want more immigration 9 to 1; 3 in 4 Americans want to hire more Border Patrol agents; nearly two-thirds support giving the president the power to suspend asylum claims when the border is overwhelmed; 77 percent say the border situation is a “crisis” or a “major problem.” And while it is not the case that a majority supports “deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally,” nearly half of Americans do. A solid majority supports wall-building. With those numbers on their side, Republicans can afford to push a little.

 

As Marquette runs the numbers, Trump is 32 points underwater when it comes to inflation and 26 points on the wrong side of tariffs, but he’s still 50/50 on immigration and 12 points up on border security, lately his strongest issue in the polls.

 

American voters have a lot of dumb ideas about a lot of things, but they do have to be consulted from time to time, and what they’re telling the pollsters lately is that there is demand for an immigration policy that is based on law and order and on real enforcement but that isn’t crazy or vindictive—and that they remain unhappy with the state of the economy and high prices, and that they really, really do not like Trump’s tariff buffoonery.

 

What part of that looks like a call for 1960s-style theatrics in support of … the right of meatpacking bosses and chain hoteliers to exploit powerless illegal workers?

 

All the Democrats need to do is the one thing they apparently cannot do: be halfway normal.