The Democrats’ key to success

The Democratic Party is lost at sea. Locked into an increasingly radical ideology, it barrels toward the abyss like Captain Ahab — mad, obsessive, and unwilling to turn back. In this voyage, changing course would mean betrayal. And the loudest voices aboard are still cheering the captain on.

That leaves Democrats with one strategy: Provoke confrontation and bait Republicans into overreaction. They want the fight — and they plan to weaponize it.

Democrats can’t lift themselves up, so they need to drag the other side down.

You can see it every single week. In the streets of Los Angeles. In Capitol Hill hearings. At detention centers in New Jersey. And in the press rooms of California.

Democrat California Sen. Alex Padilla’s meltdown and detainment at a Kristi Noem press event on Thursday was just the latest in intentional provocations where consequences are the goal.

This wasn’t some Jim Acosta act or some heckler’s fun. And in any event, why would the senior senator from the Golden State need to heckle when he’s one of the most powerful people in the country? He didn’t. He needed to get arrested on camera, preferably roughed up a bit.

The same is true of LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), the grown woman and member of the U.S. House of Representatives who allegedly rushed a Department of Homeland Security detainment center for dangerous deportees and got into a shoving match with cops. The goal wasn’t to yell at the working men and women in badges. She needed to get arrested on camera, preferably roughed up a bit.

Even Stacey Plaskett, the adult congresswoman from the U.S. Virgin Islands, got in on the fun, posting: “This t**t, c**t, pum pum [sic] whatever you want to call it represents an organ that gives LIFE and is resilienr [sic] so thanks for the compliment. I can take one interruption but [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent was out of control. And.... I know I look good for my age but baby I'm post menopausal [sic] and it still works,” followed by cherry emojis.

She sent that, presumably sober, in the middle of the afternoon in response to an anonymous X user with a few hundred followers who had rudely suggested that the women of Congress were experiencing the emotional symptoms associated with menstrual cycles. What could she possibly have been doing but attempting to provoke an offensive reaction from online Republicans?

Or the city of Los Angeles, where wealthy Democratic businessmen and nonprofits worked to equip and back fiery and violent rioting by party activists and Mexican-flag-waving illegal migrants. Their goal wasn’t to protect the communities they ravaged — it was to trigger an overuse of force from the police or National Guard that could be caught on camera and played on repeat.

Now they are doxxing the names and addresses of ICE agents and officials, in the hopes of sparking violent reprisals against law enforcement. Do they think they’ll win against the federal government? Of course not — they need an overreaction to scream about fascism and dictatorships and whatnot.

It’s a common strategy in the age of mass media, employed by losing and outnumbered sides in political battles and in wars the world over. Martyrdom, both real and symbolic, is attractive; it gains sympathy. The trick for the side in power is not to fall for the trap.

Remember the Tea Party days? Those rallies drew hundreds of thousands of people who moved about more peacefully and respectfully than any major protest movement in modern D.C. history. They even picked up their own trash. It was so safe that the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) led a group of his colleagues from the Congressional Black Caucus through the midst of one large protest.

They were hoping to be attacked or insulted, and Democratic Party staffers had their cameras at the ready. No one attacked them, so Lewis claimed they’d been called the “N-word.” The late conservative provocateur and publisher Andrew Breitbart offered $10,000 to anyone who could produce video evidence of this occurring. He kept his money. That didn’t stop the claim from being repeated by news outlets all over the world, of course. It was just like Lewis’ Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama!

Today, the corporate media’s power to spin up Jussie Smollett-style hoaxes is the lowest it’s been in modern history. More, the discipline and restraint of frontline officers and President Donald Trump’s administration have been admirable.

Padilla, who didn’t identify himself as a U.S. senator until he was already being confronted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security, was initially blocked, turned away, then only temporarily detained when he turned aggressively back toward to the secretary. Even a security expert CNN featured agreed this was well within protocol, to the host’s chagrin. After the incident, Noem met with him.

Officers showed similar restraint in dealing with LaMonica McIver’s alleged physical attack. She was later charged by the Department of Justice after the proper procedures were followed.

Stacey Plaskett’s foul-mouthed and extremely graphic online meltdown was met with awkward silence.

While National Guard and Marines were deployed to defend federal agents and buildings in Los Angeles, they were not deputized by a president who was well within his rights to declare an insurrection.

So far, no one has taken the bait, but Democrats will keep on trying. They need this confrontation. If the Democrats remain unwilling to change course on a politically unpopular stance, they need to make the other side’s actually popular stance less popular. They need to change the opinions of a kindhearted public, and they need violent overreactions to do so. They can’t lift themselves up, so they need to drag the other side down.

They’re literally playing with fire this time. When they commit assault and back the burning of neighborhoods or target federal officers for street retaliation, they’re engaging in a far more dangerous game than making up a racial slur in Washington.

Remember: Ahab eventually found the whale he was looking for.

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