IS THE DEMOCRAT'S PROBLEM THEY'RE NOT OBNOXIOUS ENOUGH?

National Review

 

Is the Democrats’ Problem That They’re Not Obnoxious Enough?

By Noah Rothman

February 4, 2025 4:09 PM

 

They don’t need self-indulgent lectures on how to be more off-putting. They’ve already got the act down pat.

 

‘We need to build a Democratic Party that is authentic, relatable, earns people’s trust, and wins again,” the new vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, David Hogg, wrote recently. That’s a sound enough prescription. So, what did Hogg propose to do to see his vision through to fruition?

 

“We have to stop being cowards — it’s time to be bold, aggressive, and to fight,” he added. It’s not entirely clear what Hogg meant by that, what his vision of bold, aggressive fighting looks like, or how his disposition corrects for the Democratic Party’s current approach to political messaging. Indeed, his recommendation that the DNC provide “a tsunami of content” akin to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent performance on Instagram Live suggests his tenure at the DNC will yield more of the same.

 

But not every insufferable young(ish) activist with a head of steam about them is so vague. Inexplicably, CBS News recently devoted a segment to TikTok influencer Suzanne Lambert, a self-described “Regina George liberal” — a reference to the most obnoxious and unrelatable character in the 2004 film Mean Girls — whose wildly novel political shtick is making fun of Republicans:

 

“One thing that Regina is really good at, she’s good at organizing, she’s good at garnering attention, she hits back, she sticks up for herself, and that’s something that we haven’t seen historically from Democrats and other liberals,” the activist stressed, betraying her unfamiliarity with the subject matter on which CBS asked her to opine. Nor is her call to action especially innovative, although the way she framed her diagnosis was uniquely antisocial.

 

“After the election, all the messaging was around how we’re going to get through this with love and peace and kindness, and, sure, all those things are true,” Lambert added perfunctorily.

 

“You’re a little low on the peace and joy part, right?” CBS host Major Garrett interjected. She agreed, gently criticized Kamala Harris for favoring joy at the expense of focusing on the flaws associated with her opponent and his movement (presumably, Lambert missed the “is Trump a fascist?” news cycle), and concurred with Garrett’s suggestion that “ferocity needs to be met with ferocity.”

 

“You fight fire with equal exertion of force, and I think that we need to do that,” Lambert posited. She advised her followers to reject criticisms of the Left as sneering and judgmental, suggesting that those critiques were products of unreconstructed misogyny that are rarely directed toward men. “I want people to feel more comfortable fighting back, and I also want people to see other people fighting for them,” the influencer concluded.

 

At the risk of contributing to Lambert’s “engagement” and “metrics” — ephemera about which the party she is advising already cares far too much — she deserves the victory lap she’s taking. After all, the Democratic Party that she insists just isn’t censorious, reproachful, and snobbish enough seems to have taken her advice to heart. For example, as Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett said recently on CNN in defense of DEI initiatives, “The only people crying are mediocre white boys.” Presumably, deriving joy from the imagined suffering endured by Americans born into déclassé identities is the kind of no-holds-barred political combat this country’s “Regina George liberals” want to see.

 

Lambert’s product is attractive to the Left because it flatters them. Her proposition is that the progressive activist class doesn’t need to change. Rather, they should double down on the qualities that rendered their conduct toxic in the first place. But Democrats don’t need self-indulgent lectures on how to be more off-putting. They’ve already got the act down pat.

 

As poll after poll has shown, significant majorities of respondents say that they are afraid to speak their minds in mixed company for fear of inviting real social, reputational, or even legal consequences. That terror was not propagated by the people who regarded “cancel culture” as a more vociferous expression of a healthy accountability mechanism. In other words, that atmosphere of apprehension was cultivated and administered by the progressive Left.

 

And we’re not just talking about hot-button subjects with political valiance. The most mundane of daily human interactions are subjected to critical deconstructive analysis by the Left’s self-appointed enforcers. Like what? Like the weather.

 

“As the political becomes increasingly personal, the line where polite conversation stops and activism starts has blurred,” the Washington Post reported in 2022. “Weather is the newest topic — along with politics, religion, and sex — to avoid at those awkward Thanksgiving dinners.” Good Democrats could no longer be expected to engage in small talk because “small talk facilitates denial.” As one activist condescendingly maintained, “Any conversation can be viewed as an opportunity for a political intervention,” as if adhering to conservative political philosophy constituted an act of intolerable self-harm.

 

As I detailed in my last book, the progressive activist class made a fetish out of politicizing cultural commodities with the aim of persuading those in their surroundings to eschew them. The campaign has been unsuccessful in part because the activist class was attempting to substitute enjoyable undertakings with carping, scolding, and garment-rending — activities that are objectively less fulfilling.

 

Nor can the progressive activist class abide a national holiday that they do not ruin with their incessant hectoring. Taking off work to celebrate Christmas is a sign of “Christian privilege,” a celebration of the “systemic oppression” that is associated with “the context of the dominant culture.” Halloween is a culturally appropriative abomination in which children act out their parent’s pathologies. “Thanksgiving Day should be known as National Land Theft and American Genocide Day,” Huffington Post contributor Nicole Breedlove snarled. If we weren’t such a fallen people, it would be rechristened “ThanksTaking” or simply replaced with a “National Day of Mourning.”

 

“An increasing number of men are taking up sewing,” the New York Times reported in 2020. But they’re not doing so because they enjoy it. Rather, it was a gesture of hostility toward “traditional gender stereotypes” and an effort to “advocate body acceptance, radical justice, and more sustainable lifestyles.” The trend didn’t seem to last, probably because the Times couldn’t identify anything fun about it. Knitting, too, is problematic, but only when it “or anything else” is kept “away from ‘political issues’” because that is the mark of “privilege.”

 

Exercise is similarly racist. “Black people have not only been excluded from the sport” of jogging, Dr. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela insisted in the pages of the Times. In addition, “They’ve also been relentlessly depicted as a threat to legitimate, white joggers.” So, you can’t like that anymore.

 

What about gardening? Well, that too has “racism baked into its DNA,” the BBC’s James Wong posited, what with its “fetishization” of words like “heritage” and “native.” Addled Americans are likely to associate gardening with the internment of the Japanese during World War II or the exploitation of migrant labor. It turns out you can’t like that, either.

 

What about bird-watching? “White people were the ones to name the birds after other White people,” University of Hawaii ornithology student Olivia Wang asserted with utmost authority.

 

Okay, how about motor sport and car culture? “Car culture didn’t create the toxic masculinity, but it’s certainly used its worst tropes to its advantage from its start,” Streetsblog USA contributor Kea Wilson admonished her readers.

 

You shouldn’t even have to ask about the sordid things you do in the privacy of your own home, like playing video games. “Video games must also come to terms with the harm they’ve caused,” PC Magazine’s Jordan Minor hyperventilated. It’s not just the content itself but what Times contributor Seth Schiesel deemed the “bigotry, social abuse, sexism, and other toxic behavior” that people engage in outside the scrutiny of the progressive speech police that the Left cannot abide.

 

We could go on at length (and I did) cataloguing the extent to which the progressive activist class and the political party it captured drafted their members into a losing war against aspects of the culture that are not responsive to the circumscribed American political process. But it was not a cost-free endeavor. The imperiousness demanded of anyone who engages in that sort of project may be intimidating, but it’s not admirable. It makes perfect sense that the public would slough off the burden progressives had imposed on them once voters demonstrated that the intimidation factor was illusory.

 

So, go ahead, Regina. Indulge in the catharsis you find in the notion that Democrats just weren’t irritating enough for your tastes. But this is just one of many rearguard actions designed to dissuade Democrats from ridding themselves of the exclusionary linguistic signifiers and shibboleths that the median American voter finds both inscrutable and repellent. No one is rooting harder for Lambert’s success than the GOP.