By all rights, the Republicans should be headed for a shellacking in the midterm elections next year. But their opposition is the Democratic Party, which, according to the Washington Post, may fail to make gains,[1] at least in part because, as they keep convincing me, they prefer to sit in opposition where they can complain about Republicans without ever actually being expected to accomplish anything.
In a weird and very uncomfortable way, that puts me in alignment with Eugene DePasquale, the new Pennsylvania Democratic Party chair, who argues—rightly—that Democrats need to run for something rather than just against Donald Trump. Where I disagree is in his eschewing of terms like ‘fascist’ and his reluctance to acknowledge that those who supported Trump are stupid.[2] Because Trump and his administration very clearly are fascist and stupid and because those who support them very clearly are fascist or stupid or both. And being mealy-mouthed about this is really just more of the same refusal to actually stand for something, which precedes their refusal to actually accomplish anything.
I mean, come on, now. The climate crisis lies behind the Texas flooding[3] and the recent calamitous hurricane in Haiti. Tariffs raise inflation.[4] Trump is obviously a pedophile.[5] And yet despite these and so many other issues,[6] Trump voters continue to support him. To refuse to acknowledge the painfully obvious just shows how out of touch DePasquale is, right along with a lot of other Democrats.
A survey result published in the Post suggests that many Amerikkkans believe both parties are out of touch.[7] But of course, this is a survey, with a ludicrously low response rate,[8] which I therefore distrust. So I guess we’ll find out a year from now.
[1] Scott Clement, Dan Balz, and Andrew Ba Tran, “Voters divided on midterms despite broad Trump disapproval, poll finds,” Washington Post, November 2, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/02/trump-democrats-poll-post-abc-ipsos/
[2] Salena Zito, “Pennsylvania Democrats know the truth about demonizing Trump,” Washington Post, October 30, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/30/pennsylvania-democrats-shapiro-trump-voters/
[3] David Benfell, “A Texas pediatrician deserves her job back,” Not Housebroken, July 10, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/a-texas-pediatrician-deserves-her
[4] Alicia Wallace, “‘Sneakflation’: How Trump’s tariffs are gradually raising costs for American consumers,” Cable News Network, August 24, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/24/economy/us-tariffs-passthrough-consumers
[5] David Benfell, “Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?” Not Housebroken, October 2, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/will-the-big-beautiful-bill-crack
[6] David Benfell, “Donald Trump repeats the Democrats' error,” Not Housebroken, January 5, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/donald-trump-repeats-the-democrats; David Benfell, “Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?” Not Housebroken, October 2, 2025, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/will-the-big-beautiful-bill-crack; David Benfell, “Will there be a surprise ending?” Not Housebroken, October 12, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/will-there-be-a-surprise-ending
[7] Scott Clement, Dan Balz, and Andrew Ba Tran, “Voters divided on midterms despite broad Trump disapproval, poll finds,” Washington Post, November 2, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/02/trump-democrats-poll-post-abc-ipsos/
[8] Steven Shepard, “Report: Phone polls aren’t dead yet,” Politico, May 15, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/15/pollsters-phone-polls-238409; Courtney Kennedy and Hannah Hartig, “Response rates in telephone surveys have resumed their decline,” Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/27/response-rates-in-telephone-surveys-have-resumed-their-decline/