Americans can be very poorly informed about political history. Understandably they spend a lot more time worried about the price of groceries to feed their families, how to pay the rent, and keep the lights on. Although America is wealthy, the distribution is hugely imbalanced and a large proportion of Americans are heavily in debt, they live pay check to pay check, and worry about things, like the price of eggs. The power centre of the United States seems very distant; they have a weak grasp of all the details about our Constitution and all the extra-Constitutional stuff (like political parties, which are NOT in the Constitution at all). Their leaders tend to lawyers, their representatives tend to be lawyers, and they rely on, for the most traumatic parts of their lives – divorce, custody, criminal defence – on lawyers, so complicated the government and laws around them.
America has not always had the same parties as it does today. It has had Federalists and anti-Federalists (the Anti-Administration Party). It has even had a Democratic-Republican Party. And even where the names are the same, the parties were not. In the mid-19th century, the Democrats generally, opposed by the Whigs tried to preserve slavery and the Republicans, formed in 1854, would in the mid-1860s abolish it. In the 1930s, the Democrats supported the have-nots in society, and the Republicans supported the wealthy. In the 1960s, you had southern Democrats, the so-called Dixiecrats, who supported segregation and northern Democrats for desegregation, while Republicans shifted from isolationists to hawks. In the 1970s, the southern Democrats then joined the Republicans leading to the conservative coalition of Reagan of Christian activists, former Dixiecrats, and Republican hawks, as well as a smaller group of isolationists. The Republican party would change again in the late 2010s, as MAGA quickly ousted the traditional Republicans who had managed to retain control by instrumentalising the party’s major sub-groups. The Democrats will now be the next part to change, but more likely, disappear.
A Whig Party political banner painted by Terrence J. Kennedy. Wikipedia Commons. The Whig Party was a mid-19th century political party in the United States. Alongside the Democratic Party, it was one of two major parties from the late 1830s until the early 1850s and part of the Second Party System.
MSNBC (an American news network) hosted an interview with a speaker in September 2025 (who it was does not matter as it reflects the obvious general weakness in the Democratic grasp of what has happened). The interviewee asked with genuine confusion, why was it that the price of eggs can be bad under Biden, and this stuck to Biden, but the price of eggs is also bad under Trump, but no one blames him for this—it just does not stick. The answer is a combination of three things.
(1) Messaging
Trump repeatedly does the blaming in simple, easy to understand terms, and claims, in simple terms, that the price of eggs has improved now, where it has not. Democratic leaders on a national level do not direct to a mass audience simple, easy to grasp truisms of everyday life that people will relate to. A few Democratic, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez- (and formerly Democratic, and now independent, like Senator Bernie Sanders) activists do speak in everyday terms at public gatherings (but they lack number 2, see below). When other Democrats speak, it is in the chambers of elite institutions, and their arguments are merely legalese that lacks meaning to everyday Americans. A simple crude message wins a lot more support than a complicated legal theorem you need a JSD (doctorate of jurisprudence) to even begin to understand. And a single message that is sustained over months has more impact than changing the charge everyday (hence the strength of the MAGA “flooding the zone”).
(2) Organization
Trump is not the only one who does mass rallies. He has a strong, well-funded organization that keeps the message going, that gets the audience into the stadium, that sustains all efforts to flood the zone. The Democratic party is in the grips of a particular elite that refuses the let go, because they would lose personal power and influence within the resulting organisation. This was true when Bernie Sanders was sidelined in favour of Hillary Clinton and the circumstances concerning Joe Biden’s health in the 2024 Election.
(3) Money
Democrats have a lot but the Republicans (in 2024 including the backing of Elon Musk) means that Republicans, particularly Trump – who has no qualms about running one money making scheme after another, despite the difficult financial conditions of many of his grassroots supporters – can sustain the organisation, afford the lawyers to fight anything and everything in the courts, and keep some of the most politically-biased media outlets possible functioning. Democrats also have suffered from some of their most well-known names also being tinged, rightly or wrongly, with the same sleaze (and sleazy friends) they attribute to Trump.
With National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, published on 25 September 2025, the President has declared war on Domestic Terrorists on grounds so sweeping and inclusive, that any organisation or individual that supports “anti-Americanism,” something not really a formal charge since the McCarthy trials or “extreme political views” will be investigated, prosecuted, made illegal, lose tax free status, and ultimately, in effect defunded. It could conceivably be used against the Democratic party. As they can be, through anti-Trump critique, be claimed to be guilty of illegal messaging, this could also apply to news organisations, media networks and their podcasts. Together, this removes (1) messaging, (2) organization, and (3) funding. If public protests are what is being counted on to counter these moves, the Trump administration is giving orders to gradually occupy predominantly Democratic (so-called “Blue”) cities throughout America with troops.
Before all of the battles are won by MAGA, popular support needs to be mobilised, again, through (1) messaging, (2) organization, and (3) funding. The Democratic Party has shown itself to be incompetent before this challenge and at least partially responsible for the rise of MAGA. All parties come to an end.
The Democratic Party already has, save as a niche political group representing the interests of Wall Street.
Can a new party be created in time to save American liberalism that can oppose the very clear bond between the causes of white, Christian, racio-nationalism and the extremist Zionism of Benjamin Netanyahu?
Michael Charney is a FORSEA Board Member.
Michael Charney
