For A Party Of ‘Joy,’ Democrats Are Awfully Miserable

In the months leading up to the 2024 election, Democrats had convinced themselves that they’d settled on the perfect campaign message. Not content with simply slandering their chief political rival as a Hitler-loving Nazi to distract from their disastrous policies, they arbitrarily declared themselves the party of “joy.”
“Forget the bad economy and border invasion, we’re all about the good vibes!” — or so went your typical Kamala Harris campaign appearance.
If it wasn’t obvious already (it should’ve been), it’s clear to any casual observer that tagline was nothing more than a facade.
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats have come down with a strong case of misery. No matter the policy or how much success it might reap for the American people, Democrats have treated nearly every action the president has taken as if it’s a world-ending crisis.
Case in point: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
On Wednesday, Harris’ weird vice presidential pick threw a hissy fit before local media, in which he dramatically bemoaned Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and return the issue to the states where it belongs. In his incoherent screed, Walz fearmongered that laying off agency employees would harm children’s learning and produce devastating consequences for America’s educators.
But the Minnesota governor’s tantrum is a microcosm of the blind rage displayed by Democrats since Trump’s comeback.
Earlier this week, a Massachusetts Democrat had a meltdown at a House subcommittee hearing after his Republican colleague correctly referred to Rep. Tim “Sarah” McBride, D-Del. — a trans-identifying man — as “Mr. McBride.” The childish display came a week after another House Democrat got kicked out of Trump’s address to Congress for repeatedly interrupting the president’s speech.
[READ: Democrats Promised Theatrics At Trump’s Speech But Displayed Their Soullessness Instead]
These actions don’t even include those undertaken by the party’s unhinged base, whose behavior has been equally — if not more — despicable.
Within the past few days alone, leftist agitators have been documented occupying Trump Tower in New York City to protest the deportation of a pro-Hamas green card holder and attacking Tesla vehicles and their owners, the latter of which appears to be directed at Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his efforts to identify waste in the federal government. They’ve even gone as far as to harass J.D. Vance about the Russia-Ukraine war while the vice president was out on a walk with his three-year-old daughter this past weekend.
Now contrast such unhinged outrage with Trump, who seems to be having the time of his life since returning to the White House.
When he’s not fulfilling the promises he made to the American people, he’s cracking jokes about Rosie O’Donnell or poking fun at Vance’s spunky St. Patty’s Day socks. He’s also delivering uplifting speeches championing American greatness and offering a vision in which the country’s best days are yet to come.
In essence, Trump is generating success and having fun doing it. And unlike his predecessor, he celebrates the uniqueness of the American experiment instead of vilifying it.
What Democrats’ continued “the sky is falling!” behavior demonstrates is that the party has yet to understand why it lost the 2024 election.
Their addiction to opposing Trump has blinded them to what a “normal” political party is supposed to act like. They’ve become so anti-Trump that they instinctively fight him on virtually every policy issue — regardless of whether his actions produce good outcomes for the American people.
But even if there were signs that Democrats wanted to move back toward “the middle” of American politics and work with Trump, there’s no indication that such a shift is even possible at this point.
Whether through academia or legacy media, the left has spent decades indoctrinating its base into supporting the extreme policies it currently champions and the general American electorate rejects. To abandon support for allowing trans-identifying men to compete in women’s sports, for example, would be viewed by the party’s core voters as a betrayal — one that could jeopardize Democrats’ political power.
The anti-American bent of the Democrat Party is a problem of their own making. They’ve let the joyless, leftist monster out of the closet, and there’s no sign it wants to go back inside.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood