One of the biggest mysteries about the upcoming election is where the nation’s leading Democrats are on the campaign trail.
While President Trump remains toxically unpopular, he deserves credit for making speeches, most of them incoherent, to his dwindling national fan base, especially for an 80-year-old.
While Trump’s speeches are predictably empty and insulting, he deserves credit for his energy and support of rabid MAGA Republicans nationwide.
So, where are the nation’s top Democrats as the election approaches?
Where are Barack and Michelle Obama, the Clintons, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Corey Booker, and even pundits like the “professional loudmouth centrist” James Carville?
This pathetic lack of Democratic Party leaders stems from the creation of the centrist group, The Third Way, which was founded by corporate Democrat Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Third Way is a toothless policy group that seeks to slowly modify the capitalist system. That’s not possible. Unregulated capitalism has created too many problems to name, but voters of all ages know that income inequality, corruption, pollution, and voter suppression will not be solved by this centrist Democrat front.
As The Nation points out, the Third Way was created in 2005 “as a neoliberal answer to GOP President George W. Bush, who announced a $15 million campaign against the Democratic left after progressive Abdul el-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary over centrist Representative Haley Stevens.” This is why the Democrats are feckless and inept. They have split their own party against the Progressives who have the best ideas and appeal to voters. This party split is not seen by most Democrats, but they can detect that the national Democratic Party is grossly out-of-touch.
Or, at best, they unnecessarily split their own party by not embracing Democratic socialists. In her 2016 presidential election bid, Hillary Clinton hated Bernie Sanders more than Donald Trump, as evidenced by her campaign manager, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.).
According to media accounts, these people sit on the sidelines.
They rarely speak at rallies, and when they do, they generate little enthusiasm.
The best Democratic Party speakers are Bernie Sanders, AOC, and some younger Progressives, who can enlighten and activate a crowd, but corporate Democrats still don’t fully welcome the Progressives.
This is a glaring problem, and the corporate Democrats do not want to address it even as the clock is ticking towards the election.
Even if the Democrats reactivated their speakers, it’s unclear who could enliven a crowd. Could the Clintons do it? No, too much baggage, and Hillary isn’t a public speaker. Kamala Harris has already proven she is an empty suit. Her speech would be read from the teleprompter, and we would have to watch her wave and smile at the crowd. Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker also don’t generate any energy.
That leaves Obama, who has made a few trips, but nothing like Trump’s public stump speeches.
Biden is also off-limits due to his age and inability to motivate people.
That’s where AOC and Bernie Sanders should be elevated to the public, but the Dems cannot acknowledge that the Progressives have more energy and better ideas than the dominant corporate wing.
Bring Back Al Franken
The Dems should recruit former Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) as a speaker. Franken had great career potential until he was ambushed by Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) in the first MeToo movement. Gillibrand was pushing the sexual harassment purity test against Franken even though he was never engaged in any sexual misconduct. Unfortunately, the Democrats were caught up in the frenzied witch hunt even as they overlooked other real instances of sexual harassment in Congress.
What Franken was unfairly accused of in 2018 would not even be classified as a misdemeanor under the new sexual harassment standards of the MAGA Trump world in 2026.
Franken was a powerful speaker and defended his party. Unfortunately, he served only 8.5 years, from 2009 to 2018, before he was forced out in a blind spasm of misguided Puritanism led by Gillibrand.
Then, with Trump and the verified connection to the Epstein crimes, Gillibrand’s vindictive action today looks wasted since she managed to end the career of Franken, a better, more articulate, charismatic politician who had more future potential than she did.
Other Democrats who deserve a national stage are Adam Kinzinger, governors John Ossoff (Georgia), Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Andy Beshear (Kentucky), Ned Lamont (Connecticut), Wes Moore (Maryland), Maura Healey (Massachusetts), Laura Kelly (Kansas), and Mikie Sherrill (New Jersey).
It’s clear the centrist, corporate Democrats who run the party and control the campaign budget are pushing the wrong agenda with the wrong people. Biden and Harris were a pathetic, lackluster ticket that had no energy to confront MAGA and Trump. That cost two national elections and, more importantly, many state-level races, plus judgeships.
The centrist Democratic formula will again deliver some partial victories, but maybe not enough to control Congress, mainly because they want to preserve unregulated capitalism despite overwhelming evidence that the system doesn’t work for most Americans.
