To hell with it all: Why I've had it with this pathetic farce

While I am typing this, members of the Democratic National Committee aren’t spending every second fighting the greatest threat to America in its history. They are wasting everybody’s time attacking themselves.

Instead of spending the gobs of money they have raised from countless hundreds of thousands of scared, hardworking Americans to form and communicate a viable alternative to the most dangerous political party on the planet, they are backhanding themselves in the backrooms of their pathetically out-of-touch, inside-the-Beltway country club to get a seat near the bottom of the top of the fading party they claim to lead.

And man, am I long past sick and tired of them — so sick and tired, in fact, I am making the case for them to just go away for good.

I’m not going to sit here and argue for a third party, because that would be another waste of the time the DNC seems to think is endless, even if America has never needed one more ...

I am arguing that the DNC itself has proven itself to be mostly a non-functioning arm of the party and a waste of time, that needs to be smashed for good into tiny bits.

Bare minimum 50 tiny bits, because I think the party would continue to be best served by micro-local leadership at the city and county level, that listens to and serves the needs of the people living in these places. Instead, we get what passes for leadership from this front-loaded group of out-of-touch political sharpies in D.C. who are climbing over each other to ignore us.

Look, most Americans aren’t registered Republicans or Democrats. For some, politics just turn their stomachs, and they have no faith in either party. Others believe the antiquated political system in this country has failed them. Others — too many — have stopped giving a damn together.

There’s no excuse for giving up, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get the inclination to just wander off, and say the hell with it all.

Fact is, most Americans are independent people with independent ideas and independent feelings about what they are experiencing in their independent lives. No party has all the answers, so we vote with the one we think is best.

I am one of them.

And while I will never vote for one of these revolting, anti-American Republicans ever again, too many Democrats have made themselves almost impossible to like, much less love.

I am demanding better. We should demand better.

The dented party has a severe image problem, and is viewed by more than 70 percent of registered voters as out of touch and ineffective, because it turns out that is exactly what it is. As unpopular as the morbid Donald Trump is, and he’s as popular as a cloudy day, the Democrats are viewed in an even dimmer light.

In fact, since we started keeping track of such things 35 years ago, they have never been more unpopular. So how are they reacting to this?

By doing absolutely nothing to change the way they are going about their business, and in the DNC’s case, re-litigating insider elections in their fancy club and ignoring people like us who pay their bills.

In this week’s sordid episode of “Inside the DNC” a select team of crusaders voted to void the results of their own election in February that made David Hogg a party vice chair, and Malcolm Kenyatta a second vice chair. Why? Because apparently some members who form something called “the credentials committee” ruled that their earlier election had not followed proper parliamentary procedures.

I’d ask you to read that again, but you might get sick, and we need you more than ever. While the world burns, these pinky-outs are sipping tea and kicking each other in the shins under the table about their shoddy “parliamentary” conduct.

According to a story in The New York Times:

“The decision — which came after roughly three hours of internal debate and one tie vote — will put the issue before the full body of the Democratic National Committee. It must decide whether to force Mr. Hogg and a second vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, to run again in another election later this year.”

More from the Times:

“Mr. Hogg, 25, an outspoken survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., has prompted a fierce backlash over his plans to spend up to $20 million through another organization he heads, Leaders We Deserve, on primary campaigns against incumbent Democrats. Ken Martin, the party chairman, has said it is inappropriate for Mr. Hogg to intervene in primaries while serving as a party official, and has recommended changing the party’s bylaws to force him to sign a neutrality pledge.”

Oh no, he violated the sacred neutrality pledge! Horrors! I have heard that he has been forced to return his shiny decoder ring that all members in good standing in the club receive after bowing down in front of a statue of Hubert Humphrey and reciting three times: “Hail to the Parliament!”

Details are still sketchy and developing, but as of now, new DNC Chairman Martin wasted no time disassociating himself from the problem from a relatively safe distance:

“I am disappointed to learn that before I became chair, there was a procedural error in the February vice chair elections. The credentials committee has issued their recommendation, and I trust that the DNC members will carefully review the committee’s resolution and resolve this matter fairly.”

You’ll also be disappointed to know, sir, that before you became chair, your party lost the presidency, the House and the Senate. Of course, I’m sure you had absolutely nothing to to do with that, either, but feel free to engage with the rest of America just as soon as you’ve cleaned up the terrible mess in your banquet hall.

In reporting from the Washington Post, Hogg said this:

“While this vote was based on how the DNC conducted its officers’ elections, which I had nothing to do with, it is also impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote. I ran to be DNC Vice Chair to help make the Democratic Party better, not to defend an indefensible status quo that has caused voters in almost every demographic group to move away from us. The DNC has pledged to remove me, and this vote has provided an avenue to fast-track that effort.”

For his part, Kenyatta seems properly irritated by the whole damn thing, but mostly with Hogg, saying Monday night that framing the vote around Hogg is “nonsense” and that the story is not about Hogg “even though he clearly wants it to be.” He touted his own accomplishments as vice chair and said the committee’s decision was “a slap in my face.”

Meantime the country burns …

Maybe I should see the sliver of good in this. Maybe because the members of the DNC seem just as sick and tired of themselves as so many us do of them it will result in some much-needed supersonic change in the room.

No, I won’t be holding my breath …

So I’ll end with this gust: Unless there are some changes — I mean REAL RADICAL changes — the Democrats are going to get their asses handed to them again on a national level because they are not capable of showing themselves to be a viable alternative to the radical right-wing hell that is overrunning us.

Their leader in the Senate is Chuck Schumer, who sports a 17 percent approval rating and the charisma of a paper weight. The calculating House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is also having trouble breaking through. It might be helpful if he let Americans know his blood pressure is capable of rising above 10 from time to time, and out of the “strongly worded letters” range.

On Wednesday, as I was putting this column to bed, The Associated Press moved this story: Democrats are deeply pessimistic about the future of their party.

From that story:

A new poll conducted earlier this month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only about one-third of Democrats are “very optimistic” or even “somewhat optimistic” about their party’s future. That’s down sharply from July 2024, when about 6 in 10 Democrats said they had a positive outlook.

I say again: This is a five-alarm fire.

From the story:

“I’m not real high on Democrats right now,” said poll respondent Damien Williams, a 48-year-old Democrat from Cahokia Heights, Illinois. “To me, they’re not doing enough to push back against Trump.”

Instead of addressing any of this with substantive change at the top, their clumsy, inept leadership is covering their eyes and their asses, and hoping it will all burn itself out.

I figure we all deserve a helluva lot better, but in the event they ever start taking themselves seriously, then maybe I will too.

For now, though, we are on our own.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)