Top Dems finally see Trump has given them the fight of their lives — here's how to win it

As many of you know, I have been critical of what passes for the Democratic leadership gasping for air and a clear message in the toxic exhaust of the immoral Trump/Republican efforts to drive the United States of America off a cliff.

Their insistence on pushing lightweights like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead us during these dangerous days has been tone deaf and insulting. At a time we so clearly need fighters, and patriots who can effortlessly and forcefully articulate easy-to-digest talking points, we instead have timid letter-writers, monotone men who inspire sleep, not action.

Somehow the party still doesn’t understand that legislation and political backroom brawling have been replaced by public street fighting, and doing everything possible to seize the message, and win and win again in the court of public opinion.

Unfortunately, perception is everything in the Cell Phone Era, and right now most Americans do not like what either party is dialing up.

Forgetting the Democrats’ failures to break through, I still admittedly have a damn hard time with anybody who can’t see the differences between party that wants to poison our air and drinking water, and a party that wants to protect these things … a party that wants to release the names of the lowlifes who befriended a child-rapist, and the other that wants these people (and one orange one in particular) protected at all costs.

The stark differences between the two major parties in America are endless, and any failure to see this is intellectually lazy at best, and willingly ignorant at worst.

And while it is correct to say they both lean on the dirty money from all these corporate thugs to keep them in work, it is equally correct that America has never been more politically polarized. This has nothing do with the differences in the colors blue and red, and everything to do with the gaping distance between what is right and what is wrong.

Democrats are not perfect, but they are vastly more honest, moral, and decent than Republicans, too many of whom I have absolutely no problem classifying as racist liars.

In fact, I just described their president right there.

Fact-check it.

We are in the early days of this Trump/Republican shutdown of our government, and it feels to me like Democrats have stiffened their upper lips, are unified, and have finally found a hill worth dying on. By allowing Trump and his Republican majority to shut down the government they so clearly hate, Democrats have been given a platform and a megaphone to take a bold message to the American public, and win that battle of public opinion.

Finding themselves on an equal perch to make their case has rarely happened the past decade or so, because Trump — even while he was out of office — has been afforded the opportunity to suck the oxygen out of every room thanks in large part to a corporate media that is run by right-wing billionaires, who are more interested in profits than the truth.

Every hour the Trump shutdown continues, more people will learn just how badly Republicans are screwing them, while they stand up for billionaires, and against the working folk in this country. (Oh … and that they will do literally ANYTHING to keep us from seeing the Epstein Files, because once the government opens again, it could well be there is finally enough votes in Congress to release them.)

Trump and his pathetic Republicans have overplayed a really bad (bruised) hand, and Democrats must make them pay.

Poll after poll shows Americans are blaming Republicans for yet more needless pain in their lives. As more and more of them learn that nine years later, Republicans’ only alternative to Obamacare is a diabolical scheme that will double their healthcare premiums, support for the grotesque Republicans will only continue to erode.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that a whopping 78 percent of Americans say Congress should EXTEND enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits due to expire at the end of the year, including … are you ready for this … 57 percent of MAGA.

As always, Republicans are making it harder on the families they allege to care about, not easier.

Just ask any farmer ....

We are coming off a week in which Trump somehow outdid himself as the most repulsive man in the world. His ugly, anti-American Mussolini act at Quantico last week was another one of those five-alarm fires that should have ended it for this sickening man. You should never get a second chance to publicly rally our military against the citizens they are supposed to defend and serve.

Of course, he never should have gotten a second chance after violently attacking us on Jan. 6, 2021, either.

The man is a traitor, and completely unfit for any duty outside of stiffing some caddie on one of his garish golf courses, which is exactly where he was yet again Saturday, showing just how little he cares about his job or Americans.

He is in declining mental and physical health, and this, too, is becoming more apparent every day.

He is a blowhard gasping for air.

America and her hard-won democracy are in the same peril they were before Trump’s shutdown began last Wednesday, but more and more Americans finally seem to be seeing they have a helluva lot more to lose than to gain with Republicans in leadership.

This shutdown is the Republicans’ doing. They have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. They are being exposed for their insistence to extend tax cuts for the rich, while doing their level best to screw everybody else.

By not caving to these vandals, Democrats are on the right side of the fight, yes, but more important: They have claimed the coveted high ground from which they can finally take their message to the American people, and the fight to Trump’s pathetic Republicans.

• (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.)