Tipsheet

The Democrats Are Choosing Very Stupid Hills to Die On

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  March 19, 2025 10:05 AM

The Democrats have ebbed to record-low favorability ratings in multiple recent polls, reflecting a leftist base that is displeased and divided over the party's performance and direction, and a broader electorate that views the opposition as extreme and unserious.  Part of their problem is that in their haste to oppose President Donald Trump at every turn, they frequently put themselves in a position of looking radical and ridiculous.  The most obvious manifestation of this dour derangement was Democrats' theatrics at Trump's joint session address to Congress earlier in the month, in which they stubbornly refused to applaud anything he said -- no matter how uncontroversial -- with many holding up protest signs or walking out.  They've shown the same mentality in a number of major policy disputes thus far, staking out extremely unpopular and politically risky positions, all in the name of base-required Resistance.  

On DOGE's mission to root out waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, Democrats have by and large chosen a 'total opposition,' scorched earth campaign against the effort and its leader, Elon Musk (with numerous leftist voices indulging in anti-immigrant nativism as they assail Musk, who's been a citizen of this country for decades).  A recent NBC News poll finds the insistence that DOGE is an unnecessary or harmful enterprise that should be shut down happens to be a position held by...a little more than one-third of the public:


If Democrats more reasonably represented the 'middle' group, who say they want DOGE to continue, but at a slower and more deliberate pace, they'd be on firmer footing with more people.  But that moderate stance would enrage their core voters, who want elected Democrats screaming 'no' as performatively as possible, all the time.  Remember, this is a coalition that spent years trying to eliminate the Senate filibuster, while also insisting that partial government shutdowns are catastrophic events that must avoided at all costs.  Those very same people are now still seething that Democrats didn't filibuster the country into a government shutdown.  Democrats are playing to their most irrational voters, which is how they've ended up in the nuance-free position of clamoring to hate everything about DOGE, even as a substantial majority of Americans want to see the project keep going.

On the Mahmoud Khalil imbroglio, Democrats have raced to defend an open supporter of Hamas, the blood-stained, US-designated terrorist organization.  They're rallying to him, as if he's some sort of free speech martyr.  The man is a Syrian national and a guest in the United States who has spent his days since Hamas' October 2023 murder, rape and kidnapping spree spewing propaganda on behalf of the butchers.  His pro-terrorism group has explicitly praised violent jihad and called for the overthrow of the United States and Western civilization writ large.  In addition to their harassment and intimidation of Jews, they've committed multiple crimes, including violent takeovers of buildings on Columbia's campus -- resulting in despicable episodes like this:

Columbia University is facing a new federal investigation over allegations from two janitors who claim they were unlawfully forced to scrub off swastikas spray-painted on campus before later being attacked and briefly trapped by an anti-Israel “mob” during the takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace, has opened a probe into complaints from Lester Wilson and Mario Torres, who were forced to fight their way out of Hamilton Hall nearly a year ago, The Post has confirmed...Wilson and Torres, who had worked at the school for over five years, were both left injured as well as traumatized from the scourge of anti-Israel unrest that engulfed the Ivy League school and have since been unable to return to work as a result, according to the complaints they filed last October.

“Hours after President [Minouche] Shafik issued her statement [that the university had become ‘unsafe for everyone‘], an antisemitic mob assaulted two janitors inside Columbia’s historic Hamilton Hall, calling them ‘Jew-lovers,'” the two complaints for both men recalled of the Hamilton Hall takeover in April last year. “Columbia had indeed become unsafe for everyone, including the two janitors who were trapped inside Hamilton Hall. And for these two men, Columbia had for months been a hostile environment in violation of Title VII,” the complaints added...“He spotted a colleague inside the encampment cleaning the mess within it,” Wilson’s complaint recounted. “He saw and heard members of the encampment shouting ‘Jew-lover’ and ‘Zionist’ at the colleague while he worked to clean up their mess.”...

Beyond the petulance and egregious anti-Semitism, there was also physical violence, as these custodians were held in the occupied building against their will for a time:

Recommended

So, That Judge Who's Trying to Hamstring DOGE and Trump on USAID Is a Total Lefty Loon Matt Vespa
Elon Musk Levels Tim Walz After He Cheers for Tesla's Falling Stock Prices Jeff Charles

Rioters had moved vending machines and zip-tied doors to barricade the exits and entrances. After deciding he was out of options, Torres decided to battle his way through the mob. ‘”I’m going to get twenty guys up here to f— you up,'” one masked rioter who had “violently” shoved Torres threatened, per the complaint. “Mr. Torres pulled a fire extinguisher, which was within arm’s reach, off the wall to defend himself and replied, ‘I’ll be right here.’” During that confrontation, Torres was repeatedly struck on his back by other rioters. After repeatedly navigating to blocked-off exits, he eventually found a way out that had been blocked by zip ties and a bike lock. Following his pleas, one of the rioters cut the zip ties and let him out. Wilson had been separated from Torres during the havoc and had quickly tried to escape after determining the rioters were taking over. During his scramble to get out, rioters smashed furniture into him and pushed him repeatedly, per the complaint.

Another 'occupation' in recent days resulted in a school employee being sent to the hospital.  Khalil was in the thick of all of it.  And yet, "Free Mahmoud Khalil," the Senate Judiciary Democrats' official account tweeted, in response to his pending removal from the country. A parade of elected members similarly demanded that he be released and permitted to stay in the United States.  (How many of these Democrats have ever uttered the name Edan Alexander, a young American citizen who's been held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza by Khalil's Hamas idols for well over 500 days?). We saw another knee-jerk flurry of outrage over the Trump administration's decision to deny re-entry to a non-citizen doctor and Brown University professor this week.  The woman in question was out of the country to attend the funeral of the top leader of Hezbollah, another US-designated terrorist group awash in American blood: 


I can understand the odious hard-Left/Islamist alliance making heroes out of people like this.  As a political matter for Democrats, joining that sick chorus feels suicidal.  As I've written previously, I'm open to the possibility that Khalil enjoys more rights than a mere student visa holder, because he has a green card.  Groups like the ACLU are welcome to advocate on his behalf, as even unpopular causes deserve representation and we adjudicate things fairly in this country. (For what it's worth, I tend to believe that his support for violent terrorism, his fanatical hatred for American values, and his group's criminal activity are more than sufficient grounds to yank his green card and send him packing, but given his immigration status, the legal process needs to play out).  But political parties are not obligated to take up profoundly and understandably unpopular causes as their own.  That's a choice Democrats have made all by themselves.

They're making a similar decision by raising vociferous objections to those Tren de Aragua deportation flights.  I actually agree that there should be some recourse mechanism for someone who might be hypothetically swept up and placed on one of these flights in error.  And arguments about whether the Trump administration crossed the line in its response to a federal judge's order about the flights shouldn't be hand-waived aside.  That said, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told me this week that every single person on those planes was an illegal immigrant, adding with what he described as a high degree of confidence that they were also members of foreign criminal gangs. Rubio noted that many of the Trump administration's critics on these issues exhibited no concerns about 'due process' when it came to the myriad infringements of American citizens' rights during COVID:


The same point applies to born-again 'free speech' enthusiasts who've tolerated or celebrated censorship and 'cancel culture' for years, only to abruptly champion the supposed speech rights of non-citizen Hamas supporters, while ignoring their illegal conduct.  'Principle' is not a word that comes to mind. Other words do, and they don't reflect well on Democrats' instincts, values or priorities.  They're certainly earning these ratings:


I'll leave you with my Fox commentary on these subjects: