Democrats Speak Before They Think
- john raymond
- May 11
- 3 min read
There’s a reason Bernie Sanders never called himself a Democrat. Even though he caucuses with them, even though he votes with them, even though his policies are closer to theirs than to the nihilism on the right—he still knew better than to wear their name. Because that name, that brand, that legacy of the Democratic Party has become a monument to cowardice masquerading as caution, to empty rhetoric in place of structural understanding. Democrats are not evil in the way Republicans have become—they are not enforcers of fascism or gleeful torturers of the weak—but they are useless in a way that makes evil stronger. And that uselessness is born from the fact that they open their mouths before they use their brains.
Every crisis is a photo op. Every betrayal is an opportunity for “healing.” Every time the republic teeters, the Democrats speak in clichés, appeal to norms already shattered, and offer nothing but the ghost of dignity as the house burns. They think the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, when in fact it bends toward whoever is holding the goddamn lever. Republicans know that. Republicans have learned to pull it. Democrats just ask if everyone’s okay with the current curvature. They are always looking backward—toward a golden age of civility that never existed, toward a constitution that has already been gutted, toward a court that no longer serves law but ideology.
Democrats speak as if politics is still a debate club, as if truth still wins because it is truth. They have no theory of power. No model of capture. No doctrine of asymmetry. No understanding that the systems they invoke—law, court, precedent—have already been turned against them by those who studied the mechanics of betrayal while the Democrats were rehearsing press statements. They treat Mitch McConnell like a colleague instead of what he is: a terminator sent to dismantle every social safeguard built in the last century. They don’t see the battlefield, because they still think this is a negotiation.
They speak without thinking because they think their words matter more than their actions. They believe that the right phrase, the right posture, the right “message discipline” will win hearts and minds. But they have no courage to match their language. They do not fire prosecutors when it matters. They do not expand courts when they have the chance. They do not fight. They only mourn. They write letters. They tweet. They shake their heads. And all the while, the machine grinds forward.
This is why Bernie never joined them in name. Because Bernie, for all his flaws, knew that systems must be confronted, not comforted. He knew that economic betrayal cannot be solved with “access” to healthcare. That moral rot cannot be treated with polling. That dignity doesn’t come from messaging, but from confrontation. The Democrats never learned this. They still think they can finesse their way out of fascism. That they can triangulate their way out of climate collapse. That they can campaign their way out of constitutional crisis.
They speak before they think. And they speak to be liked. To be seen. To be reasonable. And in doing so, they become complicit—not in word, but in failure. They fail to name the enemy. They fail to map the field. They fail to anticipate the strike. They fail, again and again, because they never believed the danger was real until it was too late. And even now, they still don’t.
That is why they lose. And that is why Bernie never fully joined them. Because to speak without thought is to surrender the only weapon we have left: clarity.
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