RESISTANCE IS FINE, AS LONG AS IT'S CENTRIST RESISTANCE, APPARENTLY

I know I should be writing about Marjorie Taylor Greene's decision to leave Congress (which is effective a day or two after her congressional pension kicks in), or President Trump's love-bombing of Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office yesterday (I think Josh Marshall is right that Trump responded to Mamdani's charisma and charm -- "It’s of a piece with [Trump] being a pushover for any good looking guy he could imagine being a movie leading man" -- and that he was also impressed by how many reporters are following Mamdani, and wants some reflected glory).

But I'm still thinking about that video from six "security" Democrats, the one that led to Trump's overreaction this week. It's actually a bold attack on Trump, from a party that became very conflict-averse immediately after Election Day 2024 and only gradually (and reluctantly) came around to the idea of fighting back, and even then only on specific issues. What happened here?

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community. The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship.

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— Senator Elissa Slotkin (@slotkin.senate.gov) November 18, 2025 at 8:31 AM

How could this have been released? Why didn't high-priced consultants and party leaders pull these six aside and tell them to pivot to kitchen-table issues?

I don't know for sure, but I think it's telling that the Democrats in this video aren't progressives. Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly are centrists from swing states; Representatives Chris DeLuzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, and Jason Crow are all among the 86 House Democrats who voted yesterday in favor of a ridiculous Republican resolution condemning socialism ("Whereas many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro ... Whereas the United States was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed...").

Democratic Establishmentatarians and the party's most trusted consultants believe that their advice on how to respond to Trump -- which was "Say nothing" for months, and then "Say nothing unless you're talking about kitchen-table issues" -- is simply a quantifiable best practice in 2025. I don't buy this, obviously. Ordinary citizens and a few rogue elected Democrats have put other topics on the agenda over the past year, and now Trump is flailing and very unpopular.

I think the Establishmentarians didn't want to fight Trump on most issues, and didn't want to seem like "the Resistance" overall, because they thought that would empower progressives -- Democrats (and others) who would then call for serious economic changes that would reduce the gap between the haves (some of whom are Democratic donors) and the have-nots.

The Establishmentarians didn't object to the video above because it came from the left-centrist wing of the party. It came from members of Congress who fit into a category the Establishmentarians think can win back power for the party: Democrats who can campaign on their national-security bona fides and who don't rock the boat on economic inequality. The Establishmentarians can point to the fact that candidates fitting this profile -- gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger -- won by bigger margins than Mamdani earlier this month.

The fact that this video exists tells me that "Stick to kitchen-table issues" wasn't a hard-and-fast rule for the Democratic Establishment -- the real rule was "Keep progressives in the background." This video didn't break that rule.