It was a spectacle of calculated chaos, the kind of grotesque carnival only modern American politics could conjure up. The New York Times, that towering cathedral of Establishment respectability, found itself fumbling with its maps like a drunk juggling road signs. The first map—a digital fever dream of small-dollar donations sprawling across the republic—painted an unsettling picture. Sanders’ grassroots army had swallowed the landscape like a wildfire. Their donations flowed like cheap whiskey at a VFW hall, drowning out every other candidate.

This was unacceptable, of course. The media mavens had a narrative to maintain, and Sanders’ tsunami of unwashed, idealistic fervor wasn’t it. So they made a new map. A cleaner one. A quieter one. One that didn’t include Sanders. Suddenly, the picture became palatable again—like swapping out a lurid Hieronymus Bosch for a soft-focus Norman Rockwell. The money was neatly redistributed among the chosen mediocrities: the “serious” candidates, the ones who wouldn’t rock the boat or upset the delicate ecosystem of cocktail-party circuit politics.

But the DNC wasn’t done yet. No, the fix had to go deeper. With the precision of a Vegas card shark, they worked their arcane rules and backroom deals to elevate not one but two of the least inspiring figures they could dredge up from their talent-starved bench. This was no accident; it was an act of pure cynicism. A calculated insult to democracy masquerading as strategy.

In one election, they handed the nomination to a stiff who could barely finish a sentence without stepping on his own shoelaces. In the next, they doubled down with someone whose charisma could be bottled and sold as a sedative. It was as though the Democratic Party had developed a perverse fetish for losers—propping up candidates so uninspiring they made a DMV waiting room seem electric by comparison.

And yet, the wheels of the machine kept turning. The pundits clapped like seals, the donors smiled through clenched teeth, and the voters were left holding their noses and pulling levers like prisoners in a Kafkaesque lottery. It was a system so warped, so grotesque, that only the truly insane could look at it and say, “Yes, this is democracy.”

Banana peel twice over moment for the Dems with their last-ditch attempt to defeat Bernie coming home to roost. Sad sorry-ass operation leaving us with Trump redux, which feels surreal. But that’s the absurd reality now—what could’ve been a reckoning for a failed system turned into the political equivalent of a three-ring circus with a tinpot dictator at the center. The Dems—still drunk on their neoliberal fantasies—did everything they could to kneecap the one guy who actually gave a damn about people, the guy who wasn’t afraid to throw punches at Wall Street, Big Pharma, and the whole rigged system. And here we are, left with a man who will give permission to corporations and banks to eat the world alive, all while grinning like a bulldog in a three-piece suit.

The Dems seem locked into this delusion, this desperate fantasy that they can just sit back and wait out the demands for real change, waiting for the next economic boom to somehow roll in and fix everything. They treat the issues Sanders raised—healthcare, living wages, housing—as if they’re optional add-ons to a system that maybe will take care of itself if we just leave it alone long enough. They’re convinced that another bubble will come, lift the economy, and make the demands for real reform vanish into thin air like a magic trick.

But here we are, still waiting for that “bounce back.” Still waiting for the economy to pull itself up by its bootstraps while the rest of us are watching the factory jobs disappear, our rents double, and our healthcare premiums rival the cost of a down payment on a house. It’s like they’re hoping for some economic miracle to save their asses, but all we’ve got is the same old tired song: “Just wait, just wait, the market will fix it all.” And yet, the market has never fixed anything. It’s only ever patched over the rot until the next crisis comes along.

Still waiting. Still waiting for that “bounce back.” But it’s obvious now: it’s not coming. And the longer the Dems stick to this fantasy, the deeper the hole they’re digging for themselves. Trump may be the symptom, but the disease is this profound refusal to face the future.

Look, the people—the disaffected, disenfranchised, and desperately ticked-off millions—were trying to send a message loud and clear. But the Democratic brain trust, the sanctimonious sages of the Party of Good Intentions, somehow misinterpreted it all. They thought they were putting a leash on fascism, but it turned out they were just muzzling themselves, eyes closed, hands over ears, la-la-la, while a political reality they refused to face bulldozed through their illusions.

Now here we are, as if in a cheap satire, where Trump and that square-jawed Vance kid—neither of whom have ever met a populist they didn’t want to keep at arm’s length—paid just enough lip service to anti-war sentiment and the working-class struggle that it landed. Turns out a hologram of populism, a cardboard cutout version, was still preferable to the Democrats’ corporate-speak. At least Trump dared to say, in his cowboy bluntness, that Americans should afford a house, a car, groceries. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris was out there with the “Opportunity Economy” claptrap, a slogan so stripped of substance it may as well have been lifted from a focus group in a Wall Street conference room.

And all these Democratic “geniuses” who thought they could outwit, outspin, and out-tactic Trump have now driven the country off a cliff. Ezra Klein—smug on the pages of every think piece and podcast—played his high-stakes game of chicken with Biden’s future, only to watch the train tumble off a different cliff entirely. The “smart set” wanted to replace Biden, sure, but only with their own pet project—a “safe,” “nuanced” alternative who could keep those liberal sinecures intact. But the result? Chaos. The one thing no one had the guts to predict was that people might actually just want to buy groceries and pay rent without a second mortgage.

For nine long years, the liberals had their noses pressed up against the glass, wide-eyed and bewildered, peering in at the spectacle of Donald J. Trump, America’s own mutant lovechild of P.T. Barnum and a Vegas slot-machine. Nine years of howling disbelief, of CNN-anchored freak shows and Sunday op-ed autopsies, trying to crack the code of this vulgar, neon god that had hypnotized half the nation. But despite all their think tanks, algorithms, and armies of degree-holders, they failed.

The Democrats, that party of enlightened ‘experts’ and effete, latte-sipping, Tesla-driving acolytes of science and social justice, were left flat-footed, clutching their Harvard diplomas like rosaries, chanting mantras of rationality in a nation half-drunk on madness. They have Ph.D.s, Nobel laureates, consulting firms worth more than most small towns, yet this grinning avatar of American chaos blew right through them like a Harley through a hedge. Trump, that carnival barker straight out of Twain, didn’t care about policies, platforms, or promises. He was there to burn down the whole damn tent, grinning with a mouth full of sparks.

And while they dithered, analyzing his moves like Kremlinologists decoding enemy broadcasts, Trump played his crowd like a fiddle. They’d call him a liar, and his followers would cheer louder. They’d point to his failures, and his supporters would laugh and raise their beers to the man who just didn’t give a damn. His appeal was primal, raw—he was a middle finger to the establishment, a bulldozer barreling through the polite hedges of educated America, taking out country clubs, college halls, and Congress in one rumbling joyride.

The liberal elites couldn’t figure out why he worked, and in their confusion, they ignored the biggest piece of the puzzle: Trump wasn’t a bug in the system; he was the system—blown up to grotesque proportions, dripping gold paint and loud as a brass band. He was the embodiment of an America that had grown fat, mean, and magnificently mad, willing to torch its own myths just to watch the flames light up the night.

And yet, the resistance that formed? A media spectacle. The talking heads, the armchair warriors of Twitter, with their hashtags and their performative outrage, cosplaying like they’re the French Resistance in ’41, missing the point entirely. #Resistance, indeed—resistance to what? To Trump? To fascism? Hell, half of them couldn’t tell you what they’re really resisting; it’s all just performance, filling airtime with self-righteous indignation.

The Democrats trotted out a candidate who managed to embody many of the worst aspects of both parties’ playbooks, yet somehow failed to win over even the moderate Republicans they hoped to sway. Here they were, with a candidate who, on paper, should’ve been right up the GOP’s alley: kept people in prison past their release dates, supported a foreign policy agenda aligned with a hyper-militarized ethnostate, and was willing to play nice with the Cheney wing of American politics.

But even that wasn’t enough. The Republicans, seasoned in the dark art of tough-guy politics, looked at this centrist Democrat and saw only a watered-down version of themselves—someone willing to flirt with their agenda but too polite, too careful, too unwilling to really pull the punches. The Dems seem unable to understand that it’s not just about policy overlap; it’s about conviction and unapologetic ruthlessness. They’re out here trying to present a “Republican Lite” option to a party that already has the real thing—and who are only too happy to go all-in with their own, bolder, brasher version.

It’s like they’ve forgotten that the GOP’s appeal lies not just in their policies but in their raw, unfiltered brand of politics. The Dems’ candidate, despite all the tough-on-crime rhetoric and hawkish foreign policy gestures, just didn’t carry the same swagger. Instead, they ended up alienating their own base and barely making a dent with Republicans, proving yet again that a lukewarm imitation won’t satisfy anyone.

In 2016, when the ACA premiums shot up 40% the same week James Comey made his move on Clinton, you’d think it would have hit home. But no, the Acela corridor elite convinced themselves it was the emails, the FBI, the Russians, the damn solar eclipse—anything but the reality that people are sick of being handed scraps while billion-dollar policy ideas make big promises and deliver squat. They closed schools, then claimed they were helping the working class. They promised affordability and served up slogans that wouldn’t fly in an undergrad debate class. They treated the working class like they’d sign off on anything.

And now we’ve arrived at the unavoidable conclusion: the people didn’t buy it. They could sniff the hypocrisy, the hollow talk, and decided, hell, we’ll take our chances with the reality-TV businessman who’s at least entertaining.

Remember Obama, that beacon of hope, the man with the golden smile who was supposed to be different, who was supposed to transcend all the swampy sludge of Washington. He had the whole country lined up behind him, all the goodwill in the world, and what did he do? He bailed out the banks, handed out blank checks to Wall Street, and made his Ivy League cronies rich. All those high-flying Wall Street wizards, the ones who’d gambled recklessly and left Main Street bleeding, got rescued—while everyone else, everyone who actually put Obama in office, got left holding the bag. Home foreclosures, lost pensions, layoffs—none of it mattered as long as the banks could stay afloat.

Obama had this chance—hell, he had the perfect chance—to put Wall Street in check, to stand with the people. But instead, he threw the working class to the wolves while claiming he’d saved the economy. His friends in high places rode high on the wave of that bailout cash, and we’re supposed to act like he had no choice? Like his hands were tied by some invisible law of the universe? Please.

And then people sit around scratching their heads, baffled, wondering how on earth we ended up with Trump? Really? After Obama’s big giveaway to the finance overlords? Trump wasn’t some inexplicable phenomenon; he was the big, ugly, neon-lit reaction to all the Democrats’ double-dealing and betrayal. Voters were tired of candidates who mouthed pretty words about “change” but handed them a bill for someone else’s yacht. They didn’t want to hear about “the long game” or “slow and steady wins the race” from a party that didn’t seem to care if they were winning or losing—so long as the right consultants got paid.

It was inevitable, really. The whole thing. The voters who lined up for Obama in ’08 felt their hope ripped out of their guts by a man they thought was on their side.

Yeah, and that’s the real kicker, isn’t it? The worst thing isn’t just that Trump’s a disaster on every front—it’s that he’s the license for all of it. The big banks, the corporations, the ones who’ve been shoveling wealth up to the top since the 1980s—they’re looking at Trump and saying, “Oh, this is our guy. This is the green light.” With Trump in power, there’s no more pretense, no more worrying about looking like the villain. The man’s practically begging them to go ahead, exploit as much as you can, take it all, and don’t even bother with the dress rehearsal.

This isn’t just about more inequality; it’s about a systematic breakdown of any semblance of responsibility. It’s an epoch of exploitation where the ones doing the exploiting have no interest in maintaining even the illusion of fair play. The veneer of decency, of corporate social responsibility, that’s all gone out the window. We’re heading into an era where the public face of business is a gleaming smile on a boardroom shark, and the lives of regular people are just another cost of doing business. Only now, no one’s even pretending it’s anything but a blood-soaked money grab.

It’s exploitation without even the grace of manners. At least back in the day, there were some unspoken rules—“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” “Don’t be too obvious about how much you’re ripping people off”—but now? We’ve entered a world where there’s no shame left in it. The rich get richer, the poor get crushed, and the ones left in the middle are too distracted by shiny promises of “tax cuts” and “jobs” to realize they’ve been handed a one-way ticket to nowhere.

We’re living through the rise of corporate fascism with a smile, the glee of deregulation, and a free-market wet dream where the only thing that matters is making a buck, even if that buck’s stolen right out of your pocket. It’s like a bad sitcom where the punchlines are just more suffering for everyone who isn’t sitting on a pile of cash. And the worst part? Trump’s got a whole cult of people cheering it on, convinced that somehow, this time it’ll trickle down.