You know what they say—momentum wins elections, and right now, the only group with real energy is MAGA. In fact, the left is so lethargic that they can’t even round up volunteers for the Democrats. Can you really blame them? Who’d be fired up to support either a bumbling buffoon who can’t string a sentence together or a cackling witch whose biggest claim to fame is crafting the nation’s largest word salad? It’s tough to rally excitement for that type of clown show. Not even the promise of free coffee is enough to draw the volunteers out, and MSNBC knows that spells big trouble.
This analysis was done just before Biden’s abrupt exit from the race, but it raises a question: With Kamala’s unpopularity—she’s polling 9 points behind Trump, which is even worse than Biden—can she really gather the momentum needed to compete against one of the most formidable and powerful political figures of our time?
As you know, Biden has bowed out of the race and thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, whose 2020 campaign was so dismal that she dropped out before Iowa. Are the Dems even trying anymore? It doesn’t seem like it. That’s the buzz at The Atlantic, where they’re saying the Dems are so battered and beaten, they’ve practically thrown in the towel. Have they resigned themselves to a Trump victory already? Or are they counting on enough mail-in ballots to pull off another ‘win’ when enthusiasm is scraping rock bottom?
In a different election year, a place like Milwaukee’s Zeidler Union Square would surely have been teeming with people, marching around with Sharpied signs and chanting about fascism. Instead, the square, an official protest zone located a few blocks from the Republican National Convention, was like a scene from some postapocalyptic tale. This afternoon’s designated protest zone was a wide, mostly empty expanse of lush grass. In the middle stood a charming gazebo equipped with a microphone and sound system. But nobody appeared to be speaking. Orange-shirted security staff paced the premises, but they really could have saved their energy. There was no one to secure.
“We thought there would be people,” Stephen, a white-bearded protester from Janesville, Wisconsin, who preferred I use only his first name, told me. He’d just arrived with two friends, who were both blinking at the empty space. “I don’t even see a dog.”
The Democrats are so bummed out that they didn’t even have the gumption to protest the RNC. The Atlantic piece goes on:
This week in Milwaukee, only one major demonstration has occurred: a modest-sized march on Monday afternoon, before Trump arrived in the city. Organizers estimated that 3,000 people had shown up that day, although some local news reports suggested numbers in the high hundreds. It was a “decent attendance,” Omar Flores, co-chair of Coalition to March on the RNC 2024, told me. Many demonstrators were not registered Democrats. Some were socialists; others were pro-Palestinian activists angry with Biden. The march coalition had had to file a lawsuit and fight with the city for a protest permit so close to the convention center.
If fascism is sweeping the nation, where are all the anti-fascists? Too down in the dumps to grab their “concrete milkshakes” and “pool noodles?” The Atlantic piece continues:
Yet after the march, and all that negotiating, the activity died down. “I was kind of surprised,” Christine Sinicki, a Wisconsin state representative and the chair of the Milwaukee County Democrats, told me. “I thought, with all the legal battles, they would be protesting every day of the RNC.” (When I asked Flores, the organizer, where he and his allies had gone, he was defensive. Monday’s march took two years to plan, he said, and “all of us have full-time jobs.”)
News of straggler events came to me via whispers: Somewhere outside of the venue, one colleague had seen an esoteric performance-art demonstration about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 involving sand. I was sad to have missed it. Otherwise, the streets surrounding the convention have been quiet, save for the occasional tipsy delegate or errant reporter.
If fascism is imminent, then where was everybody?
That’s what Nadine Seiler was wondering. The 59-year-old had come all the way from Waldorf, Maryland, to be one of two protesters standing on a street corner near a Secret Service checkpoint, where attendees and reporters like me were entering the convention. “I Googled it, and America has at least 200 million adults over 18 years old,” she said. “Why, with democracy on the line, are there only two of us here?”
