A recurring gag in the old Peanuts comic strip had Lucy holding a football and asking Charlie Brown to kick it. And every time he tried, she would trick him and pull the ball away at the last second. And after Charlie Brown resolved that he would never fall for that trick again, she would again trick him into falling for it.
Trump and you Democrats are like that. He baits and provokes you, and you predictably “fall for it” and react with yet another emotionally driven, tone-deaf outburst that demonstrates that you are utterly oblivious to the optics of your antics.
Previously, Trump unleashed Elon Musk and his tech bros in a guerrilla audit of federal agencies, revealing a number of bizarre disbursements made overseas to advance outlier causes like the transgender agenda. Democrats shrieked that “you’re not allowed to look there!” but most voters were unmoved. You ended up reinforcing your existing reputation as reckless spenders.
Then, you Democrats fought Trump over his efforts to deport the criminals and gang members admitted by the feckless Biden administration. Your usual media allies, unable to resist the allure of more clicks from alarmist reporting, thoughtfully published plenty of pictures of scary, heavily tattooed, dead-eyed gang members. While you fussed about procedural due process, the public just wondered, “Why are the Democrats so eager to keep these scary characters in the U.S.?”
To most voters, “due process” just means that the innocent aren’t punished, not that illegals be given free lawyers and allowed to spend years in the country while their frivolous asylum claims are litigated at taxpayer expense. Lauding a judge who helped an illegal charged with a violent attack, escape from immigration officers didn’t help your image.
Following that was a week of violent rioting in LA over the ICE deportations, and Trump’s efforts to carry out his winning campaign promise to stop illegal immigration. Despite media images of burning cars and rioters waving the Mexican flag, looted stores, injured cops, and chaos, the Democratic response was to complain that the violence was somehow caused by the National Guard guarding federal officers and buildings. In an impressive display of “performative victimization,” a Democratic senator crashed and disrupted an administration press conference, and got his intended reaction when he was dragged out of the room by security.
Following that, we had your “No Kings” rallies around the country, in which True Believers showed up to prove how much they hate Trump, as if there was ever any doubt. At the Salt Lake City rally, a demonstrator was shot and killed by an ironically named armed “safety monitor” who was shooting at another demonstrator who was brandishing an assault rifle. A shoot-out between “mostly peaceful demonstrators” is not a good look for a party trying hard to depict itself as containing the people who can responsibly run the country.
To be fair, sometimes it seems like Trump baits you with crazy stuff just to get a rise out of you. For example, the Democratic hysterics over the silly talk of seizing Canada and Greenland. Or the liberal media uproar on June 2 when Trump reposted a wild conspiracy theory describing how Joe Biden had been executed in 2020, and replaced with a robotic clone. What was amusing was the headline in USA Today in which the writer felt that it was necessary to clarify that it was a “false” report, and to reassure readers that Biden had not actually been executed and replaced with a robot. Really? It would explain so much.
You have succeeded in further reinforcing your images as both soft on crime and supportive of illegal immigration, as well as being profligate spenders. There is nothing that the Republicans could have said that would have more effectively delivered that message. The fact that you can turn out large crowds of progressives on campus and at your rallies means little. You are further losing the moderate middle that you need to win.
The impressions that you are now making in the public mind will plague your party for a long time. Recall that the rioting and theatrics of the left not only helped Nixon win in 1968, but gave him an overwhelming reelection victory in 1972, in which he won 49 of 50 states. And the impression endured. Consider that between the years 1968 to 1992, there was only one Democratic presidential term, to five Republican terms.
Like the elephant mascot of the Republican party, voters have long memories.
You Democrats have been directing your political theater at a relatively small pool of True Believers, not the larger electorate. If you are smart, you will be less self-indulgent and stop “falling for it” by instinctively reacting to Trump like yapping Pavlovian pooches. Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach. Tired of being tricked, he eventually just bought himself a kicking tee. Send a response for publication to lettes@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 10, 2025.
The problem is, when we ignored Trump’s “silly talk” in his first term, we lost womens’ healthcare rights and nearly our democracy. This term, we are dealing with measles outbreaks due to antivax ignorance, losing ground to climate change deniers and seeing the DOJ weaponized against our heretofore impartial judiciary, not to mention the capitulation of our free press to a Viktor Orban wannabe.
Trump: Sics secret police on American citizens and veterans. Sends immigrants to foreign gulags. Builds concentration camps.
John Donegan: “Democrats are oblivious to the optics of their antics.”
Or, maybe those things didn’t really happen after all and are just talking points. We didn’t “lose women’s healthcare”, but just left it up to the individual states, and abortion remains freely available in California and a majority of states. Measles and vaccine skepticism have been around a long time. The judiciary is not more “weaponized” than when it was deployed against Trump and conservatives, to Democrats cheers, and anti-Trump and anti Republican sentiments flow freely from the multiplicity of left wing media sources. And our democracy was never under threat, despite the hyperbole of liberals.
The Deranged Democrats: “Women lost their right to make decisions about their reproductive health”.
12 States: Ban abortion
10 States: Severely limit access to abortion
John Donegan: “That’s just a talking point”
John is a coward who won’t actually advocate for the policies he prefers, because he derives just enough self worth from simply sneering at anyone who decides to stand up for a positive vision of freedom and justice in America.
How can America be considered “free” or “Democratic” when it has an electoral college and an upper house in Congress? In England, the Senate is equivalent to their “House of Lords.” They are Lords and we are peasants. The People want an end to stupid decades long “foreign interventions,” we want a public option for healthcare, and we want a robust social safety net. Neither party responds other than to double down on tax breaks for the rich and austerity for the rest of us.
Dear John Donegan,
Where is the John Donegan of July 3rd, 2025, who wrote:
“My point? We have a lot more in common than we have differences, and we can usually work through our differences respectfully and without supervision or intervention. … Let’s keep it up and not let the voices in politics and the media turn us against each other to serve their own purposes”
By intentionally referring to other human beings with the dehumanizing terms “illegals” and “illegal”, how is this John Donegan of July 31st living up to the reasonable, positive, and humane ideals espoused by the John Donegan of July 3rd, who implored us to work out our differences with respect toward better purposes?
Sincerely,
ForUsTheLiving