Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan?

Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan?

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump arrive for the inauguration ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Getty Images/TCA, Melina Mara/POOL/AFP

With all the attention deservedly on President Trump and what he intends to do with his defiant return to the White House, there’s a more than good chance we’ll spend the next four years consumed once again by all things Trump.

There’s already been a dizzying amount: a giant raft of executive orders; attacks on a constitutional amendment; his threats to invade sovereign nations; a seeming Nazi salute from one of his biggest surrogates; his sweeping Jan. 6 pardons; his beef with a bishop; his TikTok flip-flop; his billion-dollar meme coin controversy; scathing new allegations against one of his Cabinet picks; unilaterally renaming a body of water; a federal crackdown on DEI; promises of immigration raids across major cities. All this in just the first three days of Trump’s second term.


And this may be his greatest trick — getting not only his own fans and supporters to obsess over him, but his critics and opponents, too.

He does that by flooding the zone — he is never not talking, posting, pointing fingers, ranting, raving, and keeping us all in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

The problem with that is that so much gets missed. For Republicans, that often inures to their advantage, as they get to slip significant policy changes past an unsuspecting public, or bury bad news under the pile of Trump’s ever-mounting detritus.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But for Democrats, four more years of Trump distractions could mean they miss yet another opportunity to fix their own house, and mount a serious and convincing challenger to end what could be 12 more years of Republican rule in Washington.

They need to find their Ronald Reagan.

Trump’s first term was marked by unprecedented chaos, and Dems admittedly got lured into Trump’s expanding web of distractions. While they busied themselves with investigations and hearings in order to make Trump as weak a president and candidate in 2020 as possible, they weren’t as focused on identifying and cultivating a Democratic candidate, a Democratic message, and Democratic policies that could deliver a fatal blow to the Trump era once and for all.

Over the course of Trump’s first term, his approval rating was never above water, fluctuating between a low of 35% and a high of 49%. After a term marked by civil unrest, incompetence, moral and ethical failures, conspiracy theories, extremism, mismanaging COVID-19, and overseeing Republican losses in the House and the Senate, America was decidedly tired of Trump’s ineptitude and self-destructiveness.

Joe Biden emerged from a crowded 2020 Democratic primary and a general election not with a political mandate but with a collective sigh of relief — he was elected to turn the page on Trump, and then (hopefully) pass on the torch to a younger, fresher, forward-looking Dem.

That, as we know, did not happen. Not only didn’t Biden want to pass the torch, but Democrats didn’t seem to want to architect a winning platform of dynamic messages and successful policies to keep their existing coalition and attract new voters.

Instead, they stuck with old messages that largely centered around Trump: he’s anti-democratic, he’s a convicted felon, and he’s going to end access to abortion.

They also boasted of demonstrably failing policies, insisting the economy was strong as hell, the border wasn’t a crisis, and crime was down.

Without a candidate, messages, or policies that transcended Trump, Democrats were once again playing Trump’s whack-a-mole game.

Instead of finding their own Ronald Reagan, an enormously popular president who not only transformed the conservative movement and the Republican Party, but America and in fact the world, Dems found a Jimmy Carter — a well-intentioned man whose messages and policies nevertheless inspired little confidence in the party.

Instead of setting off 12 years of party control like Reagan did, Dems eked out just four, and now risk finding themselves in the political wilderness.

Democrats must find their Reagan now — a candidate whose utility isn’t just to temporarily sideline Trump but vanquish him and his would-be successors for good.

Who that might be is both an open question and a problem. Democrats’ abject failures in places like California, New York and Chicago shine an ugly spotlight on some of the party’s biggest faces and worst policies. Other boldface names are either too old or too extreme. Identity politics, egos, and intraparty disagreements could easily get in the way.

Democrats must rebuild their party with new faces and new ideas, winning policies and inspiring messages.

For many of us, the next four years under Trump feel like an eternity. But for Democrats, they’ll come and go in the blink of an eye. What they do with that time will change history — possibly forever.

S.E. Cupp: Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan? was originally published by the Tribune Content Agency and is shared with permission.S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.

Read More

Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad
Getty Images, Richard Drury

Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad

WASHINGTON – Since his return to office in January, President Donald Trump has ushered in an era of enormous upheaval in the federal government: from dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development in early February to the recent announcement of extensive tariffs. But amid these sweeping changes, the quiet change in U.S. embassy policies is going largely unnoticed.

Since Trump’s inauguration, embassies have largely avoided drawing undue attention from the Oval Office. Under orders from Washington, they’ve avoided contact with the press and visiting Americans, and in at least one case, canceled a long-planned embassy appointment with visiting American students without explanation.

Keep ReadingShow less
Project 2025, Phase II: The Bureaucracy

An individual leaving work with their belongings.

Getty Images, RUNSTUDIO

Project 2025, Phase II: The Bureaucracy

Last spring and summer, The Fulcrum published a 30-part series on Project 2025. Now that Donald Trump’s second term The Fulcrum has started Part 2 of the series has commenced.

To no one’s surprise, President Trump reinstated his provocative “Schedule F”program as soon as he reentered the Oval Office. The policy that allows a president to redefine—and thus fire— executive branch personnel at will and replace them with loyalists, partisans, and patrons, was controversial when Trump first introduced it in October 2020. That was a mere two weeks before his failed reelection bid and only three months before his 2021 departure from the White House, scarcely enough runway to get the program off the ground.

Keep ReadingShow less
Complaint Filed to Ethics Officials Regarding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
red and white x sign

Complaint Filed to Ethics Officials Regarding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

On Friday, March 21, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) related to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging the purchase of Tesla stock on March 19th.

CLC is a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the challenges facing American democracy. Its mission is to fight for every American’s freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity, or economic status.

Keep ReadingShow less
Understanding the Debate on Presidential Immunity

The U.S. White House.

Getty Images, Caroline Purser

Understanding the Debate on Presidential Immunity

Presidential Immunity: History and Background

Presidential immunity is the long-standing idea that the president of the United States has exemption from liability or legal proceedings for acts related to the duties of presidential office. Contrary to popular belief, presidential immunity is not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution; only sitting members of Congress are explicitly granted judicial immunity through the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Rather, the concept of presidential immunity has arisen through the Department of Justice’s longstanding policy against prosecuting presidents in office and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article II, which has developed through a number of Supreme Court cases dating back to 1867.

Keep ReadingShow less