A Political Revolution Is Happening. Democrats Refuse to Join.

The neoliberal order that’s squeezed working families from Tennessee to Manchester to Warsaw is collapsing. The question is what replaces it?

Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN last week and basically told the country that Democrats are going to let Trump's administration arrest whoever they want. Two weeks earlier, he said arresting Democratic members of Congress would be a "red line." Then when it came time to actually do something about it, he started babbling about responding "in a time, place, and manner of our choosing."

That's Democrats in a nutshell. All talk, no action. Identify every problem in the world but never name names or offer adequate solutions.

Look, I get it. Everyone's tired of hearing about how the Democratic Party needs to do this or that differently. But we're in the middle of the most transformative moment in my lifetime, and I'm old. Democratic leaders are either too scared, too smug, or too bought off to seize the moment.

People are drowning in debt. Trapped in the economic class of their birth or worse. Instead of offering an economic revolution, Democrats are asking us to trust the status quo and to help them restore and defend it. The problem is the status quo is under attack. We’re in the midst of a political revolution powered by MAGA.

Let me tell you what this revolution looks like in numbers. The bottom 20% of American households are spending 181% of their income just to stay alive—food, housing, transportation, healthcare, clothing, education. That's before you add childcare, which can cost another $15,000 a year. These aren't statistics. These are your neighbors going backwards every month just trying to exist.

The middle class? They're spending 78% of their income on basics. No savings, no cushion, no room to breathe. When the car breaks down or somebody gets sick, they're done.

And it shows up in ways that should make any sane person furious. Randis Dennies, who works at a distribution center in Memphis, told the New York Times he uses payment plans to buy groceries and pay his phone bill. We're financing $116 billion worth of stuff annually through these schemes now. People are splitting their grocery bills into four payments just to eat.

This, I’d say proves that what we’re doing isn’t working. That it’s rotten to the core. But Democratic leaders look at this and think, "How can we make the payment plans slightly less predatory?"

The struggle and the rage have been building for decades. Total household debt exploded from $6 trillion in 2004 to nearly $18 trillion today. We are borrowing money just to survive while being told the economy is great. A recent study by the RAND Corporation shows the bottom 90% of workers have lost out on $79 trillion—trillion with a T—since 1975 compared to what we would have earned if we hadn't let inequality run wild.

So what do Democrats offer us? Hakeem Jeffries says their "top priority is to drive down the high cost of living. Housing costs are too high. Grocery costs are too high... childcare costs are too high." Notice what's missing? Any mention of the financialization and Wall Street greed that has been driving these prices up. By and large, the Democratic Party is not only devoid of ideas, but they are explicitly unable to even articulate the cause.

Joe Biden put it perfectly: "Look, I'm a capitalist. If you want to make a million bucks—great. I'm just going to make sure you pay your fair share in taxes." That's their whole vision. Make the system that's crushing people slightly more fair with taxes or gov subsidies.

Meanwhile, people are ready to tear the whole thing down and build something that actually works. That's the revolution. Not some abstract political theory, but millions of Americans looking at a system where you can work full-time and still not afford to live, and saying "This is insane and it has to stop."

Trump figured this out. He's a lying piece of shit, but he was the only candidate willing to say the system is rigged and needs to be destroyed. Unlike so many “revolutionary” candidates before he is somewhat trying to deliver on his promises, he’s willing to destroy the American system. People aren’t as pissed as you might think. After all, destruction is at least something. It feels better than lies and a slow strangulation.

So why be mad at Dems? Because they are supposed to be on my side. We could rebuild American manufacturing so people can make things that pay living wages. We could treat housing like public infrastructure instead of letting Wall Street turn it into a speculation game. We could build energy systems that work for communities instead of just shareholders. We could have healthcare that doesn't bankrupt families. And the party that I’d reckon would be on my side to get all this done, they are rubbing one out fantasizing about a Bezos space flight.

I’m not talking about destroying capitalism but offering a way to fix it by restoring competition. What we have now isn't a free market, it's a rigged game where a handful of massive corporations have become so powerful they function like governments. They can move entire markets, crush competitors, and extract wealth without creating any real value.

But that means taking power away from the monopolies that have destroyed true competition. The private equity firms that buy up everything from hospitals to veterinary clinics and strip them for parts. The pharmaceutical companies that can charge $300 for insulin because they've eliminated competition. The grocery chains that can price-gouge families because they've bought out all their competitors. The real estate developers who treat housing like a stock market because we let them consolidate entire markets.

Democratic leaders won't do it. They're either too scared of these interests or they genuinely believe this is as good as it gets. They've convinced themselves that the best they can do is make capitalism slightly less cruel while people finance their groceries.

What we need are candidates who understand that when families are spending 181% of their income just to survive, you don't adjust the budget—you change the system.

If you get this, if you understand that the current trajectory leads nowhere good, then you need to run. Not someday when conditions are better. Now. Primary every Democrat who thinks the solution is better messaging or more bipartisan cooperation with the people who created this mess.

Take Hakeem Jeffries. His Brooklyn district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie—neighborhoods where people are living this economic impossibility every day. He won his 2022 primary with 23,145 votes in a district of over 700,000 people. That's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley—she showed up with a message that matched what people were experiencing instead of what party consultants thought they should hear.

The revolution is already happening. People are ready for massive change. They're ready to build something better than this slow-motion economic disaster we're calling normal.

The only question is whether someone's going to step up and lead it toward the promised land, or whether we're going to keep letting Trump and his crew lead it straight to hell.

Stop waiting for the Democratic establishment to figure it out. They won't. They're too comfortable with a system that's working great for them and their donors. The change we need is going to come from people who understand that when the math doesn't work for the vast majority of Americans, you don't adjust the math—you tear down the system and build something that actually serves the people who do the work.