Criticism of Democrats

 Why I still criticize Democrats more than Trump

They can still disappoint me.

Washington Post February 17, 2025 by Shadi Hamid

Here’s a counterintuitive answer.

The comment sections of my recent columns have been awash with a familiar refrain: How dare you criticize Democrats when President Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy? The anger is palpable, particularly on left-leaning platforms such as Bluesky, where my attempts to understand — rather than simply condemn — certain Trump-adjacent ideas have sparked accusations of legitimizing fascism. But this reaction reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both Trump’s presidency and the role of political commentary in our deeply polarized era.

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Here’s the counterintuitive truth: I’m more critical of Democrats precisely because I expect more from them. When Trump disregards human rights abroad or undermines democratic norms at home, he’s not being hypocritical — he’s being exactly who he has always claimed to be. The man who called for a “Muslim ban” in 2015 and praised strongmen throughout his first term hasn’t suddenly changed his stripes in 2025.

In his Feb. 4 news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. That seemed clear enough. But because it was so clear, it seemed redundant to just condemn him. Instead, I interviewed Oubai Shahbandar, an Arab American defender of Trump who saw the president’s Gaza comments in a more positive light. I found this mystifying, but that seemed all the more reason to ask him why he thought what he thought. And then I could leave it to readers to come to their own conclusions.

This gets at a larger question. As much as moral condemnation might make us feel good, what does it accomplish? More than enough journalists and commentators are already documenting Trump’s abuses of power and holding him to account.

 

As his comments on Gaza as well as his flurry of aggressive and legally suspect executive orders make clear, Trump is a threat, including to some of the values I hold most dear. The question isn’t who is worse — that answer is obvious — but, rather, who is better. Who can still be held accountable to their own stated ideals? And the answer there is also clear: Democrats. They claim to be the party of values — of fair competition, freedom, tolerance and pluralism.

Yet Democrats consistently fall short of the very ideals they profess to champion. Under the Biden administration, party leaders — including President Joe Biden himself — spoke of the “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza while refusing to do anything to stop it. Instead Biden said, chillingly, that “we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel.” But it’s not just Gaza. The Democratic Party has long preached tolerance and inclusion while marginalizing pro-life Democrats, talking down to Black and brown voters, ignoring religious conservatives and dismissing the growing ranks of Americans who felt the party had become too radical on issues such as gender identity. On policy, what was once the working-class party chose to prioritize things such as college debt relief, which disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

This is hypocrisy. But hypocrisy has its silver lining. The hypocrite, in claiming to uphold certain values but falling short, is providing, perhaps unintentionally, a service. The hypocrite, unlike the purely cynical actor, at least acknowledges the existence of moral standards — and in failing to meet them illustrates the gap between the ideal and the reality. Political theorist David Runciman extends this insight in his book “Political Hypocrisy,” arguing that “hypocrites who pretend to be better than they really are could also be said to be better than they might be, because they are at least pretending to be good.”

This gap — between what the Democratic Party is and what it might still become — presents an opportunity for the millions of Democrats, like myself, who have grown disaffected with the party’s choices. We should demand more and expect better. It isn’t enough — and it surely wasn’t enough on Election Day — for Democrats to merely be the anti-Trump party and hope for the best.

None of this is to downplay the dangers Trump represents. But we’ve reached a point where reflexive Trump criticism has become a form of virtue signaling — a way to demonstrate one’s allegiance to the “right side” of history without engaging the harder question of why Trump grows more popular rather than less, including with Americans younger than 30.

Put simply, the argument that writers shouldn’t provide a platform for bad or otherwise morally objectionable ideas misunderstands the current political reality. These ideas are already in the air. They’re shaping policy decisions every day. Creating a cordon sanitaire around Trump-adjacent voices such as Shahbandar or Michael Brendan Dougherty, whom I also interviewed, doesn’t make their ideas disappear — it merely ensures that we never truly understand them.

And understanding is crucial. With four years still of Trump, we must wrestle with the fact that millions of our fellow Americans apparently disliked the status quo so much that they now seem indifferent to its dismantling. This isn’t about legitimizing the GOP’s burn-it-down approach to governance but rather trying to grasp why it came to this. Because it did come to this. Only in confronting these realities can Democrats rebuild and reposition themselves in the coming years to win back voters they alienated.

I’m steeling myself for four years (if not longer) of a conservative party that no longer seems interested in conserving. For Republicans, now under the full sway of a man they once detested, the chaos — it seems — is the point. Because I’ve calibrated my expectations accordingly, Trump has lost the ability to disappoint or really even shock me.

We’ve become too quick to label every Trump statement or action as unprecedented or democracy-ending. This rhetorical inflation not only diminishes our ability to respond to genuine crises but also alienates those who might otherwise be receptive to legitimate criticism of Trump’s policies.

In an era in which preaching to the converted seems more important than thoughtful debates, perhaps making my own “side” uncomfortable is exactly what’s needed. After all, if we’re not challenging Americans to think differently about this odd, unsettling political moment, then what’s the point?