This one word (distraction) captures the most important division among Democrats

CNN.com ^ | Sep 1, 2025 | Ronald Brownstein

[E. Pluribus Unum]

As President Donald Trump openly contemplates sending military forces into more American cities, the leading congressional Democrats almost invariably describe his actions as an attempt to create a “distraction” from something else — whether that’s the cost of living, the massive Medicaid cuts he signed into law, or the controversy around the Jeffrey Epstein files.

That reflex captures the overwhelming preference of top DC Democrats to frame the 2026 election on familiar partisan grounds, particularly the charge that Trump has failed in his core 2024 promise to bring down the cost of living for average families. It also reflects their hesitation about contesting Trump’s actions relating to immigration and crime.

But the tendency of Democratic congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to dismiss Trump’s moves threatening democracy as a “distraction” from other issues has created the most significant fissure between the party’s grassroots and its Washington leadership.

That one word now divides the principal competing theories of how Democrats should respond to Trump’s militant second term.

While the Democratic congressional leadership believes that focusing on the economy gives the party its best chance of gaining ground in next year’s midterm elections, many party activists argue they are failing to convey the urgency of the sweeping actions Trump has taken to erode American democracy.

The party’s top political strategists are equally split. Some believe that Trump’s 2024 victory demonstrated the necessity of remaining “laser-focused” on average families’ economic struggles, while others are just as certain that soft-pedaling Trump’s moves to shatter democratic safeguards — especially his domestic deployment of the military — is a moral as well as an electoral failure. Far from a distraction, the latter group argues, Trump’s efforts to raze democratic...

[Libloather]

Box wine. Okay, two words.

[frank ballenger]

Is there a lower life form than a CNN opinion commentator?

[Texas Eagle]

The one word I keep hearing them use is "unaffordable".

To which I aks, why are demonicRAT run cities so unaffordable?

[SaxxonWoods]

They haven’t learned anything, they have nothing to offer Americans. They have an approval rating of 19%.

Steady as she goes.

[sit-rep]

decency...

[TexasFreeper2009]

slowing the rate of inflation is not the same as bringing prices down.

Prices dont go down. Even normal inflation will double the cost of everything every 20 years.