The Political Parties Are a Mess

There’s been a lot written over the past year about a realignment of the political parties and how some of that played out in the November election. Honestly, I haven’t seen anything like it since the reliably Democratic South flipped Republican almost overnight during the Clinton years. I’ll say this about whatever is happening right now: I’ve never felt as detached from the Democratic Party as I do now. Between the Dems aligning with Liz Cheney, the mainstream position on Gaza, the willingness to throw the trans community under the bus, the ardent defense of broken institutions, and what often feels like a genuine effort to court the middle class at the expense of the working class, it’s disheartening.

The Republican Party is, of course, far worse. It’s run by billionaires who claim to champion the working class, but what they really mean is white men. Meanwhile, the MAGA base is racist, sexist, and transphobic. They’re poised to put a quack anti-vaxxer in charge of the Health Department—a former Democrat, no less—while some Democrats are suddenly opposing their own Democratic positions just because he’s MAGA. It’s led to a bizarre situation where Dems are seemingly backing Big Pharma and the snack food industry out of spite. It’s reminiscent of the first Trump term, when Dems suddenly became big defenders of… the FBI.

Then, this morning, my brain almost oozed out of my skull when I saw former Texas Governor Rick Perry on Joe Rogan’s podcast promoting Ibogaine—a plant-based psychedelic—for treating mental health issues in veterans (and others). Perry is advocating to remove Ibogaine from Schedule 1 and railing against Nixon for classifying these drugs that way to attack his political enemies. This was a guy who ran for president as an establishment Republican, praising RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz because they’d be more likely to approve psychedelics for mental health treatment. What?

And then there’s Elon Musk advocating for H-1B visas, which directly opposes the MAGA base’s stance against all immigration. Yet the MAGA base isn’t entirely wrong here, since H-1B visas are often a way for billionaires and corporations to hire highly skilled indentured servants who rely on their employers to maintain their status in America. (Musk loves H-1B visas because those employees didn’t abandon him at Twitter—because they couldn’t.)

And then, I hear from Oliver Darcy that Rob Schneider—former SNL comic turned anti-woke MAGA sycophant—is teaming up with Cheryl Hines, a lifelong anti-Trump Democrat married to Robert F. Kennedy, to launch a MAGA version of The View. This is for the Los Angeles Times, a publication that was once fiercely liberal but is now owned by MAGA-curious billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. This is the same guy who refused to let the L.A. Times endorse Kamala Harris and is now bringing MAGA voices into the fold to further his agenda. That agenda, apparently, includes using an HHS Secretary—who’s supposedly anti-Big Pharma—to push drugs developed by a billionaire drug manufacturer, all while Adam Sandler’s pity friend, Rob Schneider, tags along.

What the hell is going on, and can I please get off this ride? It feels like the only consistent voices anymore are the Bernie/Warren/AOC wing of the party, the same wing that Establishment Dems are desperately trying to sideline so they can run as centrists in upstate New York.