If incumbents, addicted to their perks and their narratives, are honest and listen to recovering leftists, recognize that they've hit rock bottom, there's a possibility they may still recover. As the Big Book of AA says, “they are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty...but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”

If you or someone you know has ever suffered from an addiction, you know that no amount of heart-to-heart talks, advice, or threats will do any good.  The sufferer wants one thing and one thing only, and that is to be left alone so that he may continue in the pursuit of his drug or activity of choice.

Occasionally well-meaning friends and family members will stage an intervention, reliving some episodes the addict put them through and maybe offering to assist him in finding treatment.  I don’t know how many interventions are successful, but I imagine that those that are include the presence of an individual who went through the same addiction and managed to come out the other side.  Sometimes the person in recovery will meet privately with the addict and, instead of lecturing him, tell his own story.

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous call this a “12th Step Call.”  The 12th Step of the AA program reads, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”  The official text of AA, known as “The Big Book,” describes what happens: “Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.”

What we’ve witnessed among Democrats in the past few years, and especially since 11/05/24, is a political party that is approaching rock bottom.  I submit that party members and many of their voters have engaged in a shared addiction to lies, projection, logical fallacies, greed, and in some cases criminality bordering on and perhaps crossing over into actual treason.  There’s no need to re-litigate the innumerable examples of these.

Conservatives have for years staged informal interventions, pointing out to leftists the horrific consequences of their policies and warning them of future costs.  Mired in denial, the left has ignored our warnings and disregarded the ramifications of its words and actions...until recently.  Like a recovering addict speaking to someone who still suffers, there are now voices among the left pointing out the need for a directional change. 

One such voice belongs to comedian Bill Maher.  He’s been criticizing Democrat excesses for a while now, seemingly to no avail.  He compiled some of his favorite sayings into a book because he said, “I thought that, by looking over all this stuff from the past, I could ascertain whether I had changed or whether the politics had changed.”  When asked if he thought it was the latter, he replied, “Yes, I absolutely do, because they got a lot crazier.”

The Democrats assembled focus groups after the cataclysmic drubbing they received last month, and their own constituents are saying that they no longer believe what their party is telling them.  A Harris campaign adviser mentioned that she has left the Democrat party because it “has the stench of loser.”  She added that leaving the party is “like leaving a cult.”  She immediately lost tens of thousands of her Twitter (X) followers and was called obscene names.

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) left the Democrat party, saying it is “toxic.”  Manchin was one of the very few Democrats whose criticisms were bipartisan.  While he was unsparing in his critiques of Republicans, he was also known to criticize pResident (not a typo) Biden on his energy policies.  When Greg Casar (D-Texas) claimed that their party would have won in November if they had been more like Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) instead of a moderate like Manchin, he replied, “For someone to say that, they’ve got to be completely insane.”

Other notable voices from the left are making themselves heard.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. left the Democrat party because he was alarmed by Democrats’ “resort[ing] to censorship, media control, and weaponization of federal agencies.  When a U.S. president colludes with, or outright coerces, media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression.  And that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest.”

Tulsi Gabbard left the party because she said it is “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) noted that “the working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling.”  Positioning himself as a possible liaison to Republicans, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) recently said, “If you’re rooting against the president, you are rooting against the nation.  And I’m not ever going to be where I want a president to fail.  So, country first.”

The 2024 presidential election saw the country’s rejection of the Democrat party platform.  Their message failed, their messaging failed, and their messengers failed.  Even Barack Hussein Obama was unable to shame and cajole black voters into supporting an incompetent, incoherent woman whose record is to the left of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders.

In a 1977 speech Margaret Thatcher said, “Britain is no longer in the politics of the pendulum, but of the ratchet.”  We’re seeing that here in the U.S.  The movement leftward may be temporarily interrupted, but it is rarely if ever reversed.  Any movement toward the center for leftists is a movement to the right, and as long as the party is being controlled by the far left, such a movement is unlikely.  It’s been said, possibly by Tony Robbins or perhaps by Just B. Jordan, that we don’t change until the pain of change is less than the pain of not changing.

Has the left hit rock bottom?  Can it recover?  Are leftists willing to suffer through the pain of change?  The wind may be against them.  Far too many on the left are afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome and so will not or cannot honestly assess their situation.  The media are still covering for them, despite their cratering ratings.  And to this day, many in their party will not acknowledge the incompetence, incoherence, and corruption of their candidates. 

Image via Pxhere.