You ever been to a cookout or yard party and became the target of a kamikaze fly or mosquito? You know, the kind that keeps dive bombing your face and terrorizing you. Buzzing in your ear, trying to land on your plate. You try to ignore it for a while but eventually the relationship turns into an all-out war. You can’t understand why the fly doesn’t realize that it’s flirting with death. Why can’t it realize that this strategy isn’t going to work?
Well that’s what I feel like these days when I hear Democrats invoke the language of “The Fight”. This is an age old political maneuver seeped in the power of persuasion and comfort of being in safe hands. “You vote for me, I’ll be your voice”. “I’ll fight the Big Baddies on your behalf”. “The people want someone who will fight for them”. It’s probably a strategy as old as elections itself. The problem, as I see it, is that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. In fact, in 2026, it probably means the opposite of what politicians THINK it means. Let me explain.
American history is littered with stories of rising heroes. Canonized figures who rose the ranks and became the voice of movements. MLK and civil rights, Huey Newton and Black Power, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Jimmy Hoffa, etc etc. You get the idea. America has always been infatuated with the singular hero story. The great fighter. The people’s champ. The problem is, the Trump era has shown us that “the fight” is overrated. People want Do-ers. People today want audacity. The time of being mesmerized by Try-ers appears to be over.
Put this in perspective. In the 2024 election, we had a guy declare:
I’m GONNA….
– Make the price of everything go down.
– Close the border and stop immigration.
– Pardon the people I like.
– Torment my enemies.
And the most exciting part of it all was …. “And there ain’t a damn thing my opponents can do about it!”.
On the other side, we had a lady with a bunch of objectively good ideas, but they came paired with a whole lot of wishful attributes. “Im gonna FIGHT to improve the ACA”. “We BELIEVE IN a living wage”. “I want to PROPOSE legislation enacting a tax minimum on billion dollar income”. Essentially, a whole bunch of TRYING.
To be clear, this is not meant to contrast candidates. It’s not even really meant to contrast ideas. My hypothesis actually has to do more with style and political exhaustion. Imagine being 35 years old and all your working adult life you’ve heard politicians say they want to get you a fair wage. And it didn’t happen. Now imagine having a bodyguard who claims he’s “going to try, with everything in his power, to keep dangerous people away from you”. And he doesn’t.
In understanding that our government was intentionally designed to make sweeping change difficult, I also understand that choosing candidates is complex as well. People who think and vote like me probably say “They vote against their interests”. I believe that is quantifiably true. What if interests are shifting though? What if the hate for the (IDD) Intentionally Difficult Design has grown bigger than the desire for any one personal interest? What if the calculus ACTUALLY is: I just want someone who can get something done. Anything! After that, I can work from there.
Again, I know. Complicated. Shortsighted. Terrible for the short game, and likely bad for the long as well. I just think it’s worth considering the messaging of audacity. Zohran Mamdani ran and became the Mayor of New York on a platform stating he is a Democrat Socialist who was going to do a bunch of stuff that made even his own party leaders clutch pearls. Many of them even tried to prop up other candidate options claiming he was too radical. The people, though, ate his messaging up. To be fair, the guy is super charismatic, but that’s kind of the point. The last three game changing politicians we’ve experienced (Obama, Trump, and Mamdani), all messaged with Audacity. The Democrats, even today, don’t seem to get that fact. Obama, against odds, got the ACA. Trump got….. Baby Germany. It remains to be seen what Mamdani can do.
Ultimately, this isn’t an endorsement of platform planks. This is a caution sign for any political leaders stuck in the old ways. Figure out your paths and start telling people how you’re going to do it. More confidence and less hoping for the best. More “Watch me work!” and less “My plan is to fight the ‘Watch me work’ guy”. I grew up in the city of Cleveland as a Browns fan. People here have a PHd in Disgust from decades of following a team of Try-ers, while watching other teams “Do” on TV every week.
As a registered voter in these here United States, I no longer want the bad bodyguard. I do not want to feel like there’s a fly dive bombing my plate. None of these people can guarantee wins, but what they can guarantee is that they don’t come out of the gate sounding like Losers.