Who can lead the Democrats out of the wilderness?

On Tuesday, April 29, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for mass mobilization against President Donald Trump, marking 100 days of the 47th administration with a clarion call that “these Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”

And no one listened. Except for maybe the single-looking white woman walking a dog
who spit on acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin during a Newsmax interview Thursday.

The faithful roared and stomped their feet so powerfully you could feel it in the rumbling floor.

Democrats are confronting a terrible reality in 2025: That mass movement of the past nine years that saw masked Democrats attacking old men and young women, vandalizing minivans at Trump rallies, blocking bridges and defunding police departments?
They didn’t lead that movement. Those peopleled them.

Politicians like to fancy themselves leaders, but virtually all of them are followers. They don’t make the waves — they do the best they can to ride them. That’s the reason so many recently self-styled “moderate” Democrats are stained by the incredible excesses of the eight-year moral panic that dominated and animated their politics. They followed.

The Democratic Party used to have real leaders. Then-Sen. Barack Obama electrified America’s youth with the promise of forgiveness for slavery and segregation. He invited environmentalists and illegal immigrants, university professors and college activists, peaceniks and aging hippies, the working class and liberal technocrats alike to embrace a radical vision for a new America. Propped up by a reporter class that claimed Michelle Obama was the new Jackie Onassis and her husband was the embodiment of cool, he introduced America to “Hamilton” and hosted famous artists at his White House.

Obama failed to live up to an impossible promise and left the country more divided, embittered, and racially charged than it had been for half a century, but he built a movement.

And then he left it. He retreated to mansions on an island off of Cape Cod and in the center of the Pacific, wore floral silk shirts, and partied with Hollywood actors. He worked on a Netflix series we’ve already forgotten. He helped guide the rudderless Biden administration through hard policy calls but was unable to mobilize voters to support any politicians but himself.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was a leader once, too. It’s impossible to forget what he was like on the campaign trail in ’16. That Bernie refused to be bogged down in the Ivy League politics of race and gender: His call was for no war but class war. The capitalists and warmongers were the enemy; chief among them was the former first lady, senator, and secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

When Sanders spoke at a high school gymnasium outside Manchester, New Hampshire, the crowd was more electrified than any I have ever witnessed. As his condemnations of America’s rulers built, the energy built with him. He pointed his finger in the air and, in his distinctive Brooklyn accent, finished the speech naming Clinton guilty in voting for the war in Iraq. The faithful roared and stomped their feet so powerfully you could feel it in the rumbling floor. He built a movement.

And then he left it, too. Four years later, Sanders was a sock puppet of himself, mouthing critical race theory and mumbling about gender ideology. The man who almost took down Hillary was beaten by Joe Biden.

Who does that leave? Pritzker? Mayor Pete Buttigieg? Podcaster Gavin Newsom? That congresswoman who twerks against Trump?

No one.

Democrats need a leader — someone who won’t grovel before activists and who can rise to meet the moment. Despite their constant griping about Republican loyalty to Trump, they’ve failed to produce anyone untainted and willing to lead with conviction.

It’s difficult to not to be reminded of the Children’s Crusade of the 13th century. That expedition to retake Jerusalem was never even able to muster the resources needed to sail south of Europe, and many died. Eight centuries later, we still remember their fervor, their zeal — and their terrible failure.

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