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What’s Wrong with the Democrats? They Need More Democracy

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Ted Rall
What’s wrong with the Democrats and how can the party be fixed? When an insurgent outsider candidate from the party’s progressive left defeats a moderate endorsed by the establishment, Democratic leaders reject the results and deny the will of their voters. They refuse the infusion of new ideas and tactics every organization needs to evolve. They anger their voter base. They lose elections they should have won. It’s time for Democrats to democratize their party. Democrats’ top-down leadership style is currently being deployed against Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist winner of New York City’s mayoral primary who defeated corporate favorite Andrew Cuomo. The primary results came in over a week ago, yet none of the party’s big guns—Obama, Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi, Buttigieg, Newsom, Harris, DNC chair Ken Martin—has endorsed Mamdani. Ever the happy warrior, Mamdani says he’s grateful for the kind words he has received from his ideological fellow travelers Bernie, AOC and other members of The Squad. But the…
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We Support Ukraine. Shouldn’t We Be Supporting Iran?

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Ted Rall
In 1984, one of Orwell’s characters explains that “doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” There’s a less elegant, yet equally absurd, way to describe the behavior of a politician who expresses two contradictory beliefs at once. People do what they want, and retrofit their ideological justification after the fact. Israel’s war against Iran provides an unambiguous example of political doublethink. The United States is supporting Israel militarily, Trump called Israel’s attack “excellent,” and members of Congress from both major political parties have issued statements backing the Jewish state. Yet the same U.S. and political leaders support Ukraine. No two wars are identical, yet the circumstances of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Israel-Iran conflict are remarkably analogous. Israel is to Iran as Russia is to Ukraine. Russia claimed that the Ukrainian government’s ideological extremism and increasing ties to anti-Russian regional allies, particularly its professed desire to join NATO, presented…
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TMI Show Ep 141: “Biden’s Cancer, Democrats’ Reckoning”

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Ted Rall
LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime: This week on The TMI Show, hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan confront the stunning news of President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, a bombshell that escalates calls for the Democratic Party to answer for its handling of his health. The revelation intensifies scrutiny over the party’s cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline, which ushered in Trump’s sweeping victory. Ted and Manila dissect the political wreckage, probing how the Democrats’ reluctance to address Biden’s senility shattered public confidence and altered the nation’s course. Why did party leaders prioritize lies over victory? How does Biden’s cancer diagnosis deepen doubts about transparency in governance? With their fearless, incisive approach, the hosts unravel the consequences for the Democratic Party’s credibility and the evolving political arena. This is The TMI Show at its most gripping—delivering unflinching analysis of leadership, health, and accountability. Plus: Joined by guest Todd “Bubba” Horwitz, the show examines the U.S. economy’s current trajectory, marked by…
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Trump Is Shocking But Not New

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Ted Rall
The philosopher Nigel Warburton shrugged: “Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons—you really can choose to stop.” But slippery slopes are a thing precisely because people often choose to keep cruising along until they smash into Sonny Bono’s tree. Critics from both parties describe Donald Trump’s behavior and policies as unprecedented. This presidency, however, did not emerge from a vacuum. Everything Trump does builds on presidential politics of the not-so-recent past—mostly, but not always, Republican. Trump has shocked free speech advocates and civil libertarians by ordering his masked ICE goons to abduct college students off city streets for participating in campus protests criticizing Israel for carpet-bombing Gaza. (An aside: what will he say when someone avails themselves of their Second Amendment rights rather than allow themselves to be chucked into an unmarked van by random strangers?) Government oppression of dissidents in America has a rich and foul history. During the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, which included many college…
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50 Years After the Fall of Saigon, Let’s Accept Defeat

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Ted Rall

Fifty years after Saigon’s fall, Ted Rall reflects on America’s Vietnam War defeat, urging acceptance of self-determination and an end to costly imperialism. This poignant piece, published April 30, 2025, calls for investing in domestic needs over foreign wars, echoing themes from Rall’s What’s Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems.

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Detonating Democracy: The Threat of Obsolete Laws

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Ted Rall

In “Detonating Democracy: The Threat of Obsolete Laws,” Ted Rall reveals how outdated U.S. laws, like the Alien Enemies Act, enable government overreach, threatening civil liberties. He calls for systemic reform to modernize or repeal these legal “landmines” before they further erode democracy.

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ChatGPT Is Disappearing Its Enemies

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Ted Rall
People worry about generative artificial intelligence. Some are afraid it will put them out of work. Others think AI could become too autonomous, like the drones programmed to select their own targets. It will almost certainly accelerate the spread and power of government surveillance. Deep fakes are already being used in efforts to impact public opinion in politics. Add another reason to keep awake at night: AI could “unperson” you. Under Stalin the Soviet Union disappeared not only anti-government dissidents but evidence that they had ever existed, famously airbrushing those who had fallen out of favor out of official photos. Retro-engineering history was the inspiration for Orwell’s main character in 1984, who toils at a government ministry in charge of rewriting the past. Eliminating an enemy of the state is one thing; ensuring that their ideas can never inspire anyone in the future by erasing them from history is especially sinister. The Internet has replaced print newspapers as the first…
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Surprise Casualties in the War of Words Over anti-Semitism

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Ted Rall
Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? Before Hamas attacked Israel, American voters had not arrived at a consensus. They hadn’t thought much about it. Asked whether the two terms were synonymous, 62% of respondents to a Brookings Institution poll taken seven months earlier said they didn’t know. 15% replied yes and 21% said no. For the time being, that argument is over. Supporters of Israel won. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution that “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” A task force created to deal with anti-Gaza War protests at Columbia University, a hotbed of campus activism a year ago, has defined anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. The policy change was announced in an Israeli newspaper. NYU and Harvard followed suit. If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you redefine criticism of the State of Israel and/or Zionism as anti-Semitism, it turns college campuses into hotbeds of anti-Semitic bigotry. “Since the terrorist attack…anti-Semitic incidents against Jewish students…
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The Era of the Wuss

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Ted Rall

“Donald Trump’s presidency, not yet ten weeks old, has already coerced powerful institutions like Columbia University into abandoning their values. From canceling $400 million in research grants to forcing out professors and banning student groups, Trump’s threats reveal an authoritarian style that stifles freedom, echoing McCarthyism—but with far less resistance.”

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We Are the Fourth Branch of Government

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Ted Rall
In high school, when we studied the separation of powers, I asked my civics teacher: “What happens if the executive branch ignores the judiciary?” He didn’t have much of an answer. It has happened before. One famous case was President Andrew Jackson’s refusal to enforce a Supreme Court ruling overturning Georgia’s seizure of Cherokee lands. “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” a defiant Jackson supposedly said. Georgia expelled the Cherokees in an act of ethnic cleansing known as the Trail of Tears. Lincoln shrugged off a federal judge’s habeas corpus order to release a Confederate sympathizer. The administration of George W. Bush defied the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rasul v. Bush (2004), ordering Guantánamo prisoners be given access to U.S. courts for habeas petitions. Still, presidents usually respect the courts. The Constitution’s checks and balances have mostly held up over 236 years. But there’s another factor—one that political scientists and teachers like mine…
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