In his 1951 book “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” Eric Hoffer wrote:
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually, the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.
The author argues that Democrats have created such a vivid and tangible villain in Donald Trump.
As they have done repeatedly with Republican nominees and presidents—and, at least once, with a House speaker named Newt “The Grinch” Gingrich—Democrats began targeting Trump during his first campaign. They described him as racist, sexist, homophobic and antisemitic. They accused him of corruption and labeled him a fascist, authoritarian and Nazi who posed a threat to democracy. Some even called him an American Hitler.
In the author’s view, the strategy closely followed Saul Alinsky’s advice: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” He compares the constant attacks on Trump to the “two-minute hate” sessions described by George Orwell, in which participants denounced an enemy and pressured others to join them.
What distinguished the Trump era, he argues, was the intensity and speed of the backlash. With George W. Bush, opposition escalated gradually over several years. Democratic anger toward Bush did not reach its peak until after 2005, coincidentally around the time Bush largely stopped responding. Trump, by contrast, faced a political firestorm before taking office, including efforts to persuade electors to prevent him from assuming the presidency.
How, then, did Democrats generate such sustained intensity? The answer, according to the author, was an extraordinary volume of political messaging. He compares the effort to the conditioning depicted in the film “A Clockwork Orange.” In that film:
Alex accepts an offer to be a test subject for the Minister of the Interior’s new Ludovico technique, an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals within two weeks. Alex is strapped to a chair, his eyes clamped open, and injected with drugs. He is forced to watch films of sex and violence, some accompanied by his favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. Alex is nauseated and, fearing he will be sick upon hearing Beethoven, begs for an end to the treatment. The Minister demonstrates Alex’s rehabilitation to officials. Alex is unable to fight back against an actor who taunts and attacks him, and becomes ill upon attempting to grope a topless woman.
That, the author suggests, is the comparison.
By 2026, he contends, Democratic voters—including newly engaged voters without established political loyalties—had been exposed to a relentless stream of content portraying Donald Trump as a political “devil.” Left-leaning television networks such as CNN and MS NOW repeatedly highlighted what they viewed as Trump’s misconduct. Online users, meanwhile, encountered anti-Trump material across platforms including X, Facebook and TikTok. The author also argues that people who searched for additional information often relied on Google, which he says suppresses conservative viewpoints. Democrats further operated the American Accountability Network, described as a campaign in which “tens of thousands of online humans — not bots — coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online. 32.5 million people hit on Instagram every day, 88.8 million hit on Twitter, X every single day. And 185 million hits on Facebook every single day.”
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Unlike the subjects in “A Clockwork Orange,” the author writes, Democratic and newly engaged voters voluntarily consumed those messages. No forced treatment—or eye drops—was necessary.
The result, he argues, was the Republican Party’s poor showing in the 2026 elections.
Republicans will end up with around 51.5 million votes? That’s barely above 2018, but 2022 wasn’t much higher…Democrats will end up with like 69 million votes. That’s 18 million more than they got in 2022 and even 8.5 million more than 2018. They showed up everywhere. They came to win. Compared to 2024 House (not presidential) results, Republicans dropped 23 million votes. Democrats only dropped maybe 2 million at most.
The author points to polling as evidence that this messaging had an impact. Atlas Intel, he notes, found that Americans viewed economic and democratic concerns as the country’s most serious challenges: “Inflation / Cost of living: 46.1% Safeguarding democracy: 46.0%…”
That helps explain, in his view, how Democrats flipped the Senate. They did not merely win competitive states; they also captured Senate seats in states Donald Trump had carried by double digits in 2024. Democrats, he argues, maintained the political intensity of their 2024 voters, while Republicans did not. The GOP primarily mobilized its usual high-propensity midterm electorate.
He contends that the same strategy helped Democrats win New Jersey and Virginia in the 2025 mid-midterm elections.
Republican turnout should be stronger in the 2028 presidential election. Still, the author urges GOP leaders to recognize the power of sustained negative messaging and develop an equally clear Democratic target for 2028—and especially for 2030. He calls for a new Nancy Pelosi: a more formidable and controversial Democratic figure whom Republicans could criticize consistently and aggressively over many election cycles.
He suggests that one possible target could be a newly elected Democratic senator from Michigan whom conservatives portray as far-left and deeply aligned with Islamist political causes.
Part 4 on The Aftermath is Coming…
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