June 10, 2025 - 9:50pm
The politics of the Los Angeles riots are scrambling Democrats, just as the party has started to regroup in the wake of its November election defeat.
“Anarchy and true chaos” is how Democratic Senator John Fetterman described the scene last night. Elected as a Trump Country progressive, Fetterman is a constant critic of his own party, often from the Right. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, frequently breaks with Democrats from the Left.
This is how Sanders tried to frame his disagreement on Monday, posting: “Dr. King defeated racist government officials & ended segregation through disciplined non-violent resistance. Defeating Trumpism, oligarchy & authoritarianism requires that same level of discipline. Violent protests are counterproductive and play right into Trump’s playbook.”
No matter, popular progressive streamer Hasan Piker fired back, “you were literally there at the nonviolent protests that everyone considered to be violent and unpopular so i have no idea what this statement does other than lean into the hysteria that gives trump enough momentum to mobilize the marines on [US] soil illegally!” Piker did not deny the existence of violence, but disputed that it was worth Sanders’s condemnation. This is an emerging argument among Democrats and Leftists, that the White House is overreacting to a protest which involved some peripheral chaos.
“We tried to talk to the administration and tell them that there was absolutely no need to have troops on the ground here in Los Angeles — the protests that happened last night in L.A. were relatively minor, about 100 protesters,” according to LA Mayor Karen Bass, speaking at the weekend.
Politico set Gavin Newsom’s position alongside Fetterman’s argument that Democrats lose “the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.” The publication observed that while the California Governor “has condemned all those things, repeatedly […] it’s also true that the central message Newsom has projected (and has sought to project) since Saturday has been steely-eyed opposition to Trump”.
This is the tightrope on which Democrats find themselves balancing. Is it possible to oppose Donald Trump while also looking sane on immigration? Should that even be the goal of elected Democrats, whether they’re in red, blue or purple states?
If one hypothetically grants Piker and Bass their point that most protesters have been peaceful — or even that most voters will disagree with Trump’s crackdown — that doesn’t really address the average American’s hierarchy of concerns. People may not like Trump’s approach, but they care much more about the macro question of Newsom’s approach. They may disagree with Trump, but they disagree more with Democrats.
This is the dynamic that gave the Left a sugar high during Trump’s first term, until the country looked around and realised Joe Biden’s pledge to restore normality brought anything but. After losing in November, Democrats took a harder look in the mirror than in 2016, when the party and the liberal media went full throttle into #Resistance mode. Yet here they are again in 2025, unable to even appear more concerned with the fact that masked thugs are posing on top of burning cop cars than with Trump’s attempt to crack down on them.
As Ruy Teixera put it in The Free Press on Monday, “The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder.” Yet liberals’ primary response to the riots has been to denounce Trump for deploying National Guard troops to restore order.
Fetterman and Sanders recognise this as a problem for the Left — and they don’t often agree on much. But Newsom is ambitious, and has positioned himself as a candidate to lead the Democrats out of their present wilderness. His instinct to seem more anti-Trump than pro-order will likely not age well.
Piker’s reply to Sanders is defensible from an ideological standpoint, but it’s not a position the Left can sell to most voters. It is, though, a stance Democrats will easily be pressured into taking by like-minded educated professionals. That’s the thing about bubbles: they’re self-reinforcing.
The return of Leftists such as Sanders, who used to rail against “open borders” as a “Koch brothers” plan to hurt the working class, seems less likely with every passing day. But the arguments are there for the taking.
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