OP-ED – The Democratic Party is in freefall, and their latest tactic—cursing up a storm—isn’t just failing to reverse the slide; it’s making them look desperate.
With approval ratings plumbing depths not seen since the party’s post-Civil War nadir, Democrats have hit rock bottom at 32 percent, according to Gallup’s latest tracker—the lowest in their 197-year history. Yet, instead of soul-searching or policy pivots, some of their loudest voices are doubling down on a strategy straight out of a dive bar: swearing their way to relevance. Spoiler alert—it’s not working.
Take Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who last week told a heckler at a town hall to “shut the f— up” before launching into a rant laced with enough expletives to make a sailor blush. Or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who dropped an f-bomb on X to decry Trump’s latest immigration moves, calling them “bulls—” to her 13 million followers. Even President Biden, in his waning days, reportedly muttered “damn fools” at aides over the party’s midterm autopsy. This isn’t the measured indignation of old-school liberals; it’s a full-on profanity parade, and voters aren’t buying tickets.
The numbers don’t lie.
Since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, Democrats have hemorrhaged support, losing ground with working-class whites, Latinos, and even their urban base. A March 14 CNN poll pegged their congressional approval at 28 percent, while Trump’s GOP enjoys a 51 percent favorability rating—a gap unseen since Reagan’s heyday. Midterm losses in 2022 and 2024 left Democrats with just 42 Senate seats and 189 House seats, their weakest showing since the 1920s. And yet, the party’s response seems to be: when in doubt, cuss it out.
This isn’t about authenticity—Fetterman’s everyman schtick worked in 2022 because it felt real, not rehearsed. Now, it’s performative, a caricature of grit that grates more than it galvanizes. AOC’s potty-mouth posts might thrill her online echo chamber, but they’re not winning back the Rust Belt or the Sun Belt, where voters cite kitchen-table issues—jobs, inflation, crime—over social media swagger. The party’s obsession with optics over substance has turned their expletives into a punchline, not a rallying cry.
Historically, Democrats thrived when they channeled frustration into policy wins—think FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society. Today, they’re stuck in a feedback loop of outrage, amplified by a media that rewards bombast over results. Cursing might feel good, but it’s no substitute for a coherent message. Trump’s GOP, love it or hate it, has one: “America First,” delivered with discipline and a knack for tapping voter anger without sounding unhinged. Democrats, meanwhile, are flailing—alienating moderates with their edge-lord antics while failing to energize a base that’s tuning out.
X tells the tale. Posts mocking “Dems’ new cussing strategy” trend weekly, with users quipping, “They’re swearing because they’ve got nothing left to say.”
A viral meme shows Fetterman as a sailor, captioned, “When your party’s sinking, just yell louder.” The sentiment cuts deeper than the party wants to admit: 63 percent of Americans, per a March 15 Pew survey, say Democrats “don’t understand people like me”—up 10 points since 2020. Profanity isn’t bridging that gap; it’s widening it.
The irony? Democrats once owned the moral high ground, casting themselves as the adults in the room against Trump’s brashness. Now, they’re mimicking his style—minus the wins. Trump’s vulgarity worked because it was paired with a clear agenda and electoral success; Democrats’ version feels like a tantrum after the game’s already lost. If they want out of this hole, they’ll need more than four-letter words—they’ll need a vision voters can believe in. Until then, all the swearing in the world won’t mask the sound of a party hitting rock bottom.