Good morning and welcome to Monday (yeah, I know, ugh), April 20, 2026. Among other things, today is National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day and National Cheddar Fries Day because obviously, if you’re doing 4/20 day, you need things to snack on. Oh, and the Boston Marathon is today. Personally, my advice would be not to mix these events together on your itinerary, but (shrug) you do you.
1611: Only documented performance of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth during the playwright’s lifetime occurs at the Globe Theatre.
1653: Oliver Cromwell and 40 musketeers forcibly dissolve the English Rump Parliament.
1904: Louisiana Purchase Exposition opens in St. Louis.
1912: Tiger Stadium in Detroit opens, and Fenway Park in Boston opens the same day. So does Weeghman Park in Chicago (now Wrigley Field).
1918: Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, marking his final victories before his death the following day.
1945: Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.
1968: British rock band billed as Roundabout debuts in Kastrup, Denmark; after a brief tour of Scandinavia, it changes its name to Deep Purple.
1979: President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a swamp rabbit that swims up to his fishing boat in Plains, Ga.
Quite a few birthdays today including: Philippe Pinel, French physician and father of modern psychiatry; Adolf Hitler, Austrian-born German dictator and house painter; Lionel Hampton, American jazz vibraphone player, pianist, drummer, and actor; Robert F. Wagner Jr., Mayor of New York City (Democrat: 1954-65); Dick Wessel, American actor (Dick Tracy vs Cueball, Beware of Blondie); John Paul Stevens, American lawyer and 103rd Supreme Court Justice (1975-2010); Leslie Phillips, British stage and screen, screen, and radio actor (Voiced Sorting hat in Harry Potter films); George Takei American actor; Johnny Tillotson, American singer-songwriter (“Poetry In Motion”); Ronald Mundy, American doo-wop tenor vocalist (The Marcels); Ryan O’Neal, American actor (Love Story, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc?); Björn Skifs, Swedish singer (Blue Swede); Ken Scott, British record producer and engineer (The Beatles, Elton John, Pink Floyd); Craig Frost, American keyboardist (Grand Funk Railroad); Jessica Lange, American actress (King Kong, Tootsie); Luther Vandross. American soul singer, songwriter; Clint Howard, American actor (Gentle Ben); Andy Serkis, English actor (Gollum in Lord of the Rings)
Is today your day? Best wishes from all of us.
* * *
Interesting article by Jonathan Alpert over at Fox this morning:
Since 2016, Democrats have increasingly asked voters to rally not around a compelling vision of America’s future, but around fear of what happens if Donald Trump returns. Every election is cast as the final firewall before catastrophe. Democracy is on the ballot. Institutions are under siege. The country cannot survive another Trump term. Some of those warnings may be sincerely felt, and some may even be justified. But when politics becomes an endless sequence of alarms, something deeper begins to erode: a political party can forget how to talk about anything beyond the emergency itself.
[…]
For a decade now, the Democratic Party’s most emotionally coherent message has often been less about what kind of country it wants to build than what catastrophe must be prevented. That urgency has been politically useful. It unified some moderates, progressives, and uneasy independents who agreed on little except the need to stop Trump. But every election framed primarily as catastrophe prevention carries a hidden psychological cost: it trains voters to experience politics as permanent emergency management. A party can sound endlessly clear about the danger it sees while remaining frustratingly vague about the future it wants to create. Alarm can drive turnout, but it is far less effective at building durable allegiance.
Yes. For years, I’ve watched Democrats offer heat without light — and voters are returning the favor. Hakeem Jeffries is drowning in his own polls, with a 26.2% favorable rating (RCP average). Chuck Schumer is right there with him, gasping at 25.0%.
“Orange Man Bad” has calcified into reflex. Ask Democrats anything — they reach for the same tool: oppose whatever Trump does. Period. I’ll tell you straight: if Donald Trump adopted Joe Biden’s entire re-election platform word for word, Democrats would oppose it without a second thought. Or a first one, for that matter.
Alpert suggests:
The long-term cost of reactive politics is identity. Fear creates short-term cohesion while postponing hard debates over class, immigration, public safety, economic aspiration, and cultural priorities. Those tensions do not disappear simply because a coalition remains emotionally united against a threat. They remain unresolved beneath the surface, only to return later with greater force. What fear suppresses, it never truly reconciles.
How this plays in the midterms remains an open question — but Democrats have spent years digging this hole, and I doubt they can climb out in time. We’ve now reached the point where Democrat rank and file are cheering for Iran and calling for Iran to assassinate President Trump.
This Margolis & Cox cartoon says it all:
The bottom line: Democrats will keep losing — including the midterms — until they give voters something other than the fear they’ve been serving up for the last decade and longer.
Robert Reich is an example. (Yeah, I read him, so you don’t have to. Aren’t I a nice guy?) Just the other day, he mounted an attack on Justice Clarence Thomas, who is, without question, the best of the nine, but still manages to lose his way and fall back on playing the boy who cried “Fascism!!!!!”
Clarence Thomas got it exactly backward. Had we not had the Progressive Era and its reforms extending through the 1930s, America might well have succumbed to fascism — as did Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini, or to communist fascism, as did Russia under Stalin. Progressive and New Deal reforms acted as bulwarks against the rise of fascism in America.
In fact, it’s been the demise of such reforms since Ronald Reagan that have opened the way to Trumpian neofascism.
See what I mean? It’s all they’ve got.
The long-standing question is this: why do Democrats spend all their time and spittle telling us how much they hate Trump, instead of telling us what they stand for? What policies will they offer to make America better?
The answer is simple — and no secret. Here’s their platform: ignore veterans while handing illegal aliens hotel rooms, phones, and free healthcare. Declare war on American culture. Preside over massive fraud — California and Wisconsin, for starters. Rack up multiple counts of corruption. Fight against vote security. Embrace identity politics. Reject every policy that actually helps the American Middle Class.
That platform plays well with the people waving “No Kings” signs — but not for long, and certainly not with the rest of America outside that thin slice. The confusion Democrats now show is palpable. They built an ideological box and climbed inside it. What they’re selling is wildly unpopular, they have nothing else to sell, and they have no idea what to do about it. They won’t find their way out of this anytime soon.
Actually — I take that back. The Democrat Party already knows the answer to its problem. They just wish to Gaia they didn’t
Thought for the day: Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious —Peter Ustinov.
I hope to see you here tomorrow.
Commentary, and hard-hitting analysis are becoming rare these days. It’s what I bring here. There’s also honest reporting to be had here at PJ Media. Indeed, you get them here as you get them nowhere else. That’s why it’s important to become a PJ Media VIP member. Not only do you support the reporters and writers who support YOU, but you also get 60% off the regular price by going to this link and using the promo code FIGHT.
