Hey Democrats: Want Our Votes? Tell Us a Story We Can Believe In | Opinion

The Trump playbook for managing the scandalous rise of Signal as a tool for discussing classified war plans is straightforward, almost too familiar: Blame the media, deny reality, and wait for the chaos to pass. And why wouldn't they fall back on this tried-and-true approach? It's still working.

There's no shortage of evidence to suggest that federal agents snatched innocent people and sent them to a torture prison in El Salvador, but that outrage barely lasted a day. Remember when DOGE fired personnel guarding our nuclear weapons and had to scramble to get them back? Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if most people have forgotten it entirely. The list goes on.

President Donald Trump doesn't possess a superpower, but he does exploit the ability of media—and even most Democrats—to move on, treating each scandal as a fleeting incident, a mere blip on the radar. What he's up against is a lack of opposition that understands how to build a compelling, cohesive narrative—the very thing that MAGA excels at. It's a skill that Democrats and liberals must learn to master—and fast.

For those of us grounded in reality, the question persists: "How can MAGA believers cling to this?" The conspiracy theories, the lies, the ridiculous portrayals of figures like Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates—all of it seems to defy any connection to truth. But think of it this way: Like a movie or TV show, the plotlines, motivations, and characters are oddly fitting. They've crafted a narrative that works. They've built a universe.

To MAGA, there's a grand conspiracy, a cabal of elites pulling the strings to keep us, the "sheep," under control. Through their minions in the media, in Big Pharma, and woke teachers manipulating their children's minds, these elites hold an iron grip on society. Their crimes? Boundless. They live in amoral excess, even orchestrating child exploitation rings. It's a modern-day Caligulan orgy. Joe Biden? He was a declining, corrupt figurehead they used as a vehicle to continue their global exploitation.

Who stands against this nefarious cartel? The heroes of this drama. The awakened ones, the "red-pilled" fighters, who've broken free from the Matrix, just like in the Keanu Reeves movie. Robert Kennedy Jr. leads the charge, claiming Ivermectin and Vitamin A are all it takes to defeat illness, and that mental health struggles can be cured by working the land. FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino will wield an ax to dismantle the Deep State, eliminating the operatives who protect the elites. And, at the center of it all, stands Trump—their Neo, the chosen one.

In their warped world, the likes of Orban, Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump himself are the true heroes—their authoritarianism a necessary counterbalance to the corrupt, decayed systems of Western democracy that the elites tried to make us all worship. These men, they believe, are fighting the cancer of the global elite.

It's a compelling tale, with a vivid cast of characters. And, like any gripping narrative, it keeps its audience hooked, hungry for more twists, and willing to buy into whatever new absurdity is fed to them. Every real or perceived wrong committed by Democrats or the establishment was placed into this larger story.

For those of us on the other side, the truth is often a messy, contradictory thing, slow to unfold. The challenge for Democrats is to present that truth with the same clarity and drama. To weave reality into a dramatic arc, to make it an integral story that keeps evolving—one where massive screw-ups and corruption can't be brushed aside as just another fleeting scandal.

The reality is that there are malevolent elites who exist—individuals who seek to consolidate their power and wealth by dismantling the state, the very system of laws and accountability that once kept them in check. They've found common cause with would-be oligarchs who share the same goal: destroying the guardrails that prevent their rise to trillionaire status. Lacking the charisma to seize power on their own, these elites have latched on to the most captivating figures they could find—people like Donald Trump, whom they've made their puppet.

The elites wrote a manifesto—Project 2025—designed to dismantle the state, piece by piece, once they seize power. But the people tasked with executing it were dangerously incompetent. Yes, they are dismantling the state, but in their wake, they've left destruction, chaos, and the crumbling of any pretense of stability.

It's this wrecking ball of incompetence that ties together every bizarre incident—from the mass firings that accidentally ejected crucial personnel, to the mishandling of public health crises, to the chaos at the FAA, the obsession with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and the endless scandals like divulging defense secrets on Signal. None of these are isolated events. They're part of an ongoing saga—episodes in a larger series, each compounding the last. All the while, the elites solidify their grip on power, while the American people's security is on a knife's edge.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), whether intentionally or not, encapsulated this theme in his recent reelection campaign speech. After cataloging the struggles families face, Ossoff hit a powerful refrain:

"And none of this is on the administration's agenda. They just do not care. They do not care. Trump's cabinet is worth, like, $60 billion. That's not even including Elon. They are literally the elites they pretended to hate. The president is not at his palace in Florida thinking about whether you can afford daycare for your daughter, or how to stop insurance companies from denying your claim, or anything that matters to our daily lives.

By the way, I'm all for government efficiency... But when you randomly fire tens of thousands of people, no matter what role they fill, no matter how well they're performing, and then you have to scramble to hire they back because you accidentally fired the people who run the veterans' crisis line, you accidentally fired the people who watch out for Ebola at the CDC, and you accidentally fired the people who fight bird flu on our poultry farms and the people who protect our nuclear weapons, when you shut down research into Alzheimer's treatments and cures, for childhood cancer, that's not efficiency. That's just cruelty and chaos."

Ossoff's words cut to the heart of the issue: Trump, and those behind him, are the new royalty. The elites pull the strings while the masses suffer the consequences of their court's egregious failures.

Every new Signal scandal only tightens the grip of this narrative, exposing the clowns for what they truly are—blundering puppets for a far more ruthless, power-hungry elite. And it underscores the inescapable truth: these elites are swiftly becoming nearly untouchable.

It's within this brutal, dramatic structure that Democrats must position themselves as the true protagonists—just as MAGA has falsely cast themselves in their own alternate reality.

On with the show!

Eric Schmeltzer is a Los Angeles-based political consultant who served as press secretary to Rep. Jerry Nadler and former-Gov. Howard Dean.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.