Most Democrats share a sense of rage about the conduct and policies of Donald J. Trump. But just hurling insults at him isn’t enough, as I argued at New York:

There is nothing wrong with Democrats insulting or expressing rage toward the president of the United States. Donald Trump has richly earned every epithet and protest he has drawn with his distinctive combination of lawlessness, narcissism, mendacity, and cruelty. But the hard, cold reality is that rage is a poor weapon for stopping or overcoming his excesses and undermining his hold on power. It amounts to investing everything in Trump’s very own cryptocurrency of mindless resentment and vengefulness and competing with him on turf he owns like Mar-a-Lago itself.

Unfortunately we’re seeing the Trump resistance movement, fed by constant demands to “fight Trump” whether or not a particular fight can be won, descending to its barren omega point, as The Hill reported last month:

“Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who has entered the California gubernatorial race, took a stand against the Trump administration on Saturday, carrying a large sign that read ‘F— Trump’ on stage at the state Democratic convention.

“The phrase has gained steam nationally ahead of midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.

“Earlier in the week, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D) released a campaign ad featuring several Prairie State residents, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), all saying, ‘F— Trump.'”

As it happens, Juliana Stratton posted a come-from-behind victory in the Illinois Senate primary shortly after launching that ad. And while her victory arguably owed more to massive late spending on her behalf by Governor J.B. Pritzker than to her ad F-bombing Trump, it produced some excited discussion among Democratic activists and strategists. One of the latter, Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of the highly influential Pod Save America podcast, thought Stratton’s ad made sense in the context of a blue-state primary:

“Stratton ran this ad because she needed attention. She needed something that went viral online, generated conversation, and ensured that people knew who she was and considered voting for her.

“Getting attention often means courting controversy — saying and doing edgy things that will get people talking. To get attention, you also need to be willing to piss some people off. The algorithms that distribute political news value engagement. An angry comment is worth as much as a positive one.

“Running an ad with a bunch of Illinoisans saying ‘F***  Trump’ will get people paying attention. Many more people saw the ad on social media or through news coverage than when it ran as a commercial.”

Perhaps the context helps justify Katie Porter’s F-bombing too: She’s running in a deep-blue state and has already made it clear she’s uninterested in appealing to anyone who might have voted for or sympathized with Trump.

But even if the audience for this crude expression of anti-Trump rage was entirely limited to Democrats, making that message front and center could be problematic: It will reinforce the dubious impression that more anger, more “spine,” more willingness to fight is a tangible asset Democrats can tap to thwart the 47th president and his party. The truth is that until Democrats break up the current Republican trifecta, their ability to “fight” Trump is strictly limited to what they can block via the Senate filibuster. And it takes no particular spine to do that, though reasonable differences are inevitable about how to use that one source of leverage.

If you really want to “fight Trump” or, to be blunt about it, to f*** him up, Democrats absolutely have to flip at least the House in the midterms. That means the audience for their messages will include a significant number of 2024 Trump voters, perhaps along with 2024 nonvoters who are not reliable members of the Democratic base. And for them, the f***-Trump message is useless. People did not vote for Trump in 2024 because they were discouraged by the lack of “fight” in the opposition party. People aren’t weighing a vote for or against Trump’s party based on whether they believe Democrats hate him just enough. Rage-based messaging is pure self-indulgence for Democrats at a time when they need discipline and even self-sacrifice — when they need brains more than they need spine. Even in blue states, the long-term interests of the Democratic Party suggest less empty posturing about “fighting” and a much greater investment in a post-Trump agenda, which in any event they will desperately need in 2028 when Trump will finally f*** off back home to Florida.