Al D’Amato was once widely known as “Sen. Pothole” for focusing on local issues. Kirsten Gillibrand is earning a different nickname: Sen. Potty-mouth.
In recent months, leading Democrats from national chairman Tom Perez on down have been unleashing f-bombs, s-bombs and everything in between as they try to rally their party to “resist.” And New York’s junior senator seems to be leading the charge.
“If we are not helping people, we should go the f - - k home,” Gillibrand told the Personal Democracy Forum at NYU last Friday. Of President Trump, she asked: “Has he kept his promises? F - - k no.”
Indeed, she has been swearing up a storm recently, part of some bizarre Democratic thinking that such language is the key to recapturing working-class voters.
True, Americans are swearing far more than they used to and all forms of media are chock-full of such language these days.
The sad fact is that our culture has grown depressingly coarse. And yes, Donald Trump is at least partly to blame, given his own language on the campaign trail.
But if Democrats like Gillibrand think that was the key to Trump’s electoral success, then they remain as clueless as ever about what happened last November.
Fact is, Trump’s language crystallized popular rage at Washington politics and came off as genuine. Gillibrand’s f-bombs are nothing but gratuitous and phony.
There’s such a thing as trying too hard. And if the Dems’ plan for victory is spelled entirely in four-letter words, they’ll be spending a long time in the wilderness.