“The Wrong ICE is Melting,” read one sign hoisted in the air by a white woman in a COVID-19 mask on the streets of Los Angeles. “Don’t Let Democracy Go Extinct,” read a poster held in Omaha, Nebraska, by a very serious liberal in an inflatable dinosaur costume. “Free Palestine, Free DC, Free Us All,” read a banner waved during a march down the National Mall in Washington. Millions of people took to the streets to protest something in mid-October. What that was, exactly, was less clear. Billed as “No Kings” protests against an American monarchy that does not exist, the demonstrations took aim at a host of things that also do not exist in America: fascism, military occupations, and a vast conspiracy to cover up an Epstein-Trump sex ring. Just this month, violent protests erupted at the University of California, Berkeley, during a Turning Point USA event. Federal investigators are looking into whether university and police officials failed to protect attendees. A ‘No Kings’ protest on Boston Common, Oct. 18, 2025. (Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe/Getty) The protests encapsulated a broader problem facing Democrats, more than one year after President Donald Trump’s entirely predictable victory nonetheless shocked them. The party has nothing but fictional villains to sell to its mostly affluent base, and no direction in which to guide the bottomless resources of the elites in its pocket. But 60 years after anti-Vietnam War protests swept the...