The hearings for Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth were disastrous… for Democrats.

The game plan was to ‘genderify’ the hearings by focusing on the infidelity allegations and the question of women in combat, and to let female Dem Senate members take the lead. The outcome was Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a few others scolding a calm Hegseth. The optics of it were bad again… for Democrats.

Usually it’s not too difficult for senators to make a nominee sweat. But that requires doing research and asking probing, damning questions, while remaining in control. Since much of what members of Congress do is hold hearings, this should be a basic skill, and yet somehow they blew it. It’s never a good situation when the interrogators are more flustered than the subject. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former lawyer (and horribly unpleasant human being) usually maintains better self-control and message discipline, came off as bitterly deranged.

Few people would have been watching the hearings anyway, but the Senate Dems knew they needed just a few moments to go viral and then get picked up late night shows who would spin them up again to make them go viral. It’s telling that those moments didn’t occur. At least not any that are useful to them.

The larger takeaway is that the Dems still haven’t recovered from the election and don’t have a plan. The things they care about, like women in combat, are of very little interest to most Americans. Dems are struggling to bridge a gap on social issues that is no longer pointing in their direction.