Given all that we know of Donald Trump’s previous misrule and vengeful, authoritarian plans for a second term, relentless Democratic opposition to his administration is both morally and politically the right call. Trump’s rapid-fire rollout of proposed cabinet secretaries and other high-level executive positions over the past week confirms that those who warned of the dangers of a second Trump term were on the mark. His nominees to critically important positions range from incompetent to wildly destructive. The latter category includes vaccine denier RFK, Jr. as the proposed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; accused sexual predator Representative Matt Gaetz for attorney general (though he has withdrawn in the last day and been replaced with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi); Russia-propagandizing former Representative Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; and unqualified Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
The clear and obvious choice for Democrats is to pummel these execrable nominees starting now. Whatever Trumpist strategy lies behind these picks — an attempt to push the GOP-controlled Senate into early obedience to awful Trump choices, a deep-seated wish for these terrible people to serve as hardcore loyalists beside him, a desire to overturn public faith in key parts of the government so as to increase his own relative authority — the Democrats’ primary goals should be to defend the American people from harm and the federal government from sabotage as much as possible. In the pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we can easily imagine a future government campaign against mass vaccination, driven by Kennedy’s literally worm-brained opposition to basic science, with “success” measured in thousands of preventable deaths. Lives are on the line, and it’s on Democrats to fight this one tooth and claw.
The other choices carry their own serious dangers. Hegseth, whose nomination appears to be in trouble even with those who nominated him, is trailed by sexual assault allegations, a history of advocating for the pardon of war criminals, and an affinity for white nationalist tattoos. His appointment would be both an insult to the U.S. military and a clear sign that Trump intends to corrupt and co-opt the defense establishment. Gabbard, more devoted to dictators than democracy, appears to be a genuine security risk, with dubious loyalty to the United States and the secrets she would be sworn to keep. And though he is no longer in contention, Democrats should broadcast far and wide the insanity of Trump proposing Gaetz to be America’s top lawman in the first place; scofflaw Gaetz is like a parody of an attorney general, akin to appointing The Joker to be mayor of Gotham.
Beyond the non-negotiable duty to defend Americans against death, lawlessness, and treason, Trump’s awful choices present a golden (if ominous) opportunity to start defining the nature of the incoming Trump administration for the American people. It should be obvious at this late date that ordinary people who don’t watch a lot of news will not automatically understand the depths of the threat and insult on display in Trump’s choices. What will increase the odds that people pay attention is Democrats talking about how Trump’s choices are so crazy that even a lot of Republican senators don’t seem to want to vote for them!
Indeed, as political analyst Brian Beutler writes in a persuasive piece about the Democrats’ need to make a big deal out of these nominations, Democratic outrage can help put pressure on Republican senators who have doubts about Trump’s choices. Beutler outlines what might be accomplished by the Democrats publicizing the accusations of child sex trafficking against Gaetz, including putting the controversy on citizens’ radar and ideally ending with Gaetz’s name being withdrawn. Given that Gaetz has indeed withdrawn without a full-bore Democratic attack, this now feels like a missed opportunity, where Democrats could have pushed on an open door and created a sense of momentum for themselves in their efforts to restrain Trump. Regardless, Beutler suggests applying this approach to the other cabinet picks, which would create a situation in which GOP senators have to choose between opposing Trump, or owning the likely destructive consequences of allowing these picks to assume power.
Unfortunately, Beutler sees troubling signs that Democratic leaders are currently not so inclined to take the fight to Trump, and criticizes recent remarks by House Democratic majority leader Hakeem Jeffries characterizing Trump’s outlandish nominations as “distractions.” Pushing back against such dismissiveness, Beutler notes that, “The sooner the rest of us establish that chain of responsibility the better, and when Democrats say ‘this is all a distraction’ or, worse, ‘this could be a constructive undertaking,’ they are blurring the lines connecting Trump to his enablers—making life easier for the people who should share blame in the the event of catastrophe.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Beutler’s criticism of this Democratic timidity, and worry that it points to a broader strategic failure in Democratic thinking beyond just these nominations about how to take on the second Trump administration. The Harris campaign was premised on the assertion, grounded firmly in reality, that Donald Trump poses a unique, anti-democratic threat to the United States: from the acts of treason that led to his first impeachment, to January 6, to his campaign promises to seek vengeance against the “enemy within” should he be re-elected, there is every reason to fear for our collective safety and democratic future during a second Trump term. One problem Harris faced, though, was making tangible the threat Trump posed, beyond gesturing to the attack on the Capitol, his incompetence in handling the covid pandemic, and a handful of other touchstones.
With these recent nominations, though, Trump has all of a sudden given a great deal of substance to the nature of his menace by naming compliant miscreants as key lieutenants in governance. Here’s what I’m not sure Democrats are quite wrapping their heads around — the very things that make these choices dangerous to the country also make them vulnerable to sustained attack from their opponents. Politics might seem topsy-turvy these days, what with a majority of voters returning an insurrectionist to the White House, but I don’t think morality has shifted so much that most Americans don’t realize it would be bad to have an accused sex predator as the country’s top law enforcement official.
And while a huge number of Americans might not know of Trump’s intent to unleash his attorney general to harass and indict his political enemies, the fact that Trump’s first AG pick moved under a cloud of criminality due to sex crime allegations might well be a way to focus people’s attention on the larger corrupt intent in this and other nominations. Is there really any doubt that Bondi, his second choice, will be as pliant as Gaetz, if not so obviously malign? And so the possible danger to Trump goes far beyond the potential of these individuals not being appointed. Because of their loyalty to Trump, their lawlessness, and their penchant for a little “light treason” (in the case of Gabbard), such appointments in fact provide tentpoles for Democrats to start describing and attacking the authoritarian government Trump so obviously aims to install:
RFK Jr.’s nomination gives them a starting point for explaining what anti-science, anti-truth animus can do to Americans’ health and safety (and in a larger sense to our commitment to a shared reality).
Gabbard’s nomination makes tangible the danger of the wrong people running America’s security services and undermining our national security (with her long history of defending dictators like Vladimir Putin, there’s plenty of tape to roll to amplify her problematic allegiances).
The unqualified, extremely right-wing Hegseth’s nomination helps make concrete Trump’s plans to corrupt the military by actions like cashiering high-level officers and replacing them with those who place loyalty to Trump above the Constitution.
Any Democratic strategy for taking on Trump II (and the rest of the GOP-controlled federal government) needs to start with a sense of initiative. In the coming months and years, there will be plenty of times and places where those who want to protect American freedoms and democracy will have to play defense, whether in terms of mitigating harm or just plain protecting their fellow Americans and others. Yet this reality, due to MAGA’s very real control over powerful levers of government, does not change the other basic reality of our political situation: rather than possessing a mandate to implement authoritarian, far-right rule over the United States, Trump and his MAGA allies are in fact planning to act in defiance of both the wishes of the majority and our form of government outlined in the Constitution. A majority does not wish to see the populace ravaged by preventable disease, innocent public servants thrown in jail, government scientists forced out of their jobs, and their country’s defenses weakened by those of questionable loyalty. As writer Joseph O’Neil recently noted, it’s actually the Democrats who have a mandate — to uphold our long democratic heritage against those who seek to burn it down.
From this perspective, it’s in the Democrats’ interest to do all they can to keep Trump and MAGA on the defensive, by acting with aggression, defiance, and/or mockery as the particular situation merits. Trump and his team are well aware of the psychological aspects of exercising power, including their blatant attempt to cow Democrats by claiming Trump has won an overwhelming victory (fact check: Trump’s vote total has dropped to below 50% of those cast, meaning that more than half of voters did not support his election). The nomination of a rogue’s gallery for the cabinet and other high-level positions is another clear power play — but as I’ve been describing, Trump’s aggression carries within itself the seeds of its own possible defeat. Such seeds won’t mature on their own, though. It’s up to Democrats to describe why his appointments are dangerous for the country.
But this isn’t just a matter of pure power politics — Trump is actively trying to expand the bounds of what is acceptable in this country, into territory that is destructive, cruel, and openly authoritarian. Those limits will not defend themselves; a backlash will not just spontaneously occur. If Trump is allowed to do awful things without a cost — like appointing a vaccine-denying freak as HHS secretary — then a line will not just have been crossed, but erased, setting us up for further depravities. Each time Trump succeeds in normalizing extremism and anti-democratic measures, it isn’t just a loss for Democrats and the majority — it threatens permanent alterations of American politics that advantage the forces of repression and authoritarianism.
Democrats should position themselves as omniscient narrators of the Trump administration’s catastrophic nature and necessary demise. Just as they should employ these nominations to provide concrete illustrations of the evils that Trump plans to inflict on the country, they should be sure to provide an overall narrative for what Trump is doing and why. In the most optimistic scenario, this would help equip ordinary citizens with a context for interpreting and understanding what is sure to appear chaotic and fear-inducing in the coming months. Tell the true story of his authoritarian mindset, his obsession with personal advantage over the public good, and the reactionary MAGA movement behind him that wants to drag the U.S. back to the 19th century.
Rather than treating Trump’s victory as a decisive rebuff to the Democrats and proof that he’s an unstoppable juggernaut to be faced only with extreme caution, party leaders should open their eyes to reality and to their heavy responsibility to defend the nation. Trump barely won the presidency; a good half of the country finds him unfit to govern. Indeed, he has arguably already gone beyond what an American majority supports; as Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg recently tweeted, “Trump has misread his ‘mandate,’ and has made serious errors out of the box. He has made the most reckless, dangerous cabinet appointments in American history, and has immediately plunged his early Presidency into chaos and struggle.” But as Rosenberg also rightly points out (in commending attacks leveled by Democratic Representative Jim McGovern against Trump’s insane nominations), “Every single Democratic elected official in the country should be talking like this and creating events to talk like this every single day for the next four years. Our electeds do not just govern and legislate, they also communicate and we need much more of this, every day.” The struggle against Trumpism can’t just be conducted in reference to specific votes and legislation; it’s on Democrats to stay on the offensive against Trump and MAGA, to make news with their defiance and appeals to American decency and democracy.