Trying to follow the Trump administration’s various outrages against the country feels overwhelming and even debilitating to many of us. In part, this is by design — Trump and his team have explicitly said they intend to “shock and awe” the public. But it is one thing for the public to be confounded by this deliberately disorienting onslaught of activity; it is another for the elected officials of the Democratic Party to fail to prioritize and respond to these threats. Doing so is literally their most important job as the opposition party. The failure to perform it becomes even more glaring when the threats include Donald Trump’s efforts to take an axe to the rule of law, to basic powers of Congress, and thus to the ability of ordinary Americans to exert the non-negotiable control over their lives and their government that is their birthright. Make no mistake — by attempting to make himself into a de facto king, Donald Trump is spitting in the face of every one of us, whether you voted for him or not. The Democrats aren’t just failing to defend themselves, or “democracy” writ large; they’re failing to protect the rights and futures of every single American.
It remains incredible to the point of incomprehensibility that even a single Democrat would have suggested after November 5 that the party might work with him on certain issues. Trump’s attempt to overthrow American democracy following the 2020 election looms permanently over the political landscape, and certainly over the question of whether the Democratic opposition might ever consider him a partner in government. In his violent and illegal attempt to reverse the 2020 election results, Donald Trump rendered himself an enemy of the United States. Nothing that has transpired since then — not the Supreme Court’s illicit proclamation that a president can commit no crimes so long as they are “official” acts, not even his election by a bare majority of voters — changes the reality of his hatred of our country, of our highest values, of our halting but real progress towards multi-ethnic democracy over the past century and more. And though Trump lied throughout his re-election campaign, he also slipped in the truth. He said he wanted to rule as a dictator; he said he wanted to overturn the rule of law by illegally prosecuting his political opponents; he cozied up to the richest men in America to fund his campaign and drive his second-term agenda of empowering the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us; he made clear that he would incite violence against vulnerable minorities (trans people, immigrants) from the highest office in the land.
And it is even more incredible that any Democrats would continue to advocate for cooperation now. A bare two weeks into office, Donald Trump has unleashed unconstitutional attacks on the separation of powers, on the birthright citizenship unambiguously protected under the 14th amendment, on our collective safety through pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists, on the rights of trans Americans to even exist. He is delivering on the anti-democratic, anti-freedom agenda that he promised, and that too many voters disbelieved — or frighteningly, endorsed.
If this is all so glaringly obvious, then why are so many Democrats, specifically those in the House and Senate, still failing to meet this moment? Put another way, why has the party’s long-term propensity for conflict avoidance carried over to a point where avoiding conflict is tantamount to surrendering the country to fascism?
The advanced age of so many in leadership likely plays a part. Many entered politics in another era, when the GOP had not yet radicalized and the sorting of the parties into center-left and far-right was not nearly so advanced. They have fond memories of bipartisanship as a hazy ideal that would theoretically attract voters of either party. And longevity feeds an inability to comprehend tectonic changes in American politics, as the radicalization of the GOP occurred slowly over many years, then quickly under Trump, leaving many with the tantalizing hope that all might go back to the way it had been once he was ushered off the stage. There is a class of politicians who simply will not believe the evidence in front of their eyes.
So the cult of bipartisanship is one reason for the Democrats’ perennial desire to avoid real conflict with the GOP — but I don’t think it’s the main reason, or sufficiently explains their present paralysis. Rather, as the GOP has radicalized into holding a host of positions whose logical consequence would be significant and even savage harm to traditional Democratic constituencies (African-Americans, Latinos, women, union members), the Democrats have notably declined to explicitly identify the sources of these conflicts: that the GOP has transformed into the vehicle for a white supremacist, misogynistic backlash against a liberal and tolerant society. Only slightly less notably, and though the party has been more open in discussing it as a major line of conflict, the Democratic Party has again and again demurred in taking on concentrated corporate power and the ever-increasing wealth divide in this country, even as GOP tax cuts and other policies opened this economic chasm ever wider.
I think the best possible spin is that many Democrats believed that demographic change and growing social liberalism would naturally bring the party into greater power, even against GOP radicalism. But something darker was also going on: I think a lot of Democrats feared that making their grounds for conflict with the GOP more explicit would place them in a losing position, tie them too closely to rights for minorities and gays and socialism. Calling out the GOP as a party of white supremacy might turn persuadable whites against the party; really going after corporate greed and power might cause big money to double down on the GOP and leave the Democrats at a serious campaign cash advantage. There was a perception that truly acting like these fissures in American society and politics were real would commit the Democratic Party to an actual fight that it might not win — so why not just keep their heads down and pray for a sort of progressive manifest destiny?
Unfortunately for them, and even more unfortunately for the millions of Americans who are now facing the consequences of such timidity, we have now reached the logical conclusion of a Democratic Party that can neither name nor engage over the fundamental conflicts in American society — including, crucially, the question of whether we should even be a democracy at all. As uniquely malevolent as he personally is, Donald Trump’s anti-democratic animus has merely amplified the minoritarian, anti-democratic trajectory of a GOP that in the past few decades stole a presidential election (in 2000), re-configured the federal and Supreme courts into a de facto pro-GOP legislative body, gerrymandered itself into Congressional and state government majorities, and embraced Trump’s lies and insurrectionary ends following the 2020 election. Fearful of an anti-GOP majority, the GOP has done all it can to nullify that majority’s party — to the point of opposing democracy itself.
And now we are at a point where Donald Trump has a reasonable roadmap to becoming an actual dictator, and the GOP to installing itself into permanent national power — and yet most elected officials in the Democratic Party, even up to this very moment, cannot bring themselves to characterize the GOP as an authoritarian or anti-democratic party, and are only slightly less inhibited about saying the same about Donald Trump. Even as the president embarks on a host of actions meant to racially purify the country (mass deportations) and solidify white men’s position at the top of America’s social hierarchy (anti-DEI initiatives that disparage and demote non-white, non-male federal workers), most elected Democrats cannot bring themselves to characterize the GOP as a white supremacist party — as if re-instituting segregation in America is not a bridge too far, but calling it out is. Even as the president empowers the world’s richest man to act as his anti-constitutional hatchet man, the newly-elected head of the Democratic National Committee talks about the Democrats’ willingness to take money from “good” billionaires. Even as the president has made clear with his appointments to head the Justice Department and FBI that he will seek to illegally prosecute Democratic opponents, Democrats can barely bring themselves to raise the alarm that our free and fair elections are in grave danger.
In a piece out this week, Off Message’s Brian Beutler writes of Democratic elected officials being in a state of denial rooted in fear. He sees the fear as based in Trump’s immediate threats to democracy and government, and to their own existence as a party, noting that they hold on to “[a]nything to keep them in their comfort zones and avoid reckoning with the existential threat staring them in the face.” I agree with his assessment of paralyzed cowardice — but we could say that this fear actually goes back years, if not decades. And going forward, the Democrats will not be able to shake their sense of denial without confronting the full sources of their fear — that democracy might be weaker than authoritarianism, that the forces of reaction might be more powerful than the forces of progress, that if clearly stated the progressive vision of the Democratic base would provoke more backlash, that big business will squish Democrats like bugs if they really demand a fair economy that works for everyone.
But with his multi-front attack on Americans’ rights, on the Constitution, and on our safety and economic well-being, the Democrats’ implicit wish to paper over the major conflicts of American society, and to not accept the essential risk inherent in any effort to win, are simply no longer tenable. There is no compromising with the vision of Trump and the GOP, on the one hand, and acting as a legitimate pro-democracy party that protects the rights and interests of both its voters and the broader public. Trump is obviously trying to seize dictatorial powers; to advance white supremacy; to further empower the billionaire class so that they might better loot America; and to profit off the whole mess himself, into the bargain.
Given this reality, it’s in the interest of the Democratic Party to maximize conflict with Donald Trump on vital matters affecting our democracy, our freedom, and our economic and national security. It may seem overly ambitious at this low point of disarray, but the lodestar for the Democratic Party should be to destroy Trump’s presidency, and, ideally, drive him from office before his term ends, as the surest route to mitigating the harm he can do. By contrast, shooting low and aiming to accommodate themselves to Trump has already — and predictably — resulted in further Democratic (and democratic) disempowerment; for example, as many Democratic senators have voted to approve his cabinet picks, Trump’s minions have attempted to seize illicit control of the U.S. Treasury’s payment functions, and the Democratic base spirals into demoralization as its elected officials seem to be experiencing a different Trump presidency than they are. The Democratic Party has a clear responsibility to stop a president who wishes to be king, and to embrace a necessary confrontation with the MAGA-fied GOP.
To put my cards on the table: the democratic political competition with the GOP that prevailed through most of our lifetimes is no longer possible, because the GOP has transformed into an authoritarian, anti-democratic vehicle for the personal ambitions of Donald Trump and the reactionary dreams of millions of (predominantly white Christian) Americans. The Democratic Party’s route to both self-preservation, and to preserving the advances in personal, religious, political, and sexual freedom of the last 50-plus years, now requires not simply competing with the Republican Party but delegitimizing it in the eyes of a strong American majority, and ultimately destroying it as a national political force. I am not saying this will be easy, or in any way quick, but it seems to be unavoidable as a matter of logic. To turn away from this reality is to turn away from American democracy, freedom, and equality, and to embrace the darkness of criminal authoritarian rule.