It is time for the Democratic Party to abandon its staunch, rules-based resistance to Trumpism and adopt a tough moral response.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (L) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) join their Democratic colleagues to renew the Freedom to Vote Act in the Lyndon B. Hall. Johnson in the US Capitol on July 18, 2023. in Washington, DC.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
No more deals. No more games. No more parliamentary parlor tricks to blunt the crudest aspects of Donald Trump’s dishonest politics. My biggest holiday wish for the messy political party known as the Democrats is that they ditch the annoying establishment backlash against Trump they’ve deployed with so little effect and instead let the people have what they say they want.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting that Democrats help Trump; I do not recommend that they join the evil he is about to bring upon the country and the world. But they shouldn’t spend another four years on the fence and holding back a “center” that has already shifted so far to the right that George W. Bush looks like a mild-mannered moderate.
We have already seen how little this approach yields. Since 2016, Democrats have deployed institutional retaliation — lawsuits, hearings, impeachment efforts and unreliable Republican allies — to try to stop Trump, while Trump has used brute political power, billionaire cronies, and anti-establishment rhetoric amplified by a frightened and rapt media. , to subjugate the political universe to his will. Even when the Democrats “won,” they looked weak and ineffectual. Think of it this way: The biggest institutional victory for Democrats during Trump’s first term came not from a Democrat, but from a Republican, John McCain, when he voted to repeal Obamacare.
Fast forward six years to that landmark moment: As Americans of both parties cheer the cold-blooded killing of a health care CEO in the streets, Democrats continue to try to convince people that a program designed to help people buy insurance sold by a dead guy is the best thing ever. we can do as long as Trump did not offer any health care plan— but his people are convinced that if he did, it would be “great.” Frankly, it’s a wonder the Democrats didn’t lose more.
And it gets worse: If you listen closely, you can hear Democrats expressing more sympathy for insurance executives than almost any group of people threatened by the Trump administration. This is the craziest failure of the Democrats’ institutional response: they spend their emotional and moral energy defending the institutions Trump is attacking, not the human race he threatens. Trump is demonizing immigrants and using executive orders to harm them, but instead of protecting immigrants and their humanity, Democrats are defending … “separation of powers” and “rule of law.” He inspires his people to attack the LGBTQ community and, especially at this point, the transgender community, while the Democrats defend… Supreme Court precedent. The entire white wing of the country now uses “DEI” as a synonym for the “n” word, and Democrats defend the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Trump wants to destroy the system in order to hurts people, but Democrats are more likely to defend the system than the people Trump is trying to hurt.
This crazy cycle has to stop. We cannot defeat Trump, or more importantly, his racist, misogynistic, know-nothing movement, by supporting the institutions and systems that so many millions of people — including those who are not racist or sexist and still reluctantly votes for Democrats. to despise If Trump seeks to destroy the institution, it’s up to the Democrats to do so nothing. But if he moves to destroy people, the Democrats should do everything under the sun, including taking the “resistance” directly to the streets in the form of extrajudicial maneuvers and civil disobedience.
Current issue
The first step to doing nothing is, of course, not voting for Trump’s policies. I can’t believe I have to write this (but people familiar with the helpless Democratic Party know I do), but Democrats should not vote for Trump’s initiatives. Not his legislation, not his government decisions, not a single thing. Keeping your head out of your ass long enough to simply not vote for Trump’s plans two years in a row would be the most anti-institutional thing the Democratic Party could do right now.
The best political outcome of this approach would be for Republicans to own everything Trump does. The government is not divided. Republicans defeated one-party rule. So make them rule. Trump should not be able to get a single cabinet appointment with Democratic votes. With their support, he does not have to pass any bill. He should not pass the budget with their help. Republicans should be on their own. And if they have to get rid of the filibuster to move their agenda, so be it. Make them do it. Do nothing and force the Republicans to do everything.
The results won’t be pretty. That’s why Democrats, having abandoned any attempt at an institutional response, must instead meet the moral outrage of the moment with tactics that don’t rely on the Trump courts, the executive branch, or Susan Collins. No one will care if the Democrats try to use a Senate lawmaker to kill some horrible plan Trump has come up with. But people won’t care if they see Democrats in the streets joining pickets and putting their physical bodies between Trump’s forces and the regular people Trump is trying to offend.
The best way to think about the difference between an institutional response and a moral one is to think about how Democrats should challenge Trump’s plans to deport millions of people en masse, as well as his other inhumane immigration policies.
Step 1: Don’t vote for it. Including you, Rep. Richie Torres. Including you, Senator John Fetterman, who sympathizes with me but not with you. No need. Vote. With Republicans. If you don’t think it’s in your political interest to stand up for the 20 million people Trump is threatening to force march out of the country, or the millions and millions of other people who see citizenship as their birthright despite having immigrant parents, then you are already on the wrong side of the moral-ethical divide in this country and are of no use in future battles. Democrats who want to find common ground with Trump need to switch parties and rid us of their bullshit. Everything will be fine, Democrats can lose just as easily without Manchin and Sinema doppelgangers as they can with real business.
Step 2: Once the act is passed — or if Trump chooses an executive order to do his dirty immigration work, as he’s threatened to do — don’t just make a fiery speech on CSPAN or file another lawsuit. We know from previous experience with Trump that these normalized and institutionalized responses don’t really work. We know that Trump has already captured the courts, and if the Supreme Court won’t directly follow his orders, he will give him attempt after attempt to craft an order until he gets it “right.” That’s what the court did with the Muslim ban, and you can believe they’ll do it again with mass deportations. Democrats need to have an answer that goes beyond crying about the rule of law and talking about states’ rights in Gavin Newsom’s California.
To me, this response is extrajudicial, anti-institutional and, at the very least, impolite. I don’t want to hear a word about “friends on the other side” when those “friends” are trying to kick out 20 million people. Instead, I want to see Democrats stage sit-ins and be carried out of Congress by a drill sergeant. I want to see politicians who chain themselves to other people. I want the Democrats lying on the railroad tracks. I want them to look at a civil rights era textbook and remember how people who had no institutional power caused structural change by demanding better from the institutionalists.
Most importantly, I want the American people to see the Democrats do it. Trump’s media will cover the trial just like that: Where’s the legal mumbo jumbo both sides there are valid arguments, but Republican lawyers decide who is right. They will see parliamentary games as just that: a game in which one side tries to outmaneuver the other side before everyone goes off to drink cocktails with each other while the big push is on.
But they will cover for a sitting congressman who stands with activists to prevent a bus full of immigrants from crossing the border in a very different way. They’ll cover a bunch of senators sending undocumented immigrants to the National Capitol and claiming “sanctuary” while forcing Pam Bondi and Christy Noah to make their way inside it’s like a national crisis.
popular
“Swipe to the bottom left to see more authors”Swipe →
And people who see Democrats fighting like this will say…whatever racist things they say. But they’ll also see that at least the Democrats aren’t punks. At least the democrats have the courage of their convictions. Trump rode a garbage truck all day; the least the democrats could do is get their hands dirty.
No more deals. No more games. No more interstate parlor tricks that look like you’re doing something when you’re really just biding your time before midterms. When there’s a man in a red hat threatening to come down America’s chimney and give everyone a gift of racism, bigotry, and misogyny, I don’t want Democrats saying, “We’re not going to be smothered in cookies and milk this year, hashtag Resist! » I want the Democrats to light a fire in the hearth and get the bastard to blow it out.
This is my desire and my determination to do everything I can to hold politicians accountable for this vision.
More from Nation
From China and the Middle East to immigration, too many liberals have already moved inexorably to the right. Count on them to quietly support some of Trump’s policies.
The outgoing senator recognizes — more than any other Democrat — the need to renew the party’s commitment to the politics of economic populism.
He didn’t get a majority of the electoral vote, and the idea that America has completely gone MAGA is amazing.
John Nichols for Nation
While the likes of Elon Musk and RFK Jr. get all the attention, the real power in Trump’s second term is likely to be in the hands of quietly efficient bureaucrats and politicians…
