Fomenting hate for the “Democrat Party” has been a pointed project of the GOP since at least Reagan, but now self-identified Dems also hate their leaders. Recent polling places approval around 40% and disapproval at 50% among Democrats. They’re polling worse among their own members than Trump is nationally (though Republicans still hate them more).
Everybody hates the Democrats, and they’ve earned it. They had over two years to plan for a second Trump term, and over two months after the election to prepare a battle plan for the resistance. They did nothing. Worse, when Trump took office and began dismantling the federal government, they were paralyzed. Elon Musk was a novel and unexpected instrument of the dismantling, but the administration’s activities were telegraphed—more than that, written down in great detail—in Project 2025. Everything the administration is doing was promised in that playbook. For two months now the Dems have stood by, slack-jawed and stunned, with no plan, no outrage, and no response.
This is a long post, but I’m going to extend it a bit more by offering one example of their fecklessness. In the days after the inauguration, I started getting emails from my elected officials. Jeff Merkley is one of our best senators and a politician I have long admired for his honesty, intelligence, and transparency. Yet his emails were terrible. They reproduced the helplessness I saw from Democrats everywhere: the underpants gnomes conundrum. That’s a South Park reference, and subsequent meme. In the episode, small-business gnomes develop this business plan with three points: 1: Collect underpants; 2: ?; 3: Profit.
In much the same way, the Democratic plan has been: 1: freak out; 2: ?; 3: change (and profit). Merkley begins his (many) emails by identifying a problem (that part is easy) and concluding with a request for money. In between? “I won't normalize Trump's behavior, and I won't let Trump try to bulldoze us without opposition. I'm standing strong in the fight against Trump, Musk, and their dangerous Project 2025 agenda, and I'm asking you to be a part of our movement.”
That throat-clearing is the equivalent of a question mark, a lacuna that admits that Dems lack not just a plan, but any real idea of how to respond. A few have met the moment with clarity and tactics, but a party’s power lies in its collective action, not the bravery of a few members. And on that score the Dems have been catastrophically inept. No wonder tank and file members are pissed off.
I have been thinking less about why the party has been so helpless—dwelling on the many examples is too depressing—and more on what they could and should be doing. It’s a lot!
Politics is the act of acquiring and exercising power. That’s it. It applies no matter what form of government is in place, though mechanisms are different in governments in, say, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Denmark. Still, in each place you have maneuvering for position, building coalitions, and pressing an agenda. Republicans have been incredibly focused on this basic truth, while Dems seem to have forgotten it entirely.
Let’s imagine a Democratic Party that understood the stakes. How would they see things right now? Well, to begin with, they would understand that a a coup is happening, and, if it’s successful, it will end American democracy. They would take stock of what the GOP has built and understand how it works so they could counter it. They wouldn’t take anything the GOP says or does at face value, but assume they are working in bad faith. They would look at their own paths to acquire power and begin immediately to start running down them.
(Because everyone hates the Dems, and because they’re so weak and useless, it’s easy to point and laugh at them along with everyone else. Or to hope for their collapse to hasten the phoenix-like rebirth of a functional liberal/leftist party. But as politics is the acquisition and exercise of power, it must be a collective force to function. If not the Dems, who? If you are so angry you’re as committed to their defeat as the GOP’s, what is your solution for a way forward? And if you’re really just taking emotional succor in nihilism, at least be honest that you’re not part of any solution. You are here to wallow in anger and self-pity. The situation is critical and only one group has any capacity to save the democracy. The Dems need rehabilitation, not destruction.)
The GOP has built an impressive infrastructure. They have created institutions devoted to legitimizing and empowering crackpots and their ideas: think tanks, an entire media ecosystem; billionaire and corporate collectives; the Federalist society; and many, many orgs that support their activities at a grasssroots, legal, and institutional level. They do this by creating true believers (churches, the NRA, pro-life orgs, etc), using a legal network that will push their agenda into the courts where Federalist Society judges will hear them, capturing local legislatures, and building grassroots support and an army of people who will plug into all these activities. They have never seen laws as a barrier to their goals; where they can’t work around it, they change it.
That’s a lot to overcome, but there is a big opportunity: the Republican project is not popular. Their efforts to gut government and reestablish a White Christo-nationalist autocracy have limited popular support. In other words, people don’t like their policy goals or a push to end democracy. (This kind of language, Christo-nationalist autocracy, unnerves some people, and that is part of the problem. If you don’t see their actions as White supremacy, why are they scrubbing all mention of women and non-Whites from the government? If you don’t think it’s an autocracy, how do you explain the talk of Trump as king, the push for a third term, and all the efforts to undermine the Constitution? If you are unwilling to accept what is happening, how can you prevent it?)
Americans like Democracy, they like stability, and they’re generally fine with a multicultural society. Democrats stand for these things. They need to take a page from the Republican playbook and begin to act like a dissident party ready to do whatever it takes. For example:
Use all the tools of government to block Republicans in Congress. Do not vote to approve any judges or federal appointees unless they are legit not fascist. Do not vote for any legislation or join in negotiations until the coup stops. Filibuster everything. Use every lever.
Find a consistent message and stick to it. Dems have been terrible at this, and worse, they constantly participate in discussions on GOP terms. Right now every Dem is talking about trans rights (and badly). If “stop the coup,” “support government,” “Elon Musk wants to steal your Social Security and give it to billionaires” were all Democrats would talk about, this would create a lot of pressure.*
Use theatricality to get attention. We live in the attention economy, and the GOP are spectacular at this. Flip the script. Hold talking filibusters. Organize MLK-style events in Republican congressional districts with a lot of federal workers, retirees, or recipients of federal moneys and hammer home the point that the Republican Party is trying to steal your [jobs, the money you paid into social security for decades] to give to Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies. Stage Congressional walkouts. Do big things people will notice.
Begin building up the institutions you let decay. Get Dem-aligned rich folks to buy private media organizations or fund new nonprofit ones. Have a fifty-state, fifty state legislator, 435-district campaign to win back power. Remember that you’re the party of the people and support workers and unions. I mean really support them.
Begin formulating and popularizing pro-democracy legislation and initiatives. For example, settle on a plan to fix the Supreme Court, create pathways to accomplish it, and begin media campaigns to demonize the corrupt current court.
Develop party cohesion outside the glare of the cameras, settle on the language and battle plan, and unanimously stick to it. Might this lead some individual Dems to lose elections? Yes, but please, grow up. We send kids off to war to fight for our democracy—incredibly privileged politicians can handle losing one election to save it.
Press for as many protections in blue states as possible. Where the Dems have power, use it to stop the illegal acts by a lawless administration. Build up the social safety nets and worker protections the feds are dismantling. (The examples here are too numerous to mention, so I’ll move along.)
This is an inexhaustible list. What is not helpful are politicians who demand constituents take the lead. Demonstrations can be helpful, but they do not by themselves result in systemic change. They need to be part of a larger strategy. What is not helpful is Dem leaders trying to work with the GOP for the sake of “bipartisanship” or other stupid concept that doesn’t apply in the middle of a coup. What is not helpful is Dem leaders still using the political techniques of 2015 in 2025. I know you are worried that need to win back that 4% of Black men you lost in 2024, but that is immaterial today. The elections of 2026 and 2028, to the extent they happen legitimately at all, will not hinge on the dynamics that led to Trump’s second win. They will center on the administration’s ravages happening now. Gretzky famously said, “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
I was fairly clear-eyed going into 2025, understanding that the GOP meant to do exactly what they said they’d do. What I didn’t anticipate was a supine Democratic Party immobilized with fear. None of us did, nor can we fathom why it’s happening. But it needs to stop. The peasants can lead a revolt, but we can’t lead a government. If the Democratic leadership will get off their asses, maybe we won’t have to.
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* Reporter: “Congressperson, Republicans want to ban trans athletes from playing on female sports teams, and polling shows this is popular—why do you oppose it.” Congressperson: “I am 100% in favor of supporting the rights of every American, which is why I’m laser-focused on the coup happening against the American people by a lawless president and his unelected hatchet man Elon Musk…”
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