Everyone I know is complaining about the Democrats. They’re weak. They’re divided. They’re letting themselves get steamrolled. And on and on.
In this case, “everyone” is right. Even allowing for some degree of shock at the sheer scope of the onslaught in these first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, they should have found their sea legs by now. And not for the shallow purpose of “winning the day,” but for a very real one: Millions of Americans have a foot—or a leg—caught in Trump’s ideological bear trap, and they need a political party that will fight this illegal and indiscriminate rampage with everything at its disposal to help people pry themselves loose.
Naturally, we should have realistic expectations about what a minority party can achieve as far as parliamentary maneuvers. But you know what happens as soon as I type a sentence like that? I imagine too many elected congressional Democrats just nodding in agreement and exhaling in relief. The truth is simple: Far too many Democrats don’t want to think of themselves as fighters. This is a self-conception that has some deep historical roots; but far more importantly, it’s a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy of passivity that will have grave consequences for tens of millions of Americans, and for the Constitution and the republic, if they don’t get over this fast and come to terms with the reality they are in.
The historical roots go back to the late 1970s, when this new thing called “movement conservatism” was afoot in the land. Movement conservatism’s intellectual roots go back to the 1950s; but it wasn’t until the 1970s, when the “religious right” began to assume its form, that this movement started electing a critical mass of politicians and having a big impact on the country’s political culture.
Movement conservatives had a vanguardist mentality—they were insurrectionists assaulting the liberal establishment’s castle. Newt Gingrich embodied and advanced this outlook more than anyone. The outlook set in train a dynamic that still holds true today: Conservatives are disruptors who constantly question the status quo; liberals are defenders of the existing order.
So I ask you: Who’s more interesting to your average person? Disruptors, of course. And who likes the existing order? Practically no one, at any time, ever. Trump and Elon Musk are the biggest disruptors arguably in the entire history of the country. Biden was about as conspicuous an order-defender as exists—and Kamala Harris became such by extension, since vice presidents can’t walk too far outside the footprints left by their presidents. That’s another one of those “established order” rules, by the way.
None of this bears any direct relationship to policy. And no pollster is going to sound out in advance the kinds of questions that disruptors force us to contemplate—Do you want an unelected billionaire rooting around in your private information? But I suggest to you that this dynamic had as much to do with Trump’s victory as border security or surgery for trans convicts. It’s why so many young men—and Latino and Black men especially—were drawn to Trump. It’s what made him interesting to Joe Rogan and others like him. In a system that feels broken and rigged, people want leaders who’ll break shit.
In this sense—and it’s important that Democrats understand this—Trump’s various assaults on the federal government probably don’t bother a lot of people yet. I read some pundits and Democrats saying things like, “The American people didn’t elect Donald Trump to destroy USAID.” But actually, in a way, they did. They knew Trump was capable of doing and saying extreme and unhinged things. They voted for him anyway. Barely, but they did.
And I’m not seeing a lot of signs that the mass of people are currently upset about what they’re seeing. As of Sunday, Trump’s approval rating at FiveThirtyEight was 49–44 to the good. Reflect on that: After these insanely unqualified Cabinet nominations, after giving Musk and his former interns access to the government’s most sensitive information systems, after announcing in essence that the United States of America will embrace a war crime as policy if need be, after trying to follow through on his main campaign promise (tariffs) and pathetically backing down within eight hours, after illegally firing inspectors general and FBI agents and other Justice Department lawyers; after all that and more, he’s at 50 percent.
I suspect that will change as the consequences of all this become clearer. But that’s going to take a while. That doesn’t mean, however, that Democrats should just sit around and wait. That’s what they always do. It’s what they did after they lost Bush v. Gore. It’s what they did after the George W. Bush administration bullied (most of) them into quiescence after 9/11. It was an abdication then, and it would be far worse an abdication now, given the malevolent nature of Trump’s plans.
No, Democrats. No sitting around and waiting for things to change. Help make them change. Public opinion will shift more quickly if you kindle that shift. This is the key psychic and emotional difference between Democrats and Republicans in my adult lifetime: Democrats are passive and timorous in the face of public opinion that isn’t squarely in their corner, whereas Republicans look at an adverse poll number and say, “OK, how do we change it?” They don’t always succeed—George W. Bush failed at privatizing Social Security in 2005. But they always, always try.
Democrats rarely try to force a change in the way voters see an issue. They rarely play the role of disruptors. Well, folks, if ever history was grabbing you by the lapels and demanding that you do some disrupting, it’s now.
RFK Jr. is evidently about to become health and human services secretary this week. They may not be able to stop that. But they can assign a couple senators and a couple House members and their staffs to be 24/7 pit bulls on RFK, monitoring every declaration and action that comes out of his department, holding weekly “RFK Watch” press conferences.
Senate Democrats put up a good symbolic fight against Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought as they held the floor overnight to protest him. They couldn’t block his confirmation. But they signaled to the world that they’re in conflict with Vought. Now it’s a live issue. As such, they can fight to make sure that Vought becomes as close to a household name as an OMB director can be.
And speaking of Project 2025: Is anyone in the Democratic Party keeping a running tab of project initiatives and goals the Trump administration has launched? How about a weekly press conference, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, bringing the public up to speed on this?
And if the hearts and minds of the working class constitute the main front in our political battle, how about a weekly press conference by Democrats ticking off the ways in which the administration has made things worse for working-class people? Trump has stripped the National Labor Relations board of a quorum, meaning that it can’t defend workers’ rights. People don’t care? Nonsense. Choose a couple emotionally charged examples that will make them care.
There are dozens of moves like this the Democrats could make. And locked out of lawmaking power, they’ve more time to spark and stoke these mini campaigns. But they have to change their mentality. They need to think of themselves as going to war, because it’s sure clear that their opponents think this is war. And not for the sake of scoring political points—they need to do it for the sake of the tens of millions of Americans upon whom Trump and MAGA actively want to impose suffering. They are counting on Democrats as never before to fight for their rights and defend our laws. If that can’t rouse them, they’ve forgotten what their job is.
