A Little Sympathy for the Democratic Party
Or why even the most pessimistic among us were far too optimistic about Trump 2.0
It’s easy to understand why many of the Democratic Party’s rank-and-file have torched their elected representatives—and especially the Democratic leadership in Congress—for their presumed passivity in the face of the lightning smash and grab campaign mounted by President Donald Trump and shadow president Elon Musk against the federal government.
Reasonably concerned that the party and its leaders don’t grasp the gravity of the present crisis, many offer these criticisms in an expression of genuine anger and frustration at watching an unelected, ketamine-addled tech oligarch and his crew of twenty-something neo-Nazi curious cybercriminal minions illegally and in many cases unconstitutionally strip the wires out of the federal government—all with the evident approval of the convicted felon in the White House. The point, it appears, is to destroy the federal government and the public services upon which many Americans and the nation as a whole rely and depend.
To their credit, elected Democrats do seem to be moving in the right direction. As the minority party in both houses of Congress, their power remains limited. But in ongoing budget negotiations, Senate Democrats have demanded provisions that would require the Trump administration actually spend the money Congress appropriates.
Still, it’s not hard to have at least some sympathy for the Democratic Party and its elected members right now. Even those of us who expected the worst from a second Trump presidency—me included—didn’t exactly predict or expect that things would get this bad this fast.
Bad as Trump’s campaign policy proposals and his innate autocratic impulses were, most of us assumed that at least some of them would go through the normal machinery of American governance. Congress would still have some say over policy through spending bills and authorization legislation, allowing it to check Trump’s and Musk’s worst instincts. For instance, I myself argued that Congress should exert its own authority on space exploration policy to prevent Musk from hollowing out NASA and transforming it into a glorified contracting agency for SpaceX. Moreover, I expected political self-preservation instincts would cause Republican members of Congress to balk at proposals that would hurt their own constituents and imperil their own re-election chances.
For their part, Democrats in Congress appear to have been more prepared to fight legislative trench warfare against Trump and his agenda than the blitzkrieg they got. Institutionalists to the core, they certainly did not expect their Republican colleagues to submit to the wave of unprecedented lawlessness and looting that began almost immediately upon Trump’s inauguration. It was an even larger error to believe that Republicans would put up sufficient resistance to the usurpation of their own clearly enumerated Constitutional powers—not just by the president but by an unelected oligarch whose precise role remains shrouded in ambiguity. One freshman Republican representative even went so far as to claim that there wasn’t anything he could do as a member of Congress to “approve or deny” Musk’s funding cuts.
Perhaps Democrats should have been better prepared for Trump and Musk’s rapid unscheduled disassembly of the federal government in violation of laws up to and including the Constitution. In truth, though, it’s hard to fault them for a failure to foresee a turn of events that even the most pessimistic among us didn’t see coming. We should by all means encouraged elected Democrats to be made of sterner stuff and hold their feet to the fire when they’re not. But they weren’t the only ones who got their analyses wrong and as a result found themselves unprepared for the scope, scale, and speed of the still-in-progress assault on democratic self-government.
Looking ahead, we all need to be ready for the worst—in both word and deed, Trump has all but declared that he wants to be a dictator. Neither Trump nor Musk deserve anything remotely resembling the benefit of the doubt, only implacable opposition as they eviscerate public services. Nor should we expect Republicans in Congress to stand up for their own institutional prerogatives, at least not in anything like a timely manner. Institutions do not appear to be holding, either; the Republican-led Congress has effectively abdicated its own role and the judiciary seems to think that an unelected oligarch dismantling the federal government at breakneck speed amounts to business as usual.
Elected Democrats cannot fall behind the curve again. They should adopt a more assertive posture against Trump and Musk, difficult as that may be for some—especially for House and Senate leaders managing the party itself. As noted, there are some signs of life in the refusal of Democratic budget negotiators to support any agreement that fails to include provisions requiring Trump and Musk to actually spend the money Congress says to spend. Individual members of Congress from Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia have taken more aggressive positions as well.
As for the rest of us, we can’t abdicate our roles as analysts, intellectuals, and citizens. We must remain clear about what’s happening in front of our own eyes; we must see things as they really are and describe them as such, even if these explanations and elucidations might otherwise sound absurd. There can be no room for sanewashing or rationalizations of deranged and dangerous policies and rhetoric. Admitting when we’re not always entirely correct in our analyses and predictions should be part and parcel of that enterprise, much as we might want to direct our ire at those we think ought to have known better and acted accordingly.
Above all, we need to do what we can to keep ourselves sane in a society that has succumbed to cruelty and irrationality in a fit of extraordinary absent-mindedness. That’s not license to check out and disengage, but a reminder that we need cut ourselves some slack as we steel ourselves for what stands to be a long struggle ahead.
At this point, we have no excuse for complacency.
I've said this before. To use a football analogy, WE, the people, by advocating for justice and moving public opinion, must be the offensive linemen who open the holes for our running backs, and who give our quarterbacks and receivers time to execute. If we don't, they have to improvise as best they can.
If we don't like how our skilled positions (office-holders) are performing, then we need to replace them, preferably by stepping up ourselves. (Spoiler alert: It's not easy.) But NO ONE can perform if we don't create the opportunity to do so. That's on us.
Do you have any suggestions for how we should engage with swing voters? IMO, winning back the House and especially the Senate is the #1 goal, even if the midterms still feel far away.