A strategy to win back America and stand against Trump’s takeover.
All is not lost. Yet.
— Blue state governors and other officials are working to “Trump proof” their states and agencies. Organizations like MoveOn and Indivisible are seeing record sign-ups, donations are flowing into groups like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, and progressive newsletters like this one are seeing unprecedented levels of new subscribers and supporters. The resistance is energized.
— Trump doesn’t have as big a mandate as the media is promoting: If a mere 155,000 people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (out of a total 12,943,827 votes cast in those three states) had shifted their votes from R to D, Kamala Harris would be our incoming president. It’s true that voters shifted to the right in virtually every race in America, but that should be seen not as a defeat but as an opportunity — much like the one Republicans faced in 1976 and 2008 — for Democrats to reboot the party and reengage in the battle, the subject of this article.
— America was birthed in resistance; we have a long tradition of fighting oppression and, to the extent Trump and his billionaire allies plan to crush “the left,” they will face fierce opposition (which has already begun).
— We know what largely drove Trump’s win. As political scientist Rachel Bitecofer writes over at her brilliant Substack newsletter The Cycle, Republicans “successfully branded Democrats as out of touch elitists that care more about sex changes for prisoners than you.” We can do something about that, particularly since the suggestion that Democrats don’t care for average working people is a vicious lie.
That said, the Democratic Party must come to the realization that is now dawning across Europe that the old Blair/Macron/Clinton neoliberal consensus (low taxes, free trade, open borders, weak unions) is dead. That if its reverse, progressive populism, isn’t embraced by center-left parties, rightwing populism and oligarchy will fill that void with a vengeance (like they’re seeing across Europe — and we just saw here in last week’s election).
