The Democratic Party is being widely criticized and excoriated for not doing a better job of opposing Trump. Worse, most of the elected officials in the party are pursuing a hopeless strategy, waiting for Trump to stumble. They think this will provide them with the opportunity to block his dismantling of our republic. This seems unlikely and is, in any event, a lousy plan.
The root of the problem is not messaging or campaign mechanics but that we are all facing a threat we have never seen before. It goes well beyond party politics. The judiciary, universities, law firms, public lands, our trading partners, the health system, the poor and hungry and aged and unwell and a host of other things are in peril. They have never been under threat like this. Trump’s attack on the very legitimacy of governmental action is not a legislative battle over national priorities. He stokes hatred and contempt since it pleases his base, but this goes well beyond what the Democratic Party knows how to do, which is mostly limited to campaigns. They focus on winning elections. No one there gets paid to engage in mass mobilization campaigns or to short circuit systemic political upheaval.
We want the Democratic Party to be a powerful counterweight to Trump. Individual Democratic office holders provide this, but it is hardly a unified coalition.
The same is true of the commercial media. It does its work with known rules and guarantees of its legitimacy. It has a respected place in society. But when the other player has upset the board and scattered the pieces on the floor they’re flummoxed. Now they are confronted by a vengeful, dishonest head of government who dismisses difficult questions and insults them. It is difficult to know how to operate in this twisted and unprecedented environment except that it must be done carefully.
Trump is producing opponents at a rapid rate. As long as we continue to have elections — who can say what a corrupt Supreme Court will do when the question comes to them — we can expect non-MAGA Republicans and Independents to be pushed into our party’s cause. Trump’s base is sufficiently delusional they cannot be won over. In 2024 Trump got 76M and Harris 74M but more than 90M did not vote. What is reported is the percent of registered voters who do not vote. The question most worthy of attention is the sheer magnitude of the unregistered population, which dwarfs all other political identities. Trump got 30%, Harris got 28% and fully 42% abstained.
That is where we can find the margin of victory, even it requires $1B to find, register and mobilize the Democrats among them.
Many non-voters mistakenly believe that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between them, that they are just two different words or the same thing. A bunny and a rabbit? These are two words for the same thing. But the two parties are demonstrably not the same and have different ecological strategies.
The Republican Party is the greatest vehicle ever invented to turn money into donations into influence into laws into profits. As a vehicle for privilege the Democrats cannot compete. Especially now when Republicans control all three branches of government. The Democrats can try to sell influence but they don’t have much inventory. To the degree that the Republicans are a coalition the members look a lot alike: poor Whites, middle class Whites and Wealthy whites. If even a tiny number of Blacks and Hispanics can be convinced to vote for an openly racist candidate that’s noteworthy.
The Democrats are a genuine coalition that reflects American diversity — disparate races, ethnicities, colors, religions. Their policy goals range from abortion rights to environmental protection, to the share of the national income that goes to working men an women and a host of other things. These tribes acknowledge and collaborate with one another because they have no better choice, no where to go. Small individual contributions make up the largest single source of funds to Senate Democrats. Almost half of the money that funds Congressional Republicans come from PACs buying the influence and outcomes the Republican office-holders are selling.
Democrats fight to make the electorate as broad and as large as possible. Republicans do their very best to suppress the vote of people they think are unlikely to be their supporters.
The worst you can say about the Democratic party is that she is a comfortable old whore who will sleep with anyone who can get her back in power. But this relative openness also allows the party to be captured by social movements — the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, feminist, and LGBT movements are examples — in ways the tightly controlled Republican Party is not.
The more educated you are the more likely you are to be a Democrat. The wealthier you are the more likely to be a Republican.
The parties are absolutely not the same.
The Democratic Party is like all the institutions that are pillars of our democracy in this frightening era. All these institutions now face an existential threat, an unprecedented calamity to harm them and undermine the Republic itself. The Democratic Party may have primacy in the field of campaigns and elections, but it just one part of the opposition. It recruits candidates, it does not organize marches and protest rallies. That sort of leadership has to come from us.
